You have some hope of wooing a farmer (or avoiding one) if you are a country girl but little if your reference for all things country is the memory of Glenroe of a Sunday night. We thought ye were funny you country folk, a bit gray and crusty looking but oh so quaint. Look where that train of thought got me; right into the milking parlour.

So, picture it. You’re trying to impress him. And you’re a high pitched city girl telling him that everything is so funny and cute and horrified and amazed at the same time that the cows are lifting their tails and he is oh so brave and amazing that he instinctively knows when to shift away from that shower of cow dung. Dreamy.

Little did that farmer’s wife in waiting know that inwardly he was wishing me out of the parlour because I had the poor cows nervous and raising-the-tail-ish. The poor girls. There’s oohing and aahing at the sound of the machine, the sight of the milk buckets, the clusters, even the dip. Swoon, the milking apron. Aw, the calf house, the straw, the ration trough. Ouch the calving jack.

Cringing at the memory of me a wide eyed city girl walking into a milking parlour to keep him company. Wishing myself in hindsight out from under his feet. You, in your flowery wellies, he’ll say, well you knew what you were letting yourself in for. Well Holy God, how could I have known? He had me at ‘Let the cows out.’

Yours in mucky love.

There’s more on love and farming in Hearthill in this week’s Irish Country Living …. http://www.farmersjournal.ie/views-on-farming-at-valentine-s-from-a-city-girl-174774/