SNIPPET: The untitled poem below by Nina HAVERS appeared as part of her contribution in the yearly (1999) "Leitrim Guardian" periodical regarding a day at Drumshanbo Mart. Nina said, "We brought in the cattle early. I had them penned in the byre the night before, and at eight o'clock this morning Gabriel and Sean turned up with the tractor and trailer and together we did battle with the weanling heifers in the mud of the street. It was cold and a soft drizzle had us all soaked before the trailer door finally slammed shut on the sacrificial cows... The place is rapidly filling up. I greet a few neighbours and acquaintances. The bellowing of cattle, the curses and shouts of the mart men, and the restiveness of the crowd seem to swell like a tide as the auctioneer and his sidekick climb into their box, start whispering to each other and shuffle papers... As the selling proceeds, I become one with the crowd around me - we are all there for a common purpose and I cease to be "The English woman who got the DUIGNAN's place" and am "a farmer selling cattle." ... I look about me. You can tell the farmers from the dealers. The dealers usually lean on the wall of the ring, itself, often wear hats and tweed jackets and have red faces. The farmers stay mostly on the tiers. Some come in jeans and sweaters, but most wear either wellies or heavy working boots. They come in all shapes and sizes; thin and fat, straight and strong or bent with arthritis, young and fresh or old and lined, dark as Gypsies, fair as Vikings, brown or grey or red or balding. They have one thing in common and a tough granite set about their faces." Winter on a small farm When your hands are chapped and your movements are old And the land is trapped in a death-like cold, When you can't feel your toes and your fingers are numb, Remember that summer will one day come; There'll be flowers all over the ripe fields of clover One warm day when summer smiles again. When the trees are bare, the reeds stiff and brown, And your boots crunch loud on the frozen ground, When the ice lies thick on the rain water butt, And you can't feel the baler-twine knife while you cut: There'll be flowers all over the ripe fields of clover One warm day when summer smiles again. When it's dark in the morning and dark at night And the cowshed is lit by candle light, when there's sleet and rain and snow and frost And half of your lambs will be surely lost, Think: There'll be flowers all over the ripe fields of clover One warm day when summer smiles again. When the cows breathe smoke like dragon's fire And God holds the world in his granite-hard ire, When the wife is complaining and the World needs explaining And your children turn blue and want comfort from you, Say, "There'll be flowers all over the ripe fields of clover One warm day when summer smiles again." -- Nina Havers (now Easterbrook)