Young lady? Lady indeed. And me now almost a certified farmer. That’s where I’ve been. My head stuck in agricultural books. I kid you not.

Today, I had to present on an article entitled ‘The Five T’s of preparing your bull for Sale’; toes, yep, teeth, got it, you have’ll have to mention treating and testing bulls and what else? Well, I did mention I’m a lady, I dare not go there. But let’s just say the fifth ‘T’ is of utmost importance with regards to a bull in the reproduction department. Aha! Keep that Eureka moment to yourself.

We had divided up the presentation with a nice Kerry boy who was to discuss the offending ‘T’; it’s temperature, shape and whatnot. Another lady farmer’s wife was to introduce the topic, while the lovely boy was to gentlemanly discuss the fifth ‘T’ until we learned he was away, on holidays, and he had taken his ‘T’ paragraph with him. What was a girl to do? There were blushes. Ooooh. There was stuttering, t, t, t. There may have been some mumbling. There was description. More mumbling, blushes from the audience. Oh la, la. We made our way through the presentation, segueing through material that while the audience, a group of male farmers, equally unused to discussing the fifth ‘T’ in public with women, diligently, kept their eyes off the speakers and on their tables.

So it was a very minute step for women in agriculture and one giant step for the Cork city girl who little thought twenty years ago that she would be literally lost for words, in search of a bull’s lost ‘T’.

It’s good to be back.