For seven decades, the Gowing family in Killeigh, County Offaly has been providing superb agri contracting services to farming families in the local community. We travelled to the midlands and caught up with Richard Gowing, known locally as Frankie to discuss the history and current well-being of this exceptional enterprise.
Gowing Agri Contractors is an integral part of life in and around Killeigh, a scenic rural village located approximately six kilometres south of Tullamore in County Offaly. For almost three-quarters of a century, the Gowing family has offered local farmers dependable and affordable agri contracting solutions, a tradition which is being maintained today by Frankie Gowing.
Reflecting on the genesis of the family’s highly-regarded contracting service, he notes: “My late father, Frank, established the contracting business. He started contracting over 65 years ago, in and around 1950. He traded under his own name and we changed it to Gowing Agri Contracting after I took over.”
Frankie has been involved in the family business for forty years now and he admits that he took to it like the proverbial duck to water. “I was born and bred into it and I’ve always had a great interest in it,” he confirms.
Like the vast majority of contractors, Frankie also runs his own family farm. Alongside his wife Carol and family Emma and Ben, he owns some 80 acres and rents an additional 100. Dry stock and cereal is the name of the game at home… “We used to sow sugar beet but we now do fodder beet instead, which we sell to local farmers,” the amiable Offaly man adds.
As for the contracting, Frankie provides a wide range of services to his customers. “My father would have started out mainly doing dung spreading, ploughing, sowing corn and baling hay,” he explains. “Today, we do ploughing, sowing corn, harvesting corn, pit and bale-wrap silage, a good bit of slurry, hedge cutting, sowing and harvesting fodder beet, and we also do a lot of fertilizer spreading and cereal spraying. We try to cover as many aspects of it as we can.”
“Most of the work is within a 20-mile radius and we try to stay within that. We keep it local and focus on providing our customers with the best possible service. We’d be associated with a lot of families here for a number of years and decades. Most of our clients are regular customers who we’ve been dealing with for a long time.”
When customers stick with you, it’s as good an endorsement of your services as you could ask for – proof that quality solutions are being provided. At the end of the day, it’s a competitive world we live in and customers won’t return unless they are being looked after.
“I suppose it’s a combination of everything,” says Frankie, when asked what does he attribute the longevity of these vital relationships. “There’s a lot of loyalty involved in it as well. I always try to get to each customer as soon as I can, so reliability is definitely a big thing – and I look after them as well as I can. That’s the way it has been here the whole time.
“Reliability and quality of work are two of our strengths and I take great pride in the work we do. Every job gets my undivided attention and I make sure it’s done right.”
In order to provide a quality service, dependable equipment is a prerequisite. To this end, Frankie runs a fleet of six tractors; four Massey Fergusons and two John Deeres. The newest is an 11-reg and there are also two ‘07s, an ’04, an ’03 and a ’96. All the tractors are regularly serviced in-house and maintained in immaculate condition at all times.
Frankie also operates a hugely-versatile JCB TM320 Agri with an array of attachments, a pair of John Deere combines, a John Deere forage harvester, a one-pass for sowing corn, a McHale baler and wrapper for silage and a Krone mower. Regarding his tendency to purchase only the very best gear, he states:
“When you stick with names like John Deere and Massey Ferguson, you know you have very reliable tractors and machinery. You can avoid downtime and keep them running. There’s no point buying cheaper makes and taking a chance that you could run into problems with them. In this game, you have to keep moving so you need equipment that won’t let you down.
“Of course, it takes a lot of time and investment to keep it all up to date and firing on all cylinders but that’s part and parcel of contracting. You also try to make sure that you have something to do all year around. I have one man working full time here and then seasonal workers depending on the work load so we do a good bit of hedge cutting during the winter to keep things ticking along.”
Then there’s the home farm to look after as well, so there’s always work to be done. “It’s a challenge to juggle everything, that’s why I stick with the dry stock,” says Frankie. “I do store-to-beef, which doesn’t take up too much time and ties in nicely with the contracting. My wife and kids help out feeding them in the evenings, so it’s a family effort.”
With farmers currently under intense pressure due to low prices being paid to primary producers, Frankie admits that these are concerning times for everyone involved in the agri sector. “It’s having an impact for sure and my guess is that it will have an even bigger impact down the road. It’s hard to know where it’s all going to end. Grain prices and dairy prices are way back and tillage and dairy between them account for most of our business, so there’s a lot of uncertainty there at the moment. We’re depending so much on world market prices now, so it’s hard to call. It’s out of our hands, really.”
All that farmers and contractors can do is roll up their sleeves and soldier on. “We’ll keep going,” Frankie concludes. “I’m confident that if we keep providing the same service, that there will be demand for it. Somebody has to provide it and I’m in the game a long time now and have a good reputation and all the machinery. As long as it’s there to be done. I’ll keep doing it.”
Gowing Agri Contractors
Killeigh,
Co. Offaly
Tel: 057 9344115
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 5, June 2016
