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Writer, journalist and broadcaster David Medcalf has worked for more than twenty-five years on national and regional newspapers in both urban and rural Ireland. He has been a news reporter on the Irish Independent and the Evening Herald and is now a journalist with the People Newspapers group, covering south-east Ireland. He also contributes to sports programmes on RTÉ radio. His columns in the People newspapers. David’s first book Plough Music has shed light on how ploughing has put food on the tables of millions of people in Ireland and across the world for thousands of years.  The world of ploughing has it all: amazing people, beautiful horses, ingenious machinery, and stars such as Harry Ferguson from County Down or his great friend and rival Henry Ford. Plough Music covers the whole gamut, from the fields of Ballycullane to the banks of the Brahmatputra; from the role played by the humble earthworm in aerating the soil to methods of ‘plough-free’ crop growing.

Why do 150,000 people attend the national ploughing championships each year? Why do hundreds of old-boy racers regularly take their vintage tractors out on the roads? And why do multimillionaires forego their yachts and foreign holidays to take to the plough? Such questions are explored with humour and insight by journalist and observer, David Medcalf. His compendium will fascinate, educate and intrigue the dedicated ploughman (or woman) and the armchair follower alike. It is a feast for both the mind and the soul; music for tired souls.

Our thanks to The Brandon House Hotel in New Ross County Wexford who provided The Directors Suite for these recordings