It's one of the brightest stars of the summer/autumn celebrations; one of the jolliest, the most nostalgic and yet vibrant young-feeling events. All done on a voluntary basis, and you know its appeal when you see the fleets of cars from all over the country, brilliantly stewarded for minimal delay in parking in various huge fields around. You've guessed it; it is of course the Moynalty Steam Threshing Festival, now celebrating its silver jubilee. But because it's all voluntary effort, don't think that there is one iota of it that shows anything amateur in the running. Even the weather seems under control. When Sean Sheridan, Public Relations Officer for the festival, was asked recently had it ever been a rainy day, he said, thoughtfully: "I think we've had one shower."
And the committee has announced that it has been able to buy the 11-acre field in which you will remember the Festival is held. They may yet build a permanent home for it. What a site, with the lovely Borora river bounding two sides. A river that shows signs of returning to its long-deserved reputation for its fish, after a poisoning disaster some years ago. Another wise head on the committee, Gerry Farrell, has urged all along that the Borora should not be restocked from other sources: "let the river heal itself," he urged. It is working.
As to the plans for the future of a lasting exhibition of yesterday's farm equipment, perhaps we will hear more from Sean Gilsenan, chairman of the committee. It is not alone the mechanically-minded who are drawn to the top corner of the field where the huge steam engines belch forth smoke in volumes to amaze the young and to remind the others of what harvesting used to be. The field itself is so inventively dotted with other side-shows form cooking of various sorts to the making of mud turf - yes mud turf sods. Always a crowd draw. There is so much to see, and Gerry Farrell, who has filmed the event for some 20 years, tells of how people who run the booths simply have to see the film because they have never had the time, naturally, to roam around while the heat was on.
They are constantly, in the committee, thinking up new ideas. A year or two ago (was it?) they grew a range of potatoes from the Famine-age. It is a family day, and as John Feeney writes in the Meath Chronicle: "the powerful sense of community felt at threshing time is rekindled in Moynalty every August for the nostalgic older visitors as well as the younger people, who are amazed to learn of a way of life which has disappeared completely in the past half-century." It's all on Sunday August 13th. Roll up. Y