Me and my tractor

HE admits to being ’70 plus’ but Kilcolgan dairy farmer and well known flood relief campaigner, Mattie Hallinan, didn’t think twice when it came to buying a new tractor this Spring.

Mattie, who is still a very active dairy farmer along with his sons Paul and Malachy, ‘pushed out the boat’ on a 140hp New Holland 7185, straight out of the box. He did have a good trade-in to soften the financial blow of a machine that in a straight deal could take the best part of 80 grand out of your back pocket.

“I suppose it takes the sting out of it a bit when you’re trading in one against the other, but we do a lot of work with our tractors, so maybe it’s a matter of enjoying the comfort of it,” Mattie Hallinan told the Farming Tribune.

His first tractor back in the late 1960s was a Ford 2000 and since then he’s always been a fan of the Fords that have now metamorphised into the New Holland range. “One thing I really like about those new tractors is how economical in diesel usage they have become over recent years.

“For such powerful machines they are quite stingy in terms of the amount of diesel they use and I suppose that’s a good thing for everyone,” said Mattie Hallinan.

He admits to being the ‘typical farmer’ when it comes to splashing out a bit when the time is right. “Farmers will generally tend to keep their money in circulation. When we have a bit we spend it and that’s the way it should be too,” said Mattie Hallinan.

His new New Holland with his 141 plates will be seen on the roads of Kilcolgan and Ballinderreen over the coming months and years, but Mattie is hoping that the days of driving through floods will come to an end.

“There have been many times down through the years when you could only drive on those roads with a tractor. “If we could get the flood problems solved in South Galway for once and for all, then maybe I could enjoy the new tractor a bit more,” said Mattie Hallinan.