This article is from page 36 of the 2007-07-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 36 JPG
THE story of west Cork farmer, Jack Sheehan, is the subject of a new book to be published by the Cork University Press in the coming weeks. Jack’s World – Farming on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula, 1920- 2003 tells the story of Jack, a farmer erowing up and struggling to survive in the 1920’s and 1930’s, managing his farm through the 1950’s and ad- justing to new forces in the 1970s but marginalized by the times we now live in.
Sheehan was one of eleven children born into an impoverished farming family on the Sheep’s Head penin- sula in southwest Ireland. Growing up in hungry times, he stayed on the farm all his eighty-three years, taking it over when his father died and steadfastly caring for its fields through the dormant 1950s and the better times that came in the decades that followed.
He lived to see the eclipse of his farming world and to view with dis- may the way encroaching property speculators and consumerism were
changing the nature of his landscape. Jack Sheehan was born just as the Irish state was coming into existence and his life is as revealing of that country’s history as the more famil- lar accounts of national figures. Jack’s World’s is illustrated in col- our with specially commissioned photographs taken by three people, Danny Gralton, Ciaran Watson and Danny Levy Sheehan, who all knew Jack and know his farm. The book is also illustrated with maps, includ- ing one showing the farm’s fields and their Irish names that were preserved
by Jack, and photographs of early documents relating to his farm’s his- ro a’s
The book’s unique sources, in addi- tion to the memories of friends and family who knew Jack and shared aspects of his world, include diaries kept by Jack from the early 1930s onwards.
Author, Sean Sheehan, is a nephew of Jack and he has written a number of books, including a guide to anar- chism and a biography of Socrates. He is presently writing a book about aie