Tag Archives: Harvest

Harvest Day ’22 Rescheduled for Saturday 6th of August

We have rescheduled the Harvest day to take place on Saturday next, 6th Aug. Activities will be starting about mid-day and we will have a fine selection of vintage cars, tractors and commercials on display. We will have tillage with vintage machines, competition ploughing demonstrations and of course combines, trailed, self-propelled and also a range of the most up to date modern machines. Fingers crossed for a fine day! We look forward to seeing you in Ballinspittle.

De Courcey Harvest Working Day 2022

De Courcey Harvest Working Day will take place on the Hayes Farm, Kilkerran, Ballinspittle, Co. Cork on Bank Holiday Monday 1st August 2022.

Old time tillage and harvest working displays. Competition ploughing. Static displays of stationary engines, cars, tractors and commercial vehicles

Update on Fr Kingston’s mission in Mozambique.

Last year the club was delighted to be able to give funds from our Harvest Day to The West Cork Fundraising Community whom since 2018 have been working towards raising enough funds to buy a tractor and other farm machinery for Fr. John Kingston’s mission in Mozambique. Clonakilty native Fr. John Kingston has been working in Mozambique since 1990, focusing primarily on helping the local community to farm.

The mission has been granted a significant plot of land (approximately 100 hectares) in Chimolo, which, if it goes unused will be taken back by the state, this would result in the eviction and loss of livelihood of a number of locals. We were delighted to hear back in May that the mission has now taken possession of a new tractor and implements to enable them to properly farm the land. See pictures of tractor arriving.

Earlier in June, we received some more pictures of the tractor, this time actually at work on the mission farm. We wish Fr Kingston the very best in the work he is doing helping the farming community in Mozambique.

De Courcey Harvest Day 5th August 2019

John O’Donovans farm Sandycove, Ballinspittle, was the setting for the 9th annual DeCourcey Harvest Working Day held as usual on the August Bank Holiday Monday. The event was run to raise money for The Fr Kingston Mission in Mozambique, Ballinadee School, Ballinadee Hall and DeCourceys Boxing club.

This year Farmhand Ltd with local distributor Derry O’Donovan Ltd were partners with the Club in running the event. Farmhand brought a fresh modern element to the Harvest Day, the highlight of which was the impressive parade of farm machinery from their catalogue. Full credit must go to Derry and Moira O’Donovan for assembling the array of equipment in one place. On the grandstand was Farmhand sales director David Borland who gave a detailed commentary on the machines as they paraded past.

In amongst the modern gear, there were a few early machines as well, including an Amazone fertilizer spinner originally sold new in Bandon in 1970 and an old Krone muck spreader, both of which were on vintage Massey Fergusons from the same era. Marketing director Stephen Scrivener was also present and was kept busy for the afternoon meeting past and future customers in the Farmhand hospitality tent. The team had a constant stream of visitors looking to chat and to purchase merchandise from the machinery brands on display.  

This year the Harvest day also featured several working horses. They spent the day collecting sheaves from the binders and drawing them to the threshing machines. Well done to local Jack O’Reilly for the fine job in restoring the horse butt which he brought to the show. It was lovely to see the butt in use throughout the day.

Two threshers were in use during the event. Sullivan’s Clayton and Shuttleworth thresher was driven by Lordan’s Marshall traction engine and John O’Neill’s Ransomes was driven by Bart Desmond’s Crossley oil engine. The oil engine was driving several belts to also power a Claas trusser and a grinding mill. Murphys from Kinsale had their 1907 Fowler engine on display.

As usual, the event featured a variety of reaper and binders, trailed combines and vintage combines as well as landowner John O’Donovans 2012 Claas Lexion Montana. Away from the harvesting, the tilling area had a range of different vintage machines ploughing and harrowing. Keith Bryan from Waterfall had his wonderful Titan tractor pulling a trailed plough having earlier in the day had a reaper and binder in tow.

At the lower end of the field Gearoid Walsh was giving a demonstration with an Amazone Cayros plough and alongside Liam O’Driscoll was putting his Kirovets K-424 articulated tractor through its paces with a reversible plough belonging to Jim O’Regan.

Once again the weather was very kind to us as we had beautiful sunshine for the afternoon. We give a big thank you to the landowner, sponsors and everyone who worked so hard to make the event a success. Looking forward to our 10th Harvest day in 2020.

Agriland: Mix of new and old destined for ‘De Courcey Harvest Day’

This year’s De Courcey Harvest Day will be held on Bank Holiday Monday, August 5. The location will be Sandycove, Ballinspittle, Co. Cork.

Farmhand – the distributor of well-known machinery brands such as Krone, Amazone and Quicke – is the main sponsor of this year’s event, in conjunction with local dealer Derry O’Donovan Machinery.

The De Courcey Harvest Day began back in 2011 as a working demonstration; it’s now described as a “national event”.

Read the article in full at https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/mix-of-new-and-old-destined-for-de-courcey-harvest-day/

 

 

 

Simulated Farm Accident

Highlight of the 2018 Harvest day in Kilbrittain was the simulated farm accident. Spectators were horrified to see a man becoming trapped in the intake auger of a combine harvester when trying to clear a blockage in the header. Luckily Dr Jason van der Velde from West Cork Rapid Response was on site as were members of the H.S.E. ambulance service, and Coastguard.

Dr Jason explained the actions being performed to extract the victim from the machine. Using his DART philosophy( Disengage, Analgesia(Pain Relief), Reverse and Tourniquet) the casualty was safely removed from the combine treated and removed from the site. Jason then answered questions from the audience. Many thanks to everyone who participated in this excellent demonstration we hope it will raise safety awareness and also inform people of what to do in the event of an accident happening.

Harvest working Day 6th August 2018.

The De Courcey Harvest Working day will be held on Monday 6th August 2018. The site will once again be in Harbour View, Kilbrittain. It will take place on the farm of club member Derry Desmond. The club is most grateful to Derry for making the site available to us for a second time. Continuing our support of local charities, 2018 will see funds raised donated to The Margaret O’Dwyer fund, Carmelite friary Kinsale renovation fund, Ballinspittle De-Fib group and West Cork Rapid Response who do such vital life-saving work in our area.

On the evening of 11th July, Club members met with representatives of these groups at the event site to officially launch the Working Day. Also supporting us was champion ploughman Liam O’Driscoll recently returned from competing in Russia.

Dr Jason van der Velde of the Rapid Response attended with his specially equipped rescue jeep completely financed by fundraising in the West Cork area. Also on site were other rescue and emergency services vehicles which will be on show at the Harvest day. 

At the end of April members of the committee had met with Dr Jason’s group to begin planning a farm safety exercise. The exercise will involve several different elements of the emergency services coordinating in respond to a serious accident where a person becomes trapped in a machine. The intention is to raise awareness of safety and also to educate people how to respond to such a serious accident. Preparation is well underway and will be very realistic. 

The 2018 harvest day will feature many new additions to the range of exhibits. De Courcey ‘s will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the launch of the Landrover in 1948. We will be organising a gathering of all types of Landrover at the event in Kilbrittain. The Club recently took time out at the Innishannon Steam Rally to promote the event with some members and friends getting their landrovers together for a photo opportunity. 

The usual harvest day activities of reaper and binder, combine harvesting, tilling and a whole host of traditional farming activities will of course take centre stage. 

There are a number of restoration projects currently underway in the Club including some vintage combine harvesters that are being prepared for debuts at the show, one of which is Ronan Horgan’s 1971 Clayson 133. In addition, we are expecting a nice number of steam traction engines to also attend. As always the focus will be on activity, with a huge array of vintage machines of all sorts working at the event.

Keep an eye on our facebook page and website www.decourceyvintage.com for further details.

Landrovers at Harvest Day ’18

This year the De Courcey Classic and Vintage Club will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the launch of the Landrover in 1948. We will be organising a gathering of all types of Landrovers at our Harvest day in Harbour view, Kilbrittain on Monday 6th of Aug.

The Club recently took time out at the Innishannon Steam Rally to promote the event with some members and friends getting their Landrovers together for a photo opportunity. Camping will be available as we already have several landrover owners committed to travel some distance to the event. Keep an eye on our facebook page and website for further details.