He looks fine and plump now, with or without the hat.<\/p>\n
His time of eating grass and wearing hats on this farm are numbered, I fear. <\/p>\n
If you recall, I gave him the present of the hat way back in early January.<\/p>\n
Back then, I figured offering him a hat was far cheaper than putting up a big shed.\n <\/p>\n
And how right I was, for the hat protected him from the weather, it worked out tremendously well.<\/p>\n
He outwintered in style. He looked like Frank Sinatra.<\/p>\n
He was an Angus to be admired. A leader in his field.<\/p>\n
And then, even after the wet winter had passed and the spring arrived, the hat remained. <\/p>\n
Now offering the clever bullock protection from the sun, as well as the rain. <\/p>\n
Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. <\/p>\n
There are no flies on my bullock, nor on me, and that’s for sure. <\/p>\n
He’s using the head, just like every other person who wears a hat to protect themselves from the elements. <\/p>\n
The only time I see my bullock without the hat nowadays is when we have visitors to the farm or at noon and 6pm.<\/p>\n
So, bar general manners and in times of prayer, the hat stays put on his head, where the good Lord intended hats to go.<\/p>\n
Yerra, he’s like Brad Pitt from the movie Snatch, except he doesn’t have a tendency to start fights. <\/p>\n
That hat is as good as welded to his head.<\/p>\n
He’s like Jack Lynch, only without the pipe.<\/p>\n
He’s like Kojak, only without the lollypop.<\/p>\n
He’s like a lot of fellows, really, only he’s a bullock.<\/p>\n
But now, alas, the time has come to bid farewell to my Angus and his hat. And no doubt, now he will use his hat to shield a tear, as I will myself, when I tell him the sad news.<\/p>\n
Yerra selling cattle is a desperately sad chore. It’s like a divorce, really.\n <\/p>\n
Our only hope now is that some kindly farmer will spot him, and purchase my Angus at Macroom Mart on Saturday, hat and all.<\/p>\n
A farmer willing to pay big money in order to make him all the plumper again.<\/p>\n
A farmer living on some dream farm back there in Drimoleague or someplace.<\/p>\n
Yerra my farm, God bless it, isn’t set up for finishing cattle, as I am allergic to buying ration.<\/p>\n
It’s grass all the way here. <\/p>\n
And there comes a time in a bullock’s life, when he desires, and indeed deserves, more.<\/p>\n
“Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home,” the great Paul Young used to sing long ago, back when we all wore hats and none of us had bald heads.<\/p>\n
Well hopefully, after next Saturday’s sale, my famous hat-wearing bullock will find a new home in a place where ration flows like water.<\/p>\n
A place where he can lay his hat in comfort, a place where sweet grass is all they have on offer. <\/p>\n
Someplace where my mad hatter of an Angus will go on to blossom and shine all the more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He looks fine and plump now, with or without the hat. His time of eating grass and wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12634,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-443037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-farming-beef-and-sheep","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}