Tipperary farmer sold the cows to buy a guitar, and never looked back

John Bermingham, who farms 100 acres in Mullinahone at the foothills of Slievenamon, is one of the latest to feature on the Department of Agriculture’s #TuesdayTreees. Speaking on the short video, John talks about his journey from reluctant farmer, to enthusiastic musician where the cows paid for the guitar.

“My grandparents bought this place in 1922. This place had become a ruin but ‘we got a mad idea to restore it and turn it into tourist accommodation, and that’s become our main enterprise along with the forestry”.

About 90 acres of the 100-acred farm is planted, with mixed varieties including elder in the wetland, beech, oak, sycamore, and a lot of Ash. However, Ash dieback means a lot of it needed to be taken out but John is hopeful that the Department’s reconstitution grant will help to replace it.

“When we renovated the place and tourists started to come out, it wasn’t only a commercial thing but we created pathways and walks so it’s an add-on to the tourism as well. It’s nice to walk down in the morning and hear nothing but trees. You hear birds singing and it’s not a bad way to start the day’.

John was not a natural farmer, and it’s not a path he would have chosen. He’s devised the business so that his own son doesn’t have to follow the same path, if he doesn’t want to.

“My father got sick when I was young, so as the eldest son I became a reluctant farmer I suppose. I wouldn’t have chosen to be a farmer. This was a dairy farm so I took on that when I was young. I was able to drive tractors and milk cows but I was ill-equipped to run a business”.

John’s father played piano, accordion, and the mouth organ. However, his son wanted to play something different, so he “sold the cows and bought a guitar”: the ‘best cow’ made £1300 in 1991.

“Then I left it all behind for a while and played music. I sold my best cow and bought a guitar and travelled around playing music”.

Meeting his partner Monica in Germany, they had a son Shaun. The return to Tipperary brought a new approach to the farm,

“I had spent a lot of money draining marginal land when I came back here, and basically tried to turn bad land into good land and that doesn’t work. Trees seemed to be a solution”

They planted trees on marginal land, starting back in 2002/2003. While the first lot of thinning was done by a contractor, John has since bought a machine with a suitable attachment so they could harvest their own timber.

“Now we’re in control of it completely. There’s no middleman between the trees and the sale”.

The tourism business goes hand-in-hand, in a way, with the agriculture side of things.

“I love meeting people when they come to visit the place, and then when they go I love to go to the farthest field in the place and sit on a digger and cut trees” says John, who is an advocate of other people doing the same thing. The biggest draw for the Mullinahone man is the amenity aspect, but admits that now, some 20 years on they are starting to make some money off it.

“I suppose part of it too, is that I knew that I didn’t want our son to feel he had to be a farmer in the way I felt I had to. I wasn’t forced to be: it was the culture at the time. Trees will still have to be managed but it won’t hold you like cows did. Liike they had a hold on me”.

As the next generation, Shaun appreciates what the people before him have built.

“You’re offered so much here with the woodlands and the walks. The previous generations laid the foundations for what it has become now, and I’m starting to develop different ideas for what I think the place can grow into, potentially an artist’s residency or a different recording space”.

The full video, including a performance of the song by John and Sean, can be viewed on the Department of Agriculture social media sites.