Athy ploughman marks record-breaking plough 

A LOT of people – myself included – did not know the ARCH Club in Blackparks, Athy was originally funded by a Guinness World Record … in a tractor.

On 8 September 1980, in Green’s Field in Levitstown, the invigilator from the Guinness Book of Records confirmed that Turnerstown farmer Pat Bolger had ploughed non-stop for 181 hours and 25 minutes to break the previous record and take his place in that year’s records book.

So recently, on 9 September, the 45th anniversary of this momentous exploit was commemorated outside the very building Pat’s record- breaking exploits helped get off the ground.

“It was nearly eight days, if you added it all up,” said Pat last week, reminiscing about his Usain Bolt moment all the way back when John Lennon was still alive.

“I started on 1 September, and finished on the eighth,” he explained. “It was 24-hour ploughing, with a 15-minute toilet or water break every two hours, in line with Guinness’s protocols.” 

 Coincidentally, the Guinness Book of World Records was conceived just a county away in the early 1950s when Hugh Beaver, the chairman of the Guinness Brewery, got into a discussion with an associate about what was the fastest game bird in the world, while at a shooting party in Wexford. And the rest, as they say, is history.

“Believe it or not, the Lions Club came up with the idea to see who would do it,” said Pat. “I was in the Athy Macra at the time; they put it to a vote and I was voted most likely.

“It was a huge challenge, because it could do a lot of harm to your head. Like, you’d come to the end of the field after a couple of days, and the tree would look like somebody’s head!

“I was 30 years’ old then, in the strength of my life, and I remember about 15 years ago somebody asking me if I’d do it again, and I said: ‘Not on your life!’” 

The Kildare Nationalist asked Pat how many years his name was in the vaunted tome, but sadly, it seems to have been just the one.

“The following year some fella from England did it with a bigger plough,” shrugged Pat. “He had a four-furrow, I only had a two-furrow plough behind an old Ford 7700, sponsored by John Perry.

“John Perry was brilliant – a real gentleman. He said, ‘whatever you want, Pat’. He was a very good man. Jackie Cummins, his head mechanic, did the running repairs, and sat up on the back of the plough if it needed another pin replaced.

“The field was 800 acres, and about 300 yards long,” Pat remembered.

“AnnaMae was there with the daughter, and she was head of the National Ploughing Association. She said to me, ‘Make sure you can bury the trash, we need a well-turned sod’.

“All the Lions Club were there to help supervise, to make sure I wasn’t sleeping up on the headland or slacking off. From dentists to garagemen … but nowadays there’s only four of them left.

“The fundraising was enough to buy the Dreamland Ballroom for the youth of Athy. I never got a penny, but I was asked to do a job, and I did.” 

Curiously, Pat has never represented Kildare in the National Ploughing Championships, despite his connections.

“I was never in the Ploughing Championships, although I ploughed at home, and I knew what I was doing, but I wasn’t a competitive ploughman, measuring furrows with feathers. That would be too much for me, too technical,” he said.

Pat is now a sprightly 75, and a retired farmer at home in Turnerstown, where he lives with wife Triona after raising his children Patrina and Keelan.

“I was going to let the anniversary go to the 50th, but you never know what happens in a year,” said Pat.

“Looking back, I knew I could do a good few days, but I never thought I’d break the record. After three days, my father came up to me and told me on the QT about a fella in England who was attempting it as well, but he came back the next day to tell me he had finished,” smiled Pat.

What did he do for entertainment during the long dark, teatime of the soul?

“I had a radio in the cab, yeah, but I had visitors coming morning, noon and night up on the step. Maybe not as many at night, though,” he generously conceded.

Pat’s modesty about his achievement is so extensive, that at his daughter’s wedding last December his new son-in-law had never heard of it and “he couldn’t believe it when he heard. I sorta kept it quiet to myself!” 

Hopefully now his achievement will be properly recognised by his peers, for a solo effort that helped turn a ploughed field into a youth club.