97-year-old Seskinore farmer still keen to get behind the wheel

AT the remarkable age of 97, James ‘Jim’ Riddell of Seskinore may well be the country’s oldest combine driver — and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Born on April 12,1928 in Philadelphia, Jim’s first experience of farming was long before his father, a Tyrone native, returned home to the Red Hand county.

He spent a lot of time watching his grandfather and uncles work the American land, doing all the different jobs that needed done.

After a time, an opportunity arose for the family to buy 60 acres locally for £475 and his father returned from the States to the farm at Lisnarable, Seskinore. Having a bit of land meant that it was also time to get some livestock, and Jim loved tending to a few cows and hens.

Later, Jim had made enough money to buy a farm where he still lives and works today.

He married a local girl Molly Caldwell, and they went onto have four children, Joy, Helen, Pearl and Robert.

Jim worked hard on his farm and was always looking to bring new ideas or find new ways of doing things.

Indeed, Jim had the first milking parlour in Tyrone – and he was also one of the first to bring a combine harvester to Tyrone!

In the mid-50s, Jim kept poultry, pigs, dairy and grew potatoes and compulsory tillage until 1955. Jim was fascinated with arable farming and grew grain for feed, this also fed Jim’s passion for big machinery.

His first combine was bought in 1955; a second-hand Ransom with a four-foot cut, cutting 12 tonnes in a morning. A job which would have previously taken seven or eight men a long, hard day at the thresher. Back then, the hard-working rig could manage around half-an-acre an hour.

It was around this time that Jim spotted an opportunity to begin selling machinery; realising he could buy in keenly-priced machines from England that suited the much smaller demands of farmers here who would not have been able to buy these machines new.

Before long, Jim earned quite a reputation for himself as a knowledgeable and honest used machinery dealer, with clients from Donegal to Wexford and beyond, and was spending six-to-eight weeks every year buying machinery in England.

Although Jim is past retirement age, he still enjoys selling the occasional combine – and was seen by many climbing the steps of and driving a 20-foot header combine during Harvest 2020… however Jim thought it was ‘just a little’ too big!

That being said, he likes to point out there would be very few farmers who could say they have been driving combines for 65 years.

Although his son Robert has now taken over the harvesting, James admits he still enjoys the occasional run on the combine – a New Holland TX36 with a 17ft header, to be exact – “just to keep my hand in!”

Neighbours say it is a rare sight to witness someone of his years still guiding a combine across the fields, but for James, it remains second nature.