Maurice Gannon never seems to stop working so we really appreciated it when he let us interrupt his hectic schedule to find out more about his outstanding farming and contracting enterprises. At Keelogues, near Cregg in north Galway, we caught up with one of the most enthusiastic, passionate and energetic men on the island.
Eighteen-hour days are par for the course for Maurice Gannon, a successful tillage farmer who also provides excellent contracting services to some 400 farmers or more in the Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Longford and Westmeath hinterland. Occasionally, he goes even further afield – into Cavan and Monaghan, for example.
With help from his wife Caroline (who looks after all the paperwork) and sons David, Kenneth and Connor, he runs a 400-acre tillage farm. When he’s not at home, he’s out contracting – spreading slurry, ploughing, sowing, reseeding, silage, harvesting. Maurice also does a fair bit of tree felling and remedial work on trees and is contracted by Kepak in Athleague to recycle organic waste.
And let’s not forget the maintenance, repair and general upkeep of Gannon Agri’s magnificent fleet! “Maintenance is key and it’s a full-time job in itself,” says the affable Galway man. “No matter how good your machinery is – or how new – it will wear and it has to be looked after. I do a good bit of the maintenance myself and also use the services of a local fitter as well as the main Valtra dealer.”
Speaking of Valtra, Maurice currently operates the most impressive Valtra-orientated fleet in the country, having gradually changed his entire fleet of tractors over to the Finnish marque. “I run ten Valtras at the moment,” he confirms. “I bought my first new one in 1999 and found it to be bulletproof. I was all Deutz before that but I demo’ed a Valtra for about three weeks and was very impressed by it. I struck a deal and within a few years I was all Valtra.”
A new one was added to the fleet this year. Clarke Machinery Group is the dealer Maurice buys from – he purchases the tractors from their New Inn, Cavan head office and also uses their Roscommon branch for parts etc. “They sell very good, reliable tractors and I receive a great service from excellent fitters and storemen.”
Maurice runs a large slurry spreading operation, with two umbilical systems, one with a dribble bar (Slurry Mate). He also owns and operates six 2600-gallon Major tankers, two Fusion balers, a few agitators, two new Keenan orbital muck spreaders, a John Deere 7550 self-propelled forage harvester, three trailed John Deere mowers plus one set of front and back Kverneland mowers, a Kverneland rake, seven Kane trailers and a complete range of tillage and grass reseeding equipment, including ploughs and one-pass tools.
Gannon Agri generates full-time employment all year around for a crew of six men, as well as four part-time positions. Maurice’s sons are all at college and the three of them are heavily involved in the business. David (22), is studying agricultural engineering at Tralee IT, Kenneth (20) s doing Agri Business at GMIT; and Connor (18), who has just completed his Leaving Cert, started at Mountbellew Agri College in September.
Between contracting and managing the home farm, the Gannons are kept busy from January until December. The tillage enterprise produces straw, grain and silage, which is sold locally and Maurice also runs a strong calf-to-beef livestock operation, rearing calves during the wintertime – almost as if to make sure he doesn’t get a break!
Maurice made his first square bale when he was only ten and started driving tractors around the same time. He’s been farming all his life and has built up very strong working relationships and friendships with other members of the farming community near and far. (“It’s all repeat business,” he notes).
The Galway man has been cutting silage for 31 years and the long hours of hard toil and honest endeavour on farmlands, drinking in the fresh air, have resulted in a strong and healthy frame that belies his 51 years on the planet. When I put it to him that farming is an incredibly healthy lifestyle, he responded:
“You will be fit for sure, and so will your staff. I love it. I love facing new tasks and new challenges and I love having a workload in front of me. I like to have a lot of work ahead of me and I’d be weighing up jobs and planning it all out in my head weeks in advance – putting a picture in place of what’s happening and what way you’re going to approach things. I suppose you have to do that when you have so many people working for you.”
So it’s a case of eating, sleeping and drinking farming? “Eat, sleep, drink, repeat…”
Weather, of course, is the constant enemy. “Weather is a challenge in everything you do. It’s the biggest factor, the largest threat. All of our work right through the year from harvesting and baling to slurry spreading all needs good weather. So weather is a major factor right across our operation.”
It’s all fine and well being enthusiastic about farming and investing an average of 18 hours a day into it (on a typical day, Maurice is up between 6am and 6:30am and he rarely sees the bed again before midnight), but at the same time it’s all rather pointless if the numbers aren’t adding up and you’re not producing a viable commercial enterprise. How difficult is it to turn a profit?
“It’s demanding – from both a financial and weather point of view – but you have to stay on top of it,” he concludes. “I live with this job, 24/7/365 and I never let it go away. If you lose your grip on it, it will slip through your fingers. At the end of the day, I’m doing what I have a passion for and what I’m experienced at and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He was restless. I knew he wanted to get back to work. So it was time for me to head home; and time for Maurice Gannon to go back out onto the land he loves.
Maurice Gannon
Keelogues
Cregg
Co. Galway
Tel: 086-2538169
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 8, October 2016
