tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62149307279961841992024-02-18T23:15:10.447-08:00Rain on My WindowLong time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window is an ongoing tale of my early memories shared by my younger brother David and myself on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay in the Orkney Islands, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-84522725129839109102010-06-11T04:23:00.000-07:002010-06-11T04:25:00.113-07:00No 78. Diaries offer a look into the past.No 78. Travelling Threshing Mills.<br /><br />The earliest reference to thrashing mills on a personal note I have taken from the Diaries of William Tait of Ingsay, 1880 to 1939. These Diaries are going to intrude into my notes as time goes by. They accentuate much of what I have already written in Rain on My Window about yesterday.<br /> William Tait, finally of Ingsay in Birsay, Orkney, was my father’s mother’s brother, bred off Caithness stock. His father was John Tait, born in 1820 in Grotistoft, Hill of Barrock, now a roofless ruin after being cleared in May 1843 by James Traill of Rattar. His mother was Janet Steven, born in Dunnet. They emigrated to Orkney circa 1850. These Diaries I knew about many years ago, had an occasional look inside them, but they are not mine. They possibly belong more to Archival History than to any one family, though Wm Tait’s grandson Sandy Scarth in Twatt in Birsay has present claim. But they are in my present care as I transcribe them into this marvellous computer age, making the contents available to a wider readership. I am now half way through the work, pencil written in old and old-fashioned farmers’ diaries full of much useless bits of information, such as M.P.s and the Right Honourable Members of the House of Lords !!! Interesting enough in it’s own way. The pencil writings are faint, but we are making progress.<br /> Still much unfinished with 25 Diaries still to go by late May 2010, but at least over half of them are already done and are printed out and available for viewing and perusal in a green backed folder in Castlehill Heritage Centre. I am getting some help from them, so if anyone wants they can have a look into the past of farming in Orkney around 100 years ago, which was much the same as in Caithness. They still need a final editing but that is only a touching up to correct my typos. I will pick and choose from the Diaries from time to time, without apology, but this article at least introduces them to John O’ Groat readers. <br /> The Diaries are nearer to me than I thought. Until I began transcribing them I did not know that from1894 to 1900 Wm Tait was farm manager at Rousam in Stronsay, farmed then by David Pottinger my grandfather and his brother-in-law. From 1907 to 1919 Wm Tait farmed at the Bay Farm next door to Rousam. So we have a span and a wonderful look back into 25 years of Stronsay farming either side of the turn of the last Century.<br /> <br />In Nov.1888 Wm Tait took over the farm of Work just outside Kirkwall as tenant. The system then was the in-coming tenant was bound to thrash down the crop for his out going predecessor. The straw was normally steelbow, a term to describe that the straw was bound to the farm and went to the incoming tenant for no payment. In the case of Work farm, as described in the Diaries, Wm Tait had to pay for the straw. This was balanced by reverse transaction on outgoing. And the thrashing down by Wm Tait in 1889 was done by a Steam Travelling Mill.<br /> I have already written about barn thrashing mills and straw handling, but I wondered how far back our travelling thrashing mills went. I found a wonderful illustration on the internet of a horse powered travelling mill of 1881, easily downloaded if we cannot print it. <br />My first experience of travelling mills was at Greenland Mains. The ones I remember were owned by Wildy Allan from Mey and Donald (Injun Donald) Gunn from West Greenland, but there were many more. The excellent Museum at Kingussie is full of these old timers, the Mills I mean!! . But here in Wm Tait’s Diary for 1889 I came on the following entries, and the steam travelling threshing mill that thrashed down the crop.<br /><br /><br /><br /> I quote the Diaries, editing out most of the entries save on the Steam Mill :-<br />1889. <br />jan 30 wed Thrashing with Steam Mill - thrashed two stacks - stormy day.<br />jan 31 thur Orrow horse carting straw to Jas. Gunn - carting dung & turnips. <br />feb 01 frid Steam Mill thrashed two stacks. <br />feb 02 sat Very stormy - gathering up blown down straw in forenoon.<br />feb 04 mon 3 carts at Kirkwall with grain - catching up straw & 4 carts with grain <br /> to Kirkwall in afternoon with oats - 28 qrs in all. (a Qr is 3 cwts, 150 kg. )<br />feb 05 tues Start the mill for a few minutes but was too windy. <br />feb 07 thur Steam mill thrashed in afternoon.<br />feb 09 sat Very stormy, taking in straw in forenoon, dressing oats in afternoon.<br />feb 12 tue Steam mill thrashed 8.1/2 hours - fine frosty day - ground covered with snow.<br />feb 13 wed Steam Mill Thrashed 8 hours - fine day. <br />feb 15 frid Two carts at Kirkwall a.m. with grain, 8 qrs. – <br />one with straw to Mrs Skea, 34 windlings - took in some straw a.m. - <br />feb 16 sat Taking in straw to the barn, a.m. - finished dressing oats today.<br /> MEMO- 197 qrs & 1 bushel is all the grain of the crop of Work Farm.<br /> Bought 4 qrs 2 bu. oats from R. Marwick, 32 lb. per bu. @ 11/- a qr. <br />[The Valuation Roll for 1888 lists Robert Thomas Marwick, farmer, as tenant of Work farm<br />hence the outgoing tenant. - M.P..]<br />feb 18 mon 4 carts carting oats to Kirkwall, 16 qrs.<br /> MEMO:- Straw of 197.1/8 qrs at 6/- is £59.2.9d<br /><br /> So Wm Tait had thrashed down all the crop and dressed all the oats and carted all the sacks to Kirkwall for sale for the outgoing tenant. For that he had the privilege of paying the sum of £59.2.9d for the straw. Not too easy an entry for a new tenant, but those were the terms on that So in 1889 we know that a team of steam engine and thrashing mill was travelling around Orkney. <br /><br />. Many farms had some stacks left after the winter ended and the cattle went out to grass, a very nice state of affairs to be in but not too often seen after a hungry winter. The outside of summer stacks was usually covered with chaff and bits of half eaten grain surrounding the many visible holes of the inhabitants. Rats could make a motorway of tracks zig zagging up the outside of the stack, an easy way of getting around rather than burrowing a tunnel. So before the rats and mice could totally destroy the stack over the long summer, thrashing down was required.<br /> <br /> In Caithness we had the travelling mills which were taken round the county to the various stackyards and moved along the line of stacks to thrash them down. The thrashing mill coming down the road meant a busy few days, both outdoors and in the farm kitchen.<br />. <br /> This outdoor thrashing meant building a gilt which was a long stack of straw, covered by stack nets when finished and left for another winter until carted in to the cattle courts as a layer of bedding. Or some other winter At least it used up surplus straw and made it into useful dung. <br />Or sometimes a gilt was forgotten about, left in solitary splendour at the far side of the stackyard forever !!!.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-22305674514426712602010-05-28T07:48:00.000-07:002010-05-28T07:49:35.725-07:00No 77. Straw from the Mill. pb 28.05.2010No 77. STRAW FROM THE MILL.<br /><br />Straw, such a normal aspect of farming that we might take it for granted and so it might get overlooked. Yet I have seen so many changes in the handling of straw over so many years, produced by the Biblical flail on a croft in Rousam in Stronsay to the monster combines of today.The handling of straw comes to mind, easiest is to quote what I saw from my own experiences. <br /> First was the Mill at Whitehaa in my early days, rebuilt by Davie Davidson and mentioned previously. Mainly the high speed drum and the grain carrier through the thick stone wall at the back of the barn.<br /> Equally important was the straw end of the mill on the ground floor at the far end from the drum in the sheaf loft. The newly thrashed sheaf, now just a mix of loose straw, good grain and soft chaff, made its way over and along the well named straw shakers to sift out and collect the grain, then the straw went down over the end. No change at all in that system to today’s combine harvestors.<br /> There at the end of the mill lay the apparently simple task of carrying away the straw from the end of the mill. It could be and was hard work with a four-toed graip fork or a two-toed pitchfork. Keep the end of the mill clear of straw, stack it in the barn for future use, pitch it up to someone building the straw in bouts across the barn, or carry some away from the end of the mill direct to the byres and sheds. If the cattleman had some time available he would lend a hand. It saved him time later on, stacking it in handy corners for later use, or just chucking it over into the cattle courts to be later spread for bedding. <br /><br /> When we came to Greenland Mains straw was laboriously stacked in the lowish barn as per usual. Then our father had a straw blower installed at the end of the Mill by Davie Davidson of Scarths in Kirkwall. The straw dropped into a fairly high speed four-bladed blower and on into a round section pipe which went round various corners and across various spaces to deliver the straw at suitable points in the steading. Along the way were a succession of hatches at various drop off points, a short section of square box with a two way movable panel to intercept the straw, open it to deliver the straw or close it to let the straw carry on to the next drop off point.<br />. <br /> There was the occasional choking of the pipe or of the blower, but handy slides allowed the blockages to be easily cleared. A safety feature was that a choke in the blower itself just meant the flat driving belt being cast off and no damage. It needed overseeing, but the changing thumping sound soon gave away a blockage. <br />The straw went many ways at Greenland Mains, straight ahead into the straw barn, right into the clipping shed under the main grain loft, left through the milkers byre to the far away sheds, a diversion into the Back Court where a stockade was erected to hold the straw, giving easy access for the cows.<br /> The blower saved a great deal of straw carrying through narrow doorways and corridors. The blower was quite similar to the grain blowers we still have, but very much larger.<br /><br />Next came the straw carrier. First one I saw was at Lower Dounreay, put in there before me, a shallow wooden trough about 5 feet wide with an endless chain and cross flights that dragged the straw along the trough to a convenient series of hatches to drop it where needed. The chain and flights returned above the straw. It worked straight ahead from the mill, and was made by Garvie in Aberdeenshire. We moved the whole assembly from Lower Dounreay to Isauld in 1956, adding a further length to extend it to 90 feet to carry the straw to a lofted area over the indoor silage pit. With all the hatches open it dealt unattended with the straw, as each dropping off point filled up to the hatch it just carried on to the next. Did very well though attention was needed to adjust the tension of the chains to avoid jumping a link. It did sterling service for many a year until the mill was superceded by the combine harvester, for us sometime in the 1960s. That straw loft was very handy as the straw just had to be pushed over the open sides down into a straw feeding passage on either side, no carrying at all. Bedding the courts could also be easily done from the loft, though the final spreading in the courts was with a graip or with some helpful cattle!! <br /><br /> Next came the buncher. We never had one, but a buncher was often used by various travelling mills, though not on the first ones I saw. This took the loose straw at the end of the mill and fed it into the buncher, just a larger version of the binder sheafing mechanism but a double assembly with two twine needles. <br />The buncher tied the straw into convenient sized bundles or sheaves. The action was similar to the binder, packing fingers and a pressure trip mechanism. It made handling the straw from the travelling mill a lot easier, especially on a windy day in the stackyard,<br /> The buncher was also installed on various farms at the end of the mill. My brother Steven had one when he was in Baillie. The bunches still had to be carried though the steading to various byes and stables but were ready for the cattleman to carry, to use or to store in handy corners as thrashing went on. They were also handy for pitching over the cattle’s backs into the straw rack on the wall in front of them, saved walking up between every two cattle to fill the rack. Store some in the straw barn, carry some to the byres to handy corners as thrashing went on, it all depended on how many people were available, or if the cattleman had a spare moment. .<br /> The bunches were close in appearance to the hand tied windlins we used to make in Stronsay to carry straw to the byres and the stable, and were most useful. <br /> A quite extra use was to load it with a pitchfork like sheaves onto a cart to sell or to give a load to someone else, perhaps a neighbour, perhaps a crofter needing a bit of straw. It made for easier loading and building on the cart than loose straw which was a devil to work with on a windy day. <br /> Today we have forgotten all these methods. The thrashing mill is an antique if it still exists. Some do, silently gathering dust in a forgotten corner of some steadings. We now have huge round balers swallowing up the harvested straw faster than the combine can produce it. Even the little square bale is seldom seen now though it is by no means entirely gone.<br /> The big round straw bale is dumped into a machine that disintegrates it and blows it direct into the cattle courts. Untouched by human hand!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-64136371108248803192010-05-14T12:12:00.001-07:002010-05-14T12:12:43.932-07:00No 76. Thrashing Mills pb 14.05 2010No 76. “THRASHING MILLS” <br /><br />I remember the advent at Whitehall of the high speed thrashing drum, the rising echoing humming song as it got up to speed on a thrashing morning. Made of steel, the drum 4’6” wide, 18” diameter, the grooves on the rasp bars angled each way alternately. Davie Davidson, of Robert Scarths in Kirkwall, came out to Stronsay to rebuild the old Whitehaa Mill, fitting the new high speed drum, speed around 1100 revs. He did various other wonderful things with the Mill, changing this and that, a magician with wood, flat pulleys, grain elevators, bearings, shafts. <br /> He fitted a shaking box grain conveyor carrier under the cross beams - the couple backs - of the rafters over the straw in the barn and on through the back wall of the barn to deliver grain into the bruiser loft beyond. How the grain moved along was beyond us, but it did. The angles and the shaking speed were critical, a slipping belt meant spilt grain. Davie subsequently rebuilt thrashing mills for our father at Greenland Mains in 1947 and at Stemster Mains in 1949, putting in straw blowers to distribute the straw around the various steading buildings and grain carriers to the various lofts. That saved an incredible amount of work, both in carrying straw from the barn to the byers and at Whitehaa sacks of grain on the men’s backs from the Mill out the barn door and along the sometimes wet flagstone pavement and up the Stone Stairs and into the grain lofts. Real hard work. <br /><br />The thrashing mills of yesterday were very crude but these were the times. The oldest mills I remember had big diameter drums with driven-in wooden replaceable pegs of hard wood to thrash the grain. Drum speed maybe 500 revs a minute, probably less, often driven by a water wheel where the land provided enough water to fill a mill dam, fed by a burn or even by connected ditches. At Forss Estate nr Thurso there was a magnificent trail of ditches criss-crossing across the face of the land, channelling the same water by a series of ditches from one mill dam to the next as it came down the hill, the same water used many times over by each lower farm. <br /> Where there was no mill dam the mill was driven by horses everlastingly going round and round in circles in the Mill Course. They did a lot of work in their time.<br /> The result of such thrashing was grain with many a bit of straw or chaff still there. The fanners in the loft were used to take that out and deliver a clean sample for selling or for the local miller for grinding into oatmeal or bere meal as case needed. <br />Lower down the scale in size were the hand mills, simple and worked by a man on a handle. Output was miniscule but they did the thrashing on many a croft. Some are still around in farm museums, I think one at Laidhay.<br /> Even earlier than that was the flail. I saw one being worked on a croft at Rousam, serious hard work but not for the amateur. The swinging hinged flying arm could catch you a fair crack on the head if not swung with the expertise of the old timers. I know, we tried it !! Effortless when done by an expert, an easy swing, a sharp flick of the wrist on the down stroke, and the oats came flying off the sheaf. Usually two men in unison time about and opposite each other. What wood the flails were made of I do not know, but it was a real hard and heavy wood. The soople, the flexible joining of the two arms, was usually a woven leather rope but sometimes hempen. Took a lot of wear. Sometimes just a bit of good green horse hide did the job, easily replaced. <br /><br /> The thrashing mills were located in many a varied manner. At Lower Dounreay we had a stackyard high up on a sand dune above the shore at loft level. We backed the carts into the double loft door and just tipped the load of sheaves onto the floor ready for the threshing drum fed by Jamie Wares our foreman.<br /> Most thrashing mills had a biggish sheaf loft with a sheaf window through which a man could pitch the sheaves from the cart while the horse stood patiently waiting. The sheaf loft was needed, indeed it was essential, as with horse driven mills there was neither enough horses nor enough men to take in a stack and thrash at the same time. So a stack would be taken in by a couple of men and stored in the sheaf loft ready for thrashing later when all hands and horses were available. It also allowed a stack to be taken in to the sheaf loft and thrashing to be done on a wet day when no outside work was possible. <br /> <br /> With continuous thrashing as we did one cart was being loaded from the stack in the yard, a second cart stood outside the sheaf window. On that cart one man pitched the sheaves through the sheaf window to another man - or woman - who took the sheaves as they came flying through the window and pitched or placed them carefully on the sheaf table beside the foreman ready for feeding the drum. They had to lie just the right way, the grain head of the sheaf always pointing forward towards the feeder at the drum. Make a mistake and the sheaf as like as not came flying back to the pitcher butt end first. Not a nice experience at all, but it soon corrected a dopey pitcher. Nothing annoyed a feeder more than a sheaf the wrong way round.<br /> I cannot recall any sheaf table not located to the left hand of the feeder. There must have been some the other way round, it all depended on the layout of the Mill in the barn. Take the sheaf in the left hand, slash the binder twine with a sharp knife, or in earlier days the straw band that held the sheaf together, and in one easy flowing movement from left to right spread the now loosened sheaf right across the mouth of the drum, giving as easy a flow of straw into the drum as possible. <br /> We always had a leather glove for the feeder’s left hand with a short knife blade built in, better and safer than a loose knife which sometimes fell into the drum and vanished!! There were good feeders whose technique was such that you could not distinguish one sheaf from another. There were others where every sheaf went in with a bang, hard on everything.<br />. In the days when horses drove the mill from the Mill course it was imperative to maintain an easy feed to lesson any jerky loading on the poor beasts. Take good care when feeding, more than one man I knew had a hand taken off by the drum snatching the sheaf, and his hand with it. <br /> Often there would be a louser who cut the sheaf band in readiness for the feeder, frequently a woman, placing the sheaf on the board just so to his hand. That made three people in the loft at the feeding end.<br /> <br /> The incredible total one could have at a continuous thrashing was:-<br />One man on the stack in the yard, one man building the cart load, one man on the other cart pitching sheaves in the sheaf window, one pitching the sheaves with a short handled pitchfork from the window to the sheaf board, one lousing the sheaves, one feeding the drum, always the foreman, one bagging off the grain at the end of the mill. Two men to take away the thrashed straw and store it in the barn, at Whitehall usually one carrying from the mill end and forking it to one building the straw in bouts across the barn. <br />And the Boss, or the Grieve, was usually there keeping an eye on things like a slipping flat belt or a spillage where no spillage was allowed. Tails – light grain – were usually delivered from a side chute and had to be kept clear. Riddles could choke with rubbish, the grain could come over the end of the mill with the strumps, which were short pieces of straw and odds and ends not carrying on with the straw shakers into the straw barn. He was also useful in clearing the chaff as it built up at the end of the mill. <br /> That was a lot of men to get the job done. But that was yesterday - today’s farming is not so labour intensive..scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-55762088206176982582010-04-30T11:42:00.000-07:002010-04-30T11:43:32.583-07:00No 75 Dressing oats.No 75. “THE FANNERS IN THE LOFT” . or “DRESSING OATS”.<br /><br />Recently I got temporary possession of 50 years of the Diaries of Wm Tait of Ingsay in Birsay in Orkney, from 1880 TO 1936. I hope to transcribe them before giving them back to where they belong. Repetitive they may be, but these were his times. Not every year is there but most. There is a fund of information from farming 100 years ago contained in these small tattered pencil-written black booklets, and by chance quite a deal of it refers to the Bu’ of Rousam, tenanted by my grandfather David Pottinger from 1893 to 1913. The family then moved to Hobbister in Orphir in the Mainland of Orkney before returning to Stronsay in 1919. William Tait was his brother-in-law and William must have worked at Rousam for a time, at least from 1896 until leaving Rousam for Stennaquoy in Eday on 26th Nov. 1900. Rousam was where our father spent his early years.<br /><br /> One of the most common entries was “Dressing oats”, or corn which was the Orkney name for bere, the Northern version of barley, so quick to grow, so early to ripen, last sown, first harvested. Dressing oats was a never ending task on many a wet day, and on many a dark morning till enough light crept into the eastern sky to harness the horses and off to the plow, or cart neeps. I think bere is now banned under E.U. rules!!!. At Rousam in the Diaries from 1896 to 1900 Wm Tait refers many a day to:- “Heavy rain, no outside work, dressing oats”<br /><br /> Prime loft tool for dressing oats was the Fanners. There is still a good one to be seen at Mary Anne’s Cottage in Dunnet, opening at the end of May<br />Made of good wood, ash or pitch pine, with metal parts such as a handle to turn it with and neat gears and wheels and shafts and suspending wooden hangers for the various riddles. Sitting on four short legs but easily moved across the loft floor to be strategically near the heap of grain to be dressed. <br /> A grain hopper on top, a fairly high lift for a man, too high for we kids but we upended a box and managed to fill enough to have a wee shot ourselves when no-one was around. A fairly safe machine for children to play with in the loft on a rainy day. Ridiculous to look back on but those were the times. There were fanners also at Greenland Mains, now gone, occasionally used to touch up an already good sample for the Meal Dealer!!!. <br /><br />The grain hopper had an adjustable wooden slide to let grain through at a controlled rate, different settings to control the amount passing into the works. Some varieties of grain were stickier than others, light bushel weight not so runny as heavy. Badly threshed grain - full of bits of chaff and straw, strumps we called it - needed a larger opening to run. Different oats had different slippiness, the old variety Black oats were very slippy, almost oily to touch. Or bere which was much more runny than oats. The fanners had various interchangeable riddles with different sized holes to spread the grain evenly into the flow of air from the wooden bladed fan, constantly being turned at a measured pace by the man on the handle. And out of the fanners the bits of straw and chaff were blown out of the open end, the lighter grain called tails out of one side chute, the heavier grain another. <br /><br />The work was tedious. Fill the shoulder-high hopper from the grain heap, set the slide just so to let the right amount of grain into the fanners. One man turned the handle, usually a shared task time about. Another man filled the hopper and also took away the clean grain and removed the small amounts of odd bits and pieces, putting each on to it’s own heap.<br /><br />Fanners were much needed to clean the grain from the more simple thrashing mills of former times. The first old mills I first remember had wooden pegs on the large drum to thrash the grain, pegs made of hard wood and replaceable. Drum speed was maybe 500, probably less, often driven by a water wheel or by several horses everlasting going round and round in circles on the Mill Course. Even earlier than that was the flail, I saw one being worked on a croft at Rousam, serious hard work. Sometimes these fanners were handed down through generations, long lasting if looked after well.<br /><br />Another essential was square wooden grain boxes, lightly made, a wooden handle on either side and an angled lip which lay flat on the floor to scoop grain out of the heap. Near enough to a bushel measure, capable of scooping up just the right amount of oats in four full lifts, or to my memory three heaped full lifts and just a small amount to finish. It depended much on the bushel weight of the grain. Low weights around 38 lbs needed four very full measures, good heavy grain around the standard 42 lbs the bushel needed three and a half boxes - or “thereby” - to fill the one and a half cwt grain sack with oats, or 2 cwts. if with barley.<br /><br /> A necessary accompaniment to the fanners was the weighing machine, we had two. The first was just a balance with a platform tray either side. On one platform the sacks of grain were placed, the opposite platform had an assortment of iron weights, descending from a 56lb all the way down to ½ lb. The larger weights had either a handle cast into it as part of the weight, or a ring handle. Three 56 lbs made the 1.1/2 cwt needed for a sack of oats, four bushels for oats or 3 bushels for bere or barley. You can still see the 56lb weight being easily thrown over the bar at the Halkirk Games by Alistair Gunn, last Saturday in July!! The sacks were filled until the whole thing was tipping in balance, add a little, take out a little, just right. <br /> The other kind of more modern weights had one platform with a graduated arm on which a sliding brass weight was moved along to the correct place. Still got one at Isauld, bought 55 years ago and as good as ever. The platform on which to set the sacks had two hooks or two clamps to hold a bag open for one man to fill, slower than with a helper but functional. Or turn the top of the bag down over the frame. We weighed many a bag on it.<br /><br /> It was amazing how near to full measure an experienced man could work, off by a mere few pounds from correct weight. An easy swinging shove into the heap, top it up to full with scooped hands, an equally easy lift and swing to the sack held open by another man to receive its four scoops. His helper would then, with hands and an easy knee-helped swing, set the bag onto the weighing machine, a very small topping up or taking out to level the weight bar to balance. <br /><br /> Bagging up was sometimes done at the same time as fanning, but the fanners were slow so the bagging might be done just now and then as the heap built up, clearing the floor. Many of the entries in my Grandfather’s day was dressing oats in the early morning, then off to the plow. Or to the Mill with 24 sacks on 3 carts, getting back 19 bolls of 140 lbs a piece from the last lot. That gave a yield of meal of about two thirds, the rest being lost through moisture, grop, sids, by-products of meal making. Some oats were good meal yielders, some were pretty poor. Sandy variety of oats were good.<br /><br />A two-wheeled spanker or two to wheel full sacks here or there, still widely used today with no improvements needed to the old design other than perhaps rubber wheels instead of iron. Wheel the bags to rest just inside the outer door for eventual loading off the Stone Steps.<br /><br /> And in the long dark dreich mornings of Orkney winters the work would be done by the light of a few paraffin oil lanterns.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-90553139060756902642010-04-16T07:16:00.000-07:002010-04-21T03:23:14.705-07:00No 61. FOOD, or Pickled, Salted or Dried.Young gannets, the grey ones, called guga on Sule Sgeir off Lewis.<br />Guga on Sula Sgeir. Via Malcom Murray<br />“The ile is full of wild fowls, and when the fowls has their birds ripe, men out of the parish of Ness in Lewis sail and tarry there seven or eight days and to fetch with them home their boatfull of dry wild fowls with wild fowl feathers” – Donald Monro, Archdeacon of the Isles, 1549.<br /><br />No 61. FOOD FOR WINTER. Groat - 16th April, 2010 <br /><br />Today we come home from the supermarket, unload the boot of the car, take the packets of already frozen plastic wrapped plastic tasting food out of the insulated bags and straight into the freezer compartment of the fridge/freezer. Not so frozen bits go into the upper fridge compartment. But we had no fridges in my early days. We had never heard of “Sale by dates”. So how did we survive at all? Should we not have all been food poisoned into extinction? Certainly if one listens to all the pundits we should not now be alive. From my memory the list of things we stored and later ate is much too long, but we will give it a go.<br /><br /> Winter coming meant laying down food in summer for winter use. Prime one was making jam with home grown berries, or rhubarb from the garden with added ginger. An absolute special was jam made with ling heather berries from Rothiesholm Head, all too small in quantity but so exquisite in taste. It was a day adventure going there and collecting them, 5 long miles away. Jam making meant days of wonderful smells coming through the house from the large brass jam pan bubbling away on the stove, the rattling of jam jars being boiled to sterility in large pans of water, then set out round the sink or table for filling with a large soup ladle or a spouted jug dipping into the scalding jam. Cooled, a waxed disc of paper on top of the jam, a paper cover on top of all with a rubber band to hold it in place. Then into the pantry to be stored on the shelves or in the cupboards in serried rows of this or that with stickers on their sides telling if blackcurrant or rhubarb or whatever, and the year of making. Well made, it would last for years of need be. Different houses had different tasting jams, even with the same ingredients. I never worked it out. <br /><br /><br /> Bottling fruit was also part of winter, the surplus of summer being sterilised by boiling and stored in spring clip topped glass pressure jars which when they had cooled down created their own vacuum. Difficult to prise open the lid later. Our mother dried apple rings but they were not home grown, getting a large case of apples from J. & W. Taits in Kirkwall. Peeled, cored, cut into thin rings and strung on a string in the open air on a sunny day. They lasted well, nicely chewy. And of course they were reconstituted and made into stewed apples, apple puddings and apple crumble later in the winter.<br />.<br /> Butter of course was in surplus in summer, some was salted down in a medium sized brown earthenware crock. Practically uneatable but it was done, the bothy boys seemed not to notice. Hunger is the greatest of all sauces!! It was almost unspreadable as well. Best used for cooking.<br />There were numerous big brown earthenware crocks, glazed inside, stored in the cool dairy until needed. Sizes differed. There were smaller ones for butter, one to open, one to keep for another day. Once opened the butter deteriorated slowly. Very salty indeed, but in mid winter the cows were not milking much except maybe one or two for milk for boss and the men. No fresh butter available, nor long life milk, nor milk powder. The best we could come up with was Nestles Condensed Milk in tins from the van.<br />The newly made soft butter was worked over in the dairy on the butter working roller tray, backwards and forwards, how much salt I cannot remember. It was worked until a high degree of saltiness was achieved that the expert taster said was enough. Then it was packed into one of the brown crocks and a thin layer of melted white suet fat poured carefully over the butter. Sealed perfectly, store as cool as possible.<br /><br />Cheese. Kept long enough. Rubbed down with salt for several days when new made, turned over each day on the flagstone shelves. The salt gave it a hard durable rind. Then stored on a high shelf out of reach of varmints. Green mould on an opened cheese was just scraped off, not thrown away as today as if it had turned to poison. A good cheese did not last long once on the table, vanishing in thick slices on bere bread or oatcakes. Or just a fly slice on its own. Again varying tastes or flavours in different houses.<br /> <br /> Long years ago in the 1600s, and maybe not as long ago as that either, the Mertinmas beast was just that, the killing of an ox for whom there was not enough winter feed. Came November – Martinmas - and he had to go. So the meat was pickled with much rubbing in of salt on the flagstone shelves of the dairy, then sunk for the winter in salt brine in capacious 50 gallon wooden barrels. When taken out for cooking it needed a fair degree of soaking in many changes of cold fresh water for a couple of days before it was edible. Sometimes boiling with plenty tatties helped which took some of the salt out of it, throw away the tatties!! The last of the barrel was almost inedible came Spring but it was used. <br /> <br /> We never did kill a cattle beast at Whitehall, though there was one half grown calf that someone hit with a too well thrown stone just behind the ear, killing it instantly. It was butchered on the spot and made good use of, shared out even to the thrower!! .<br /><br />Sheep meat from a yeld gimmer, or a ewe hopefully not too old, home butchered and salted down for winter in the usual capacious barrel of pickle. We called it mutton but now it is unobtainable unless a farmer kills his own, which is getting a scarcer practice as time goes by and there are less people on the farms. Lambs were never home killed unless a casualty like a broken leg, tender but pretty tasteless when compared to mature mutton. It was not that long ago that mutton made as good a price as lamb but fashions change, and the wedder hirsels on the hills of Sutherland with up to 4 year old male castrated sheep are long gone.<br /><br />I do know a couple, I cannot possibly say they are old fashioned, who got two Blackface sheep carcases from the Western Isles for their recent Golden Wedding. I was told the meal was very acceptably memorable.<br /><br />Pig meat was normal, killing one every six months, but that I will deal separately as it was another big adventure. <br /><br /> Fish of course were plentiful, evenings out on the water with fishing rods called wands and fitted with white goose feather lures on the three hooks for cuddin, called caithes in Stronsay. Or mackeral. Or a long line with lures for bottom fish such as haddock, ling, skate, cod, occasionally a dogfish but not to everyone’s taste. Should have been called catfish as many found their way to the cats who relished any fish at all. These acceptable fish such as sillocks, caithes, saithe, ling, cod especially, were either salted down into a barrel of pickle or split and wind dried on a long line hanging on the cottage wall facing the sun. The firkin of salt herring (fourth of a barrel) was of course obligatory.<br /><br /> Eggs were set aside for winter, stored in a crock in either a heavy salt pickle or in isinglass, a gelatinous substance obtained from certain seaweeds, which sealed the shell. They lasted a long time in either medium but definitely did not taste like a fresh egg. Possibly used more for baking but at least it made good use of a surplus of eggs in summer.<br /> This is just a taste of some of our winter provisions. In places like St Kilda and Foula and the Guga of Ness in North Lewis, or Copinsay in the days of my great great great grand father Edward Pottinger, split, salted or dried young sea birds were stored for winter. Fishy tasting I am told!! Taken just before being able to fly, going down the cliffs on long ropes to get them. Again, hunger is a great sauce!!! <br /><br /><br /> <br /> <br /><br />Young gannets, the grey ones called guga, on Sule Sgeir off Lewis.<br />Guga on Sula Sgeir. Via Malcom Murray<br /><br />“The ile is full of wild fowls, and when the fowls has their birds ripe, men out of the parish of Ness in Lewis sail and tarry there seven or eight days and to fetch with them home their boatfull of dry wild fowls with wild fowl feathers” – Donald Monro, Archdeacon of the Isles, 1549.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-56804420760435485772010-04-16T07:09:00.000-07:002010-04-16T07:26:51.007-07:00No 61. Food, = or = Pickled, salted or dried.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-87977311139852986282010-04-02T05:01:00.000-07:002010-04-02T05:01:39.345-07:00<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgxiIK0KMEktXg8v83t0YCt0-S_oPULDuSRa7sDY7NWbg90lmFYlOnPf61EecEnnlxdFVevqojDgLvUaUakqdEUp7d-1SBlQCgOVmFjS0_tLSRt5oT1QPunZnXpznCu-N11-XPFlbkdk/s1600/WHITEHALL.jpg'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgxiIK0KMEktXg8v83t0YCt0-S_oPULDuSRa7sDY7NWbg90lmFYlOnPf61EecEnnlxdFVevqojDgLvUaUakqdEUp7d-1SBlQCgOVmFjS0_tLSRt5oT1QPunZnXpznCu-N11-XPFlbkdk/s320/WHITEHALL.jpg' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-78767045966944168692010-04-02T04:58:00.001-07:002010-04-02T04:58:58.950-07:00No 72 The SQUARE No 2.A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />No 72 “ THE SQUARE.” pb 02.04.2010.<br /><br />The social side of “The Square”, that self-contained world all on its own, proud in it’s solitude, where so many people lived and worked out their lives, from whence they took their last journey with their friends walking to the Bay Cemetary behind the ornate two horse black hearse which I remember. <br /> The fairm hoos, the cottages, a happy Square or a sad one. The Boss for whom people liked to work, where men stayed a long time, or the opposite before moving on if they could get another place, not always too easy. A man’s reputation often went before him. Like the man who asked for a reference from his boss, and proudly carried for the rest of his days in his inside pocket the scrap of paper with the words written in pencil :- “During his time working for me Jon **** did everything I asked him to do entirely to his own satisfaction”. <br /> Some men just liked to move on anyway, nothing personal but the appeal of a new place was profound with some farm servants. Perhaps it enlivened their dreary days of constant work, a new place very much like the old one but at least a shift, greener grass over the dyke - maybe!!.<br /><br /> The Square is remembered now by mainly urban dwellers as where their grandparents lived, returning on a summer pilgrimage from America to “The Square” and staring unbelievingly at the old house or cottage from whence their grandfather emigrated. I met one to whom that refers, her grandfather George Shearer leaving Whitehaa in 1927 as a young man aged 20 for Canada. Then a family move South to the USA, Georgia I believe. No names, but her out cousins are still around, I know them well. The cottage at Whitehaa is long gone. <br /> <br />What made one farm so different from another, the “Boss” or the “Mistress”, each so important each in their own way? Their little empires should have been the Boss outdoors, the Mistress in the house, but it was not always so. There are stories now passing into the mists of time of the “Mistress” who knew everything going on outdoors, who reduced the all powerful ”Boss” to a shivering heap of humanity when she came round the corner. No-one was as observant as a farm worker - or his wife - they missed nothing. Probably gave origin to the phrase “Who wears the troosers in that hoos?”<br /> Not too many of these proud matriarchs as far as I remember, but on the positive side many a farmer died too young and his widow took over, bringing up her family and running the farm as if he had never been there. Sometimes at a very young age too. Not an easy thing to do, but it was very well done by not a few women and I take off my bonnet to them. Oddly the young sons of that situation frequently did very well in later life, the responsibility thrust upon them at an early age doing them no harm whatsoever.<br /> <br />The old days at The Square of Whitehaa, and at other farms, was so much on it’s own. Transport to elsewhere was entirely on foot, or maybe the Long Cart was yoked for communal transport to the Island Picnic, bairns and all. <br />The 50 years of diaries of Wm Tait, of the Bay Farm in Stronsay until Nov. 28th Nov.1919 when he moved to Ingsay in Birsay, record “July 19 Sat 1919, General Holiday - Picnic on Rousam Links - Concert in School in evening - Bonfire at Hall 11 p.m.” and “Aug 05 Tues 1919 - Tarring carts a.m. – United Free Church Picnic p.m. - fair day.” and on Sat 15th 1899 “Golf Picnic in Rousam Links”, and Aug 7th, 1899 “ Mr and Mrs Sutherlands Picnic..” The Sutherlands lived their summer holidays in Mount Pleasant on the edge of the Rousam Links in Stronsay. And the Long Carts carried the folk. They had the advantage of always being clean, never used for neeps or for dung, great for carting hay or for a flitting. The Island obviously had it’s social side!!!<br /> <br />Perhaps the farm servant had a bicycle. Maybe a motor bike but if one then it would be owned by a young unmarried man with no family responsibilities. Either a bike or a bairn, the choice was his, though the bike might indeed lead to the bairn!!<br /> . A car for a farm worker was quite unheard of, the first I remember was owned by Benny Leith, now gone, who had one at Greenland Mains when he worked there. A two seater, three wheeler, two at the front, one at the back, which was the driving wheel powered by a rear mounted engine about the size of a motor bikes. Open top, though I think there might have been a canvas cover lying in the shed. So near the ground you checked when you came out of it to see if the a*** of your troosers was still intact. To get a run in it was a great honour.<br /> But in Stronsay walking was the name of the game, all children walking to school, some as far as five miles for the Ste’nsons o’ Burrogate at the end of the hill road at Rousam Head, and in all weathers. A very solid hour at a brisk step, no dallying on the way to school, but coming home was different. So too with any others visiting within the Island, or Church, or shopping, but shopping is another part of days gone away which we will take care of in due time. <br /> There was an interaction between households, I remember no strife between individual houses at Whitehaa though there must have been some somewhere. Rather a helping hand you could count on if need arose. Doors were never locked, some sugar or tea would be borrowed if the owner was out, later to be replaced.<br /><br /><br /> Some of the farms had servant dwellings actually in the Square, looking out on the middens at times. Sometimes the Grieve’s House took pride of place at the entrance to the Square, cutting off all visitors. A barking dog would keep good guard. Some cottages or mens’ houses were actually in the Square, on the ground floor with a grain loft above, or in the loft above the byres. There is still a fireplace I know of in the gable end of a building now gutted out as a store, hanging suspended way up the wall. In 1896 with my grandfather at the Bu’ of Rousam in Stronsay Willie Logie flit – moved - to the Loft. It must have been a better dwelling than the one he was already in. It is still there. Logie was the farm foreman. At Barrock Mains the surviving old smiddy still has a small room above it for the visiting blacksmith who would stay a day or two to go over all the horses. A farm kitchen often had a room above it for the servant girls, quite warm and cosy too. Very popular I was told. <br /> There was another farm cottage of old, the Grieve’s House. Better than the rest, very often strategically built at the entrance to the Square. There it was, almost a guard house for no-one could pass without being seen. Or for that matter on farm business which the Grieve took care of. It always was one of our father’s tales that when he bought and came to Greenland Mains in 1944 he could not get into his own lofts without John Leith the Grieve letting him in with the only key. And it could not have been in better hands.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-78613183610517740772010-03-22T14:22:00.000-07:002010-04-16T07:24:56.052-07:00<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='http://localhost:49479/68618317563aa32f0ff0fca52ae2663b/image3327.jpg'><img src='http://localhost:49479/68618317563aa32f0ff0fca52ae2663b/image3327.jpg?size=320' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-51843528857684452192010-03-19T10:13:00.000-07:002010-03-19T10:15:58.318-07:00WHITEHAA SQUARE 1935<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwyP3KBuOXn0DVP2JDbXW2s69Rs5jd66JNa1e-YKmayrKIaKDbkomHciev2KZ-D2vbArnsT79ZvbTGAZnFmYtkZ1l6vmpwzgl3i8uQ0YG3VRnc3ucGJ7AVptbSsgLtMwBNmIUKyhFSxpI/s1600-h/WHITEHALL.jpg'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwyP3KBuOXn0DVP2JDbXW2s69Rs5jd66JNa1e-YKmayrKIaKDbkomHciev2KZ-D2vbArnsT79ZvbTGAZnFmYtkZ1l6vmpwzgl3i8uQ0YG3VRnc3ucGJ7AVptbSsgLtMwBNmIUKyhFSxpI/s320/WHITEHALL.jpg' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-91737126624478566782010-03-19T10:10:00.000-07:002010-03-19T10:11:12.235-07:00No 70. THE SQUARE.A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />No 70. “ THE SQUARE.” <br /><br /> “The Square”, the “Fairm Toon”, was everything about the farm buildings, an all encompassing phrase pertaining to a farm of my early days, a very real square indeed. It was a self contained entity where every activity on the farm began and finished, the hub of the farm, the dwelling place of all the farm people. The Square of Whitehall included the farm house and the farm servants’ cottages, though separate from the main buildings. So the Square actually at the farm was the buildings, but the Square to outsiders was the whole entity, dwellings and all. <br />. <br />Each farm was a small factory standing in the midst of its own farmland and in its own right, the “Fairm Toon” of Lewis Grassick Gibbon. Often enough the phrase was used as an all embracing postal and local address for all those who lived there, sometimes even a letter was so addressed. So much to tell.<br /><br />“The Square” contained the barns, the lofts, the stable, the byres, the middens, the odd sheds, the sheep pens. There was the blacksmith shop with forge and anvil, spare horse shoes and smithy tools hanging on pegs on the wall. It was there for the convenience of the local blacksmith who would come to the farm for a day and shoe a bunch of horses. It saved a passel of time not having to make the long trek with the horses to the blacksmiths own forge. It was also handy for the occasional loose horseshoe being replaced by a knackey horseman, or one of the men shaping or straightening a bit of bent iron for some purpose. <br /><br />As bairns we had a bit of fun lighting the old forge, pumping the old bellows, heating a bit of iron red hot and hammering it on the anvil into something or other. Even tried hot welding two bits of iron, just to see if we could do it. Not too good, there was still a magic in the blacksmiths hands.<br />We had a blacksmith shop at Greenland Mains used by John Innes, the blacksmith from Rattar. There was one at Bardnaheigh, though too late for us as we had no horses there. There was the joiner’s shed redolent with the smell of sawdust and new wood.. There would be a well for water, sometimes a long enough walk, some spring feeding it. <br /> The steading was surrounded with farm roads and small stone-dyked parks and odd pens and walls. There was the Bull shed where father hopefully fed some young Pedigree Aberdeen Angus for sale in Kirkwall. The stone walled sheep fanks had a sheep dipper incorporated into and under and through the wall of the sucklers byre. There was the remains of a sheepy house, fallen into disuse. <br /><br />. <br />The working day began there, finished there. In summer the horse men took in their horses from their grass field to the stable in the morning to harness up and then left the stable to go to the field, coming back at dayset to unharness. In winter all the beasts were housed there, save the sheep who would be outdoors on some rough ground or a poor field. We were literally surrounded by horse, cattle, sheep, pigs, hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, dogs, cats, rats and mice. <br /><br /> If there was a blizzard of snow cutting us off from the outside world we could survive all on our own. The well filled meal girnel in the loft with oatmeal ,and beremeal, the stash of white and black puddings buried in the oat meal in the girnel and which kept well there, the potato shed with its well covered heaps of many varieties of tatties. The neep shed would have a well heaped up pile of turnips, taken in over the days before the storm as most farmers could smell a storm coming by a look at the moon or a sniff of the air in the early morning. Extra cart loads were taken in from the field, Yellows or Swedes, and dumped in handy places if the sheds were full. <br /> The barrel of salt herring inside the back door, dried sillocks hanging in the cottage kitchens, eggs in the henhouse, not forgetting the odd fat clucking hen who had her neck pulled on her way to a good pot of Scotch Broth. The cured hams hanging on hooks from the kitchen ceilings, or stashed in the brine barrel. All that was needed for just carrying on carrying on!! <br /><br />The Square applied to the people as well as to the buildings. The men were called the Whitehaa Men, farm people who were sometimes born there, lived there, died there. Not just the workers but their wives, their children, their grannies, their granddads, their dogs, their cats, even a canary or a budgie or two. They usually had some hens and a pig or two, even the milking goat of one worker I knew, tethered by a chain as she would eat through any rope tether to escape and create mayhem. <br /><br />At times their houses were just part of the square itself, fitted in to a convenient or even an inconvenient, corner. Sometimes there was a byre below and a house above, warm, central heating from the cattle. Or more often the other way round, cottage below and grain loft above. These steading dwellings can still be seen on many farms today, now long gone from human occupancy and serving as a store. Maybe not so long gone at that for I still come across someone who remembers living in a house actually in “The Square”. The cottages were usually built to suit the farmer, if they looked out onto a farm midden that was of little or no consequence. Oddly, full circle, today these old steadings are sometimes being converted into very desirable and very highly priced modern residences. I know quite a few, and well done they are too.<br />.<br />On Whitehall the Square began with the nucleus of the thrashing mill with its grain lofts and straw barn, taking up all of one side of the Square, two floors high, the threshing mill and the barn midway. The lean to engine shed for the Campbell oil-engine was tacked on at the back. The stackyard lay above that at Whitehall with the two adjoining stone built hen houses, one in the upper left corner, one in the lower. <br /><br />Climbing the roofs of the barn was one of our boyhood ploys, see who could go fastest from one end to the other along the ridge. Totally frowned upon, and total hell if we were caught, which no doubt added to the charm. Only one of us, a friend David McLeod whose father was a prisoner of the Japanese from the Fall of Singapore in 1941 to August 1945, and survived, could and did walk upright along the top of the ridge of the barn at Greenland Mains. Fearless. No Health and Safety then of course, but I do not think many today would try to emulate him. There was also in our boyhood Stewart Hewison of Trenaby in Westray who stood on his head on the top stone of the gable end of Queen Mary Stewarts too close friend Bothwell’s now ruined Castle of Noltland. Both totally mad in the nicest sense. <br /><br /> The barn I have described previously, but at right angles to it were two of the byres. On the upper side of The Square were the three calfie byres, built across the roof line. Each byre held 12 small weaned Spring born calves, tied by the neck with chains called asks in Caithness, neck bands in Orkney, three double stalls either side. The asks were on sliders which allowed verticle head movement for each beast, high enough to pull straw out of the heck or rack, or maybe just to reach across for a titbit of turnip from in front of its partner. <br /> Tying the cattle up for the winter was a pantomime. A lasso was made from a cart rope and several men were in the byre with the door closed to prevent any escape. Throw a loop over a neck, run the free end through the slider in the flagstone hallan and hang on, pull in the reluctant beast until the neck chain could be fastened. Job done. <br /><br /> At the lower opposite side was the yearlings byre, or yearalts byre as we called it, with the Long Loft above. Below that the feeders byre, a lean-to construction with the roof tucked just under the Long Loft roof eaves but quite high and spacious, plenty good ventilation.<br />At the fourth side of the square opposite the barn and next to the Big Hoos was the cartshed with a handy neep shed at either end to service the calfie byres above and the yearalts byre below. <br /> In the centre of The Square was the cattle midden, cleaned out in summer. <br /> An old photo has survived of The Square showing Billy the Horse with our cousin Thora Johnston from Stromness, our cousins Jean, Robert and Margaret Flett from Edinburgh, and myself. I do not know if it is printable. <br /><br />We must not forget the social side of “The Square” either. Another day perhaps. <br /><br />‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-59768744604876502872010-03-06T01:04:00.000-08:002010-03-06T01:04:12.784-08:00<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1KYAG_loh2j8VbEEdDdsc9HKoZK0Dru1ugugCDqw8BuRF2Rnjg9QH-FLt9lOOc_qsglEHu1tXeRzVzT0AikXBW_uek8uixW0lXgAbaN5VZKLuyTqNUZQx4S2t_LzrRXuC-EpbM-eGLc/s1600-h/Coal+Hulk+Watchful.jpg'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1KYAG_loh2j8VbEEdDdsc9HKoZK0Dru1ugugCDqw8BuRF2Rnjg9QH-FLt9lOOc_qsglEHu1tXeRzVzT0AikXBW_uek8uixW0lXgAbaN5VZKLuyTqNUZQx4S2t_LzrRXuC-EpbM-eGLc/s320/Coal+Hulk+Watchful.jpg' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-48069324516152097822010-03-06T01:01:00.001-08:002010-03-06T01:01:56.740-08:00No 71. Coaling Huilks in StronsayA long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on <br /><br />Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a <br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />No 71. THE COALING HULKS OF STRONSAY.<br /><br /> Lying at anchor below Whitehall Farm in the Bay of Franks were the coaling hulks waiting for their customers, the herring drifters of Buckie and Bamff, Fraserburgh and Aberdeen, Lerwick and Lowestoft. And other places but these were the main herring ports I knew. The hulks must have been anchored fore and aft, otherwise they would have needed too much sea room to swing on wind and tide in a shallow bay. A very old photo I have shows them all lined up in one direction, drifters swarming about them like bees at a honey pot. <br /> Ships serving there as coaling hulks, though not necessarily all at the same time, were the Watchful, Hebe, Glenmore, Dorjoy and Riga, and especially the Orcadia (ii).<br /> The last mentioned, the Orcadia (ii), had pride of place for me. She had served the North Isles routes in the ownership of Robertsons Orkney Steam Navigation Co. from building in 1868 to 1931. She was withdrawn in 1931 when the newly built Earl Sigurd arrived, and was sold on to W & J Leslie of Kirkwall, who used her for two months as a replacement for the shop-boat Cormorant, going around the various Islands. She then served as a coaling hulk in Stronsay before being finally towed South and broken up at Bo'ness in 1934. That was the ship that took our mother to Sanday in Orkney to teach school there before she married our father in 1928. She stayed in Sanday with her mother’s brother Wm Robertson from Stroma and his wife Lizzie, who I think farmed there. If not then they lived there anyway.<br /> A wonderful but very old photo shows about 6 hulks coaling the drifters at the same time. One was a cement barge, though I wonder now if the Hebe was indeed that barge. Nice name anyway. There was certainly a wonderful photo of a ship lying across the outer end of the Stronsay pier which had been a sailing ship, but stripped of her yards and sails as if on her way to the coal hulk station. The concrete barge is now settled hard on the bottom for ever, breaking loose in a storm and being holed though concrete ships were incredibly strong. John Jefferis built some small concrete fishing boats at Scrabster after supervising the making of the concrete panels for PFR at Dounreay for Taylor Woodrow, PFR going critical in 1974. Unconventional but well made boats.<br /> They were filled with coal in readiness for the season by colliers, usually from Newcastle, that came to Stronsay during May and June to transfer their cargoes of coal into the hulks ready for the fishing season in July. That in itself was a busy job with men going out in motorboats from the piers at the Harbour to the hulks, about a near mile over the water. Early morning to late evening, then coming back as black as only coalmen could be, totally covered head to foot in coal dust. Hard manual work too. <br /> <br />. We used as boys look for the registration letters on the bows of the drifters to tell us from whence they had come, keeping a tally to see who had got the most. It was a change from collecting cigarette cards from fag smokers. The last of the old sailing drifters had of course little need for coal save a few bags from Davie Chalmer’s coal yard at the head of the pier for their stoves which served both as cooker and cabin heater The small iron pipe in the stern of all the drifters showed if the stove was lit or not, a give away small plume of smoke.<br /><br />These old timers were past their working days on the high seas but still capable of service in their own way as coaling hulks. Their anchorage station in the sheltered Bay of Franks was a hive of activity in the herring season. First the drifters came in to the various piers during the early mornings, both in Stronsay and half a mile across the Harbour in Papa Stronsay, to unload and sell their catch, then unload their herring onto waiting carts to get them as soon as possible fresh to the curing yards. The crews then eased their boats off the pier to make room for another boat to slip in between them and the pier, then the crew turned in to their tiny bunks in the equally tiny six bunk cabin at the stern of the drifter to get their supper and sleep, work done for an upside-down-day, working through the night, hauling herring in the early morning, and sleeping during at least part of the day. <br /> Early afternoon they stirred, banked up their fires and, with black smoke spiralling from their funnels, streamed across the harbour to the coaling hulks to get their bunkers filled ready for their next night at sea. The numbers seemed enormous to us, as indeed they were. Old photographs in Wick Heritage Centre of drifters in Wick Harbour give some idea of the numbers. Though Wick and Ian Sutherland claim Wick as the Herring Capital of the North Sea, rightly so, Stronsay in its day was as large. Herring migrated South from shoaling in Shetland waters to off Stronsay and then moved further South to off Wick, further on again as Autumn progressed to off East Anglia. And the herring boats followed them.<br /><br /> Storms were always a peril, even in a sheltered bay, their anchors the only attachment for the hulks to stay in place and their engines long removed. There were incidents but dealt with as I do not remember any ships being driven onto the beach. We did look to the hulks during or after any storm to see if all was well, not that much could be done if they broke loose. The Bay of Franks must have been good holding ground. <br /><br />With the final cessation of herring fishing in 1938 the steel hulks were either towed away for breaking up at Burntisland or Bo’ness, or were cut to pieces in Stronsay during the War for scrap iron, the remaining hulks being bought by Davie Chalmers and broken up at Newton’s Pier. I am told that some of them still exist as door lintels in Stronsay houses or sheds. Certainly if any use could have been made of parts of them Stronsay would not have seen them going to waste.<br /><br /> The concrete barge stays high in my memory. It was the object of one of our dafter escapades, and I think all the iron hulks had gone by then. Our father had gone in to Kirkwall so when the cats away the mice can play!!! We had a 14ft dinghy which stayed above the beach. The rowlocks were always taken safely away by our father out of our reach. No matter, someone !*!*! suggested that we should explore the barge. Jackie Stevenson, his brother Hecky Marshall, David, Norna, Isobel and I, set off for the shore. No rowlocks, no matter, we found bits of wood on the beach which we made fit into the proper holes. Into the water with the boat, oars tied to the sticks with binder twine, and off we set. Not far to go, the sea was kind. In respect to our late father he had long trained us how to behave in a boat, no standing, keep your allocated seats, balance the weight. Got to the barge, tied up with the boat rope and we explored. <br />Then someone saw a motorboat heading straight for us from the pier. Ominous. So into the dinghy, oars out and we headed for the shore. One of our bits of wood serving as rowlocks broke, we were adrift. The motorboat soon came up, a rope was tied to our little battle cruiser and we were towed in ignominy to the pier. There our mother was waiting for us. And none of us could swim!!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-89628196657542568682010-02-20T04:18:00.000-08:002010-02-20T04:18:15.696-08:00<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddVKivOiuuQ-X6JmyN2kAd5hVhZycaUBQ4ZOgn-UEu8HaKz1AYawnzFgE7bRH4svWHprGPVaioVzTv63vvKOeCbIPgfycKm6mtNCeQcgCVGRJUShv1oQrKqtlIai5vQdX0uSaoXySwZ4/s1600-h/16122.jpg'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgddVKivOiuuQ-X6JmyN2kAd5hVhZycaUBQ4ZOgn-UEu8HaKz1AYawnzFgE7bRH4svWHprGPVaioVzTv63vvKOeCbIPgfycKm6mtNCeQcgCVGRJUShv1oQrKqtlIai5vQdX0uSaoXySwZ4/s320/16122.jpg' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-42004091454269019292010-02-19T05:55:00.000-08:002010-02-20T04:24:21.951-08:00No 62. Full steam ahead for Islands visit.A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br />Earl Sigurd leaving Stronsay.<br /><br />Steamer day. David and I were on our way unaccompanied on the Earl Sigurd to Cleat in Westray for a holiday with our Uncle Bill and our slightly older cousins Jean and Grace Pottinger. The heavy ropes holding the Sigurd to the pier were let go, hauled onboard, coiled and snugged down in place, held there neatly with a whip rope. The wire ropes were wound onto their drums by a couple of men on a turn handle. The Sigurd eased away from the pier, water gurgling to fill the increasing space. The brass telegraph on the bridge double clanged as the Captain put it to Dead Slow Astern, a repeated double clang in acknowledgment from the depths of the engine room from the engineer. The propeller turned and began to draw the ship back and out from the pier, water flowing along the sides. <br /> It was a Friday and the Earl Sigurd was doing its once-a-week Round-the-Isles trip from Kirkwall, calling first at Stronsay, then Sanday, a small boat coming out at Calf Sound in Eday, then Westray and back in to Kirkwall. A long day for the crew but a chance for a popular summer tour Round the Isles or going to visit friends on another island as sailings allowed. Passengers and mail and newspapers only, a quick turn round at each call, no cargo unless special parcels or spare parts or essentials like a case of Whisky for the Pub. The sailing routes varied.<br /><br />Tuesday was also a sailing day for the Sigurd, not doing regular round the Islands sailings but more specials loading livestock specifically from one or other Island. She serviced North Ronaldsay, I think once a week, and we might see her funnel smoke in the far distance as she slipped round to the West of Sanday and out of sight to the North, a one Island all day run.<br /><br /><br /> The two steamers serving the North Isles, the Earl Thorfinn and the smaller Earl Sigurd, were coal-burning, steam-driven, slow turning reciprocating engines. Looking down from the engine room door that day, we were met with the hot smell of steam, oil, grease, the sough and thump of the massive pistons flying unseen in their cylinders, the huge propeller shaft dimly seen revolving in the depths below us. The perpetual clatter of shovels as the firemen threw coal through the open firedoor and into the red glowing maw of the furnace to keep stream pressure up, or pulled down more coal from out of the bunker. The chief engineer took we boys down for a conducted tour, a bit of oily cotton waste in his massive fist giving a wipe in passing to an already spotless surface. <br /><br /><br />In Orkney folklore and in the Orkneyinga Saga Earl Thorfinn was the Viking Earl Thorfinn Sigurdson and Earl Sigurd was his father Earl Sigurd Hlodvirsson, who was killed at the Battle of the Ford of Clontarff just outside Dublin on 23rd April, 1014 A.D. Our Viking history was, and still is, dear to the Orkneyman. Our ships were so named. <br />The Earl Thorfinn was the larger and senior vessel and did the main part of the North Isles sailings. I think it came into service about 1928, sold in 1963 for breaking up. The Earl Sigurd followed into service about 1931, smaller but she did her fair share, and was finally broken up in 1969. They took over the North Isles service from the Orcadia (ii) which our mother knew well and in which she sailed to Sanday where she taught school, staying there with her mother’s brother Will Robertson, both came from Stroma. The Orcadia (ii), built for Robertsons of Orkney Steam Navigation Co. in 1868, was sold in 1931 to Leslies of Kirkwall, used for two months as a replacement for the travelling shop boat Cormorant going round the Islands, then sold on again to Davie Chalmers in Stronsay to serve as one of his coal hulks. .<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Sailings were Earl Thorfinn on Saturday out from Kirkwall, calling at Eday, Stronsay, Sanday, in whatever order the tides dictated. Eday had the shallowest pier, Sanday next and Stronsay had the deepest. The ship sailed through Calf Sound between the spectacular Red Head on Eday and the Grey Head on the Calf, a freak of nature lying but a short distance apart and a notorious place for sea sickness. Finally to Pierowall in Westray where the Thorfinn lay over the weekend. Most of her crew came from Westray, almost her home port. Monday in to Kirkwall by various Islands, dictated by the tides for shallow piers. Tuesday the Thorfinn lay in Kirkwall taking on coal and doing other servicing, Wednesday out again eventually to Westray, and Thursday in to Kirkwall, Saturday back out again by the various Islands to Westray for the weekend. <br /><br /> Every now and again the Thorfinn would lie overnight at another Island, perhaps once a month in turn. That meant an early start from that Island and once I visited my brother David when he farmed Huip in Stronsay, played chess with him all night, and then down to Whitehall Village to catch the Thorfinn for a 5.30 am. sailing. No point in going to bed and missing the boat!! Slept all the way in to Kirkwall, waking up as the ship tied up alongside the pier.<br /><br /> Papa Stronsay was also serviced on rare occasion by the Sigurd which we could see just across the water lying at the Papa pier, a special sailing for livestock. Normally Papa Stronsay people crossed by small motor boat to Stronsay for connections, pick up the mail and papers, shopping. Papa Stronsay was a small island but very fertile, I think about 150 acres, tenanted by Jeemie Stout in our time in Stronsay. Eventually he was our successor in Whitehall as tenant. His family now own the farm, and recently also bought next door Clestrain.<br /> The two steamers also did special runs such as the County Show when they each did a couple of Islands, getting people in to Kirkwall early for the day and out again at day’s end, a very early start in the mornings after lying at the respective harbours overnight. There were also special trip days for one or other island, again in and out. Two hours sailing direct from Stronsay, two and a half from Westray. Made for a long day, but these were summer sailings and the evenings in the North were long light. We went once with our father on a day trip for the Inter-island International Football Match between Shetland and Orkney. Shetland won. <br /> From Whitehall we looked North to Sanday to catch the first distant black smudge of smoke telling us the Thorfinn was getting up steam ready for leaving Kettletoft Pier for the half hour crossing to Stronsay, a small black dot at first but steadily growing. Came in between Huip Ness and Papa Stronsay, skirting the guiding buoys and into the pier. <br /> A gathering of men and a long narrow wooden gangway was quickly lifted off the pier and put in place, tied safely to the ship’s rails with ropes. Depending on the tide, sometimes the gangway sloped up on a high tide, sometimes down on an ebb. Again, on a very high tide, sometimes the gangway was fitted onto a lower deck. Different Islands had different piers with different heights. Total rise and fall on a spring tide could be as much as fifteen feet. <br /> Passengers came ashore, some to Stronsay, some to head up the pier for a breakfast at Jock Stout’s the baker, or rather Aggie Stout his very capable wife. Good breakfasts too. <br />The steamer had various times at the pier, sometimes quite short, especially on the way out from Kirkwall, sometimes quite long if much cargo or many animals had to be loaded so plenty of time for a leisurely meal. Always a warning blast from the ship ten minutes before casting off. <br /> We once had a breakfast at Stouts, passing Stronsay on our way to Westray after coming to Caithness, a breakfast shared with my cousin Grace from Cleat, John Tait her husband, and our respective families. We just made it down the pier. In fact the Thorfinn had already winched around the pier end ready for leaving but we got aboard. Sometimes it did that if the tide was on the ebb at Spring Tides just to be ready to get away without touching the sandy bottom. The gangway would be put up again for that final ten minute wait if taken round the pier end. <br /> Gossip at the pier was normal, some friend or other on the Thorfinn or Sigurd going to another Island or in to Kirkwall coming down the gangway to have a yarn on the pier with an old friend, get the latest news, or just pass the time of day. It was a social part of Island life, a meeting place with sometimes a real need to meet the steamer, sometimes just an excuse for a yarn and a dram. Steamer day was steamer day, a social event as well as business. And the pub was open all day!!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-25785666971919036192010-02-05T04:56:00.000-08:002010-02-05T04:56:18.068-08:00<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhTojymaiCgVXvUWJXC0UL6ilppyb9A38TaYEit8_EfWNkR2HsRy27NfGgxI_FnU9zvlwUMLXo4pD7tUouqswAu2nQ2-oaUE9nSRn-UJflVW3nPfkGh4c7kdigiZfAVTVATedCpseBmYo/s1600-h/16124.jpg'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhTojymaiCgVXvUWJXC0UL6ilppyb9A38TaYEit8_EfWNkR2HsRy27NfGgxI_FnU9zvlwUMLXo4pD7tUouqswAu2nQ2-oaUE9nSRn-UJflVW3nPfkGh4c7kdigiZfAVTVATedCpseBmYo/s320/16124.jpg' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-8905893870077094722010-02-05T04:54:00.001-08:002010-02-05T05:01:37.221-08:00No 65. Loading for Kirkwall.ABOVE ;; THE EARL THORFINN LEAVING STRONSAY.<br /><br />A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br />Monday sailing back in to Kirkwall for the Thorfinn, normally from Westray save when it had an overnight at other Island, maybe once a month in turn. If it did then the Sigurd did Westray as a special direct sailing on it’s own. The Thorfinn for example would be overnighting at Stronsay, then on to Sanday and Eday and in to Kirkwall. Early start as Monday was the usual day for cattle for cross-pier connection to be loaded on another ship for Aberdeen, usually the St Magnus but there were others, St Rognvald and St Ninian come to mind.<br /> They sailed from Kirkwall about 6pm if I remember correctly to get in to Aberdeen in the early morning. There had been a service as far as Leith but that was discontinued in my memory. Some ships called at Wick too on their way South, carrying livestock from Sinclair’s Auction Mart and passengers. That sailing served many students going to Edinburgh University such as my three doctor uncles, as well as others from Caithness, some of them still around.<br /><br />The Thorfinn getting in early to Kirkwall also fitted with the Auction Mart as it gave them good time to deal with incoming cattle or sheep, driving them up the pier and along the Back Road to the old Auction Mart site. with enough helpers to block off side roads and gardens!! That site is now the wonderful New Orkney Library and Archive, the Mart has been relocated out of town at Hatston. The Library and Archive is the very best one could wish for, mountains of new equipment, masses of stored information. Perhaps oil money helped to build such an excellent facility, if it did then it was spectacularly well spent. It is worth a visit just to see it!!<br /> <br />The loading of the ship was a matter of great judgement and skill in determining what went where, slings of this and that already made up and strategically set out on the pier in readiness for loading by a magic formula. Everything seemed to be in the right spot when needed, little words needing to be exchanged, long practice made perfect no doubt. The heavy wire rope from the ship with its latched lifting hook could stretch quite a ways so that items could be slid with some guidance along the pier before being lifted into the air and swung on board to disappear down through the hatch into the hold below. Gave real meaning to the phrase “Down the Hatch!!!” A shout from the depths relayed to the winch man helped to distribute the loads unseen by us from the bridge spectator point. <br /><br /> Most usual from Stronsay was the huge weekly consignment of boxes of eggs. Monday suited best so the Egg Grading Station in Kirkwall could get them graded and sent South. Glasgow was a favourite weekly destination for Dennison’s ship the Elwick Bay.<br /> There might be occasional loading of furniture as someone left the Island, no containers to pack but bits and pieces off a cart or two. Maybe a large box or two and a couple of trunks but no special containers. When we came to Caithness in May 1944, though I was not there, we loaded some little furniture on the Thorfinn, a piano now at Barrock Mains, an Orkney straw backed chair made for our grand-father and grand-mother for their marriage in 1880. It is still in Greenland Mains House with brother Hamish, still almost as good as new though woodworm have been present in the straw back, nothing serious, just discernable. I never knew woodworm did other than look for wood but there it is, straw will do. Other than that most of the house furniture was sold at the sale in Nov.1944. Greenland Mains was already quite well furnished by John Scott’s sisters who left most of it for us, we had no need to move much.<br /><br /> We also took to Greenland Mains some pedigree Aberdeen Angus cows our father liked, some working Clydesdale horses including a big black home bred former stallion called Prince who I helped train. Now don’t get me wrong, I was not the trainer, but I did a few things to help. Peter Stevenson was the very capable trainer. I was only home on holidays but one training task at Easter was to yoke Prince into a heavy wooden beam or sleeper and pull it across the ploughed furrows. Nothing sharp to cause damage if he got a bit fractious. To help with a little extra weight, not much I admit, we stood on the sleeper while Peter held the reins and took care of the horse. Prince was easy to train, a big bonny horse, no longer a stallion thanks to the vet from Kirkwall but with the proud carriage and strong neck of his early years.<br /> The other task I helped with in training Prince was to build cart loads of sheaves from the stooks in the field at harvest while again Peter controlled the horse. I must have been a bit conceited even then as I reckoned my loads were the best built.!!! Actually quite proud to be asked to help by my father, I was 14, the harvest was October 1943, it was my last in Stronsay. The memory of that harvest is with me still. I was home on Harvest Holidays from school in Inverness, a Wartime practice to help food production. Sometimes called “Tattie Holidays” though Stronsay was not a great tattie grower, but there were other harvest tasks to be done. Even town children were encouraged to go into the country to lend a hand, getting a bed on the farm they were working on. An adventure for many even if lodgings had to be found, and we looked forward to the break.<br />But to continue the loading. When all the smaller items had been loaded and safely stowed below in the hold, the hatch cover was put in place, the heavy waterproof tarpaulin stretched over all, the wooden wedges driven home into the cleats at the hatch sides to hold the cover against any incoming waves. Then they got ready for what I can best describe as the rodeo. <br /> The pens for the cattle were under the bridge and a long ways back towards the passenger cabins, a door separating them but allowing access. The smell was of course that of the byre, but stronger. The pens had been washed down with a copious supply of pumped sea water, draining overboard into the sea. Tastier fish I was told!! <br /> The cattle had been penned at the head of the pier in one of Davie Chalmers yards. All were haltered with home made halters, a job again for a wet day making them with home made rope in the Long Loft. The cattle would be haltered in their stalls in the byre before being let off the asks (neck chains) and driven down the road to the pier head in readiness. Usually the previous evening for most of the Island but an early start from Whitehall was our usual as we had only one mile to go.<br /> When ready a loading pen was erected next to the ship with heavy movable timber partitions, three sided and the fourth side against the ship holding the heavy wooden cattle gangway which had been lifted off the pier by the winch and lowered into place. Sloping up or down according to the tide.<br /> The cattle were then driven down the pier in a bunch, plenty helpers but no shouting, just gentle driving. There were no side rails on the pier, just a flat surface with bollards along either side for ship mooring. On occasion a beast would go over the edge, I saw one once but men were quickly into a boat. Get alongside the swimming steer, throw a noose over his head, catch the halter, row back to shore towing the miscreant. Then back along the pier to join his fellows with two men hanging on the halter and off South. Choice words I cannot repeat bestowed on him. Still, it did not happen often.<br /> Actual loading meant catching a halter and pulling, the beasts being tied up in the pens onboard. Sometimes they just drove them on if they went easy but the halter was a standby.<br /><br /> That would conclude the loading, a blast on the ship’s siren to give ten minutes warning which time was not wasted as the crew tidied up and made ready for sea.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-74428655251662882502010-01-22T09:09:00.000-08:002010-01-22T09:13:42.002-08:00No 64. Unloading Ship. 23rd Jan. 2010A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /> <br /><br />FOTO OF EARL THORFINN AT STRONSAY PIER. <br /><br />No 64. UNLOADING SHIP. 23RD JAN.2010<br /><br />Unloading ship was one of our adventures. Sometimes the Thorfinn was as much as two hours at a pier, both going out with unloading cargo for each island, about the same sometimes loading going in to “The Toon”. This was of course before the days of roll-on roll-off ferries with containers for everything. No fun at all now, just touch and go.<br /><br /> Our two hour entertainment was always at Kettletoft Pier at Sanday. Eday was a shorter time for a smaller Island. We did not see the unloading for that length of time in Stronsay as we had no need to be on the pier until nearer sailing time if we were going on the ship, though Stronsay as well as Sanday could be a two hour stop in it’s own right. Many times we were there for some of the time with our father, though never allowed to go down the one mile to the Village on our own. The pier was not really too safe. Peter Burr, originally from Tongue in Sutherlandshire and father of Peter Burr who used to live in Janetstown before finally moving to Tongue, our butcher in Stronsay and one of our general merchants, was drowned when he unfortunately reversed his lorry over the unguarded edge. His passenger, a Williamson whose first name I cannot recall, got out of the cab, surfaced and survived. A sad day.<br /><br />But going to Westray we could be spectators for that two hours at Sanday, a larger island than Stronsay, more people, more cattle. That time gave us an excuse to go up the pier to the Post Office and visit the shop owned by the Sinclairs, our Uncle Bill in Westray’s in-laws. They served teas which we made use of if we had a long stopover. Good teas too with home baking. And they never took a penny from we boys, family like.<br /> Unloading at the Islands was a hotch-potch of a great variety of goods. Heavy rope slings were greatly used and much of the cargo was stowed in the hold already in the slings ready for lifting out. A man at the hatch controlled everything, watching below to see if a lift was ready and signalling by hand to the winch man when to lift. No walky talkies then, just good team work.<br />Feeding stuffs loomed large as the egg industry was then going great guns in Orkney. Even during the War feed supplies were available but on ration, eggs were needed to feed the Nation. So we got our allotment. Mostly Bibbys and BOCM. Slings of empty egg boxes were lowered onto the pier, to be later filled and returned to Kirkwall. All eggs were free range production which was all we had before modern intensive methods came in Post-war, so called factory farming. Wooden henhouses were spread all over the landscape and some in gardens at the back of the Village, free ranging over father’s fields over the back garden walls but I guess he got paid in kind one way or the other. <br />At Drummond Park Hostel in Inverness during the War Years we often had scrambled eggs using dried egg powder. To farm boys used to our own fresh farm eggs it was not our first choice. The dried egg powder was shipped across the Atlantic from the USA at dreadful cost in men and ships. We should have been more grateful to get it, but fresh eggs from home was indeed Manna from Heaven. The Postal Service did wonders during the War, many a parcel of this and that from the farms was sent to friends in the towns and still arrived fresh enough, mostly!! Our School Hostel staff from Mr Frewin down were very kind to all us boys in dealing with gifts of food from home. He was also my Maths Master at Inverness Royal Academy..<br />Imported feed to the Islands such as Stronsay was essential to augment our own limited grain resources. Pigs also needed considerable imports. And cattle cake. The feed came in hessian bags weighing 11/2 cwts, about 75 kgs today. Now illegal to lift that weight under H&SE rules but a man who could not lift that bag on his own was not of much use. And many a woman could do just as well, sometimes better!! <br /> Odd wooden crates were landed for various purposes. Bags of flour for our two bakers in the Village, Jock Stout and Swanneys. Slings of timber for the two joiners we had, Cheemie Morrison at Hillcrest who made that new cart for our father and Jock Mitchel in the Village. Sometimes a farmer got a load of timber for doing his own building work, as did our father for the Madhoos at Airy.<br />Iron for the two Island blacksmiths, one in the Village and one in the South End. Drums of 45 gallons of paraffin or petrol, paraffin for farmers’ tractors and petrol for Davie Chalmers at the top of the pier to pour into his tank with it’s hand cranked pump. Tar in 40 gallon barrels for various uses. There was one time when the roads were being tar sealed for the first time and a large number of tar barrels came to Stronsay. That must have been pre-war as the roads were done while I was still in the North School. The quarry over the road was going full blast, the rattle and thump of the stone crusher punctuating our day. The empty barrels were much in demand, being cut open, flattened, and used as one would use corrugated iron sheeting. Many a hen house or small shed was so made. A pretty adaptable people.<br /><br />Boxes and boxes of groceries for various shops. Flour and sugar came in big bags, not today’s pretty pretty plastic wrapped minuscule packets. Various sacks of dried fruits, peas, beans, salt.. A scoop was a very necessary part of a shop’s fittings!! And a weighing machine. Large boxes of tissue wrapped apples and pears from California and from New Zealand for the shops.<br /> Livestock came ashore, some in slings under the belly though most walked up or down a heavy wooden gangway depending on the height of the tide. It was slung into place by the ship’s derrick with men steadying it from swinging. A new horse, a cow for milking, a young bull for some farm in the Island. Young calves for some farm or other needing a calf to replace a casualty, or just to bucket rear if milk was plentiful in summer. No powdered calf milk in those days. Safely esconsed in a small sack with the neck securely tied with bindertwine but not too tight to throttle them, their legs in the bag safe from kicking. John T Flett of Quanterness, doyen of Orkney cattle dealers, was the source for many. Some were sent from the Auction Mart in Kirkwall. Young calves were quite plentiful as many a person then kept a milking cow for their own use and the week old new-born calf was sold.<br /> Davie Miller was in charge of the pier, held the key to the store, did all the paper work. Married to a Caithness girl, their daughter Daveen was in my class and we vied for top place. I will give her best, she was usually top, but not always. The storeshed was enlarged in my memory, an extension being built on to one end, but never big enough. <br /><br /> And the passengers were always of interest, some for that particular Island, some passing by, some on business. Even while the Thorfinn was not yet alongside the pier, someone would see their friend on board and wave vigorously each way, a hanky often used as a flag. Seemed to be a matter of pride as to who would see whom first!! I do well remember, coming home for school holidays from Inverness, looking as we approached the pier to see if our father was waiting, though he definitely was not one of those waving a hanky!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-14684657002353555972010-01-09T01:13:00.000-08:002010-01-12T22:12:39.460-08:00No 63. Papay Boatmen and their skills.A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br />No 63. ISLAND HARBOURS.<br />Or Mesmerised by the skill of the Papa boatmen.<br /><br />The North Isles of Orkney had the harbours of Whitehall at Stronsay, Kettletoft at Sanday, Backaskail at Eday, Peirowall at Westray. The Island of Papa Westray had it’s pier, so too had Papa Stronsay, but their piers were more tidal, needing a high tide to get in. Normally only shipping livestock or unloading fertiliser or coal from an occasional Newcastle coal boat determined a pier call at either. The Island of Rousay had its pier. North Ronaldsay, Orkney’s farthest North Island, had its pier. North Ronaldsay was out on its own, lying a good bit to the North of Sanday, getting the Sigurd to do a call which was for them alone. From Whitehall we used to see the smoke of the Sigurd, small in the distance, slipping out of sight between the Calf of Eday and Sanday on it’s way North. Shapinsay had its Balfour Pier but was serviced by another locally owned ship. Denison’s Elwick Bay springs to mind but he had other ships over the years.<br /> Papa Westray was one of our delights. The small amount of trade or passengers often dictated that a small boat put off to meet the Steamer lying off the pier. We used to watch mesmerised the skill of the Papa men, standing in the stern of their boat with hand on the tiller, swaying easily to the roll of the sea and the pitch of the waves. They would snap their small boat alongside the Thorfinn more easily than most motorists would park at the pavement. A rope flung to them fore and aft kept them alongside. . <br /><br /> Drifting gently but with the Thorfinn still under steerage way at dead slow, passengers and mail and parcels were quickly transferred over the side, two iron plates being temporarily hinged or swung back to give an easier and lower entry. A rope ladder helped. <br /><br />Consummate seamen, if the wind was right as soon as they left the Thorfinn‘s side the big brown sail snapped up, the boat heeled to the breeze and rapidly left us behind, half way to the shore before we really got fully under way again. <br /><br /> Papa Westray was normally pronounced a quick “Pappae” or “Pappey”, inflection lifting at the end, more the old Norwegian or Viking pronunciation, as well it should be. Their accent was totally Nordic and peculiarly their own. Indeed each Island had its own particular accent, quite distinguishable between Islands then, and still there with the native born, but much mixed now with incomers from other places. <br /><br /> Eday had the same small boat service at Calf Sound, that stretch of water that separates the Calf of Eday from Eday itself. There was a small pier at Carrick House on that Sound. The Eday pier was shallow, a short right angle, and a bit awkward, the ship having to winch itself around the pier end to facilitate leaving straight out. That stop was dictated by tide, or just that the loading was small I cannot say, possibly a mixture. Speeded up the sailings if serviced at Calf Sound as going in to the Eday pier took time. We used to watch the sandy bottom being churned up by the Thorfinn’s propeller as we left, bits of seaweed turmoiling with churned up sand. The shallower Sigurd sometimes serviced Eday rather than the deeper draft Thorfinn. Indeed sailings were shared between the two ships according to tide and what cargo needed handling.. <br /> Calf Sound was also a magic place for us. The Sound went between the Red Head on Eday to the west side and the Grey Head on the Calf of Eday to the east side of the narrow seaway. It was our route from Stronsay to visit our Uncle Bill, father’s brother in the farm of Cleat in Westray. It was a notorious seaway as the wild Atlantic came through the Sound and it could be a rough sailing with many sea sick passengers if the tide was ebbing and a Westerly gale was blowing against it. Quite beautiful cliffs. Stone quarried from the Red Head is said to be in the fabric of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. As the Kirkwall Council Book refers, if you can follow the challenge of the Old English of the 1600s. :-<br /><br />“Tolbuith of the samen, the Twentie ane day of November 1T viH. and nyntie one [1691]<br /><br />The whilk day the Magistrats and councill being conveened anent the sowme of money which George Baikie of Greintoft in Eday, with his accomplices & associates, wes fined and amerciat upon the twelth of this instant for his unwarrantable, hostiall Intrusione in the Cathedral Kirk in Kirkwall, about five houres in the afternoone or yrbye, without Liberty or Licence granted either be the minister or Magistrats, And he being called day and daitte forsd, Judiciallie confest his unwarrantable Intrusione with his sds accomplices at the South Church door, And yt he had committed ane high and attrocious cryme in swa doeing, But also in deforceing of the officers and oyrs the burgesses who wes called to remove him and his accociats furth of the sds church at yt tyme of night, as the Provest and his subtione yrto more fullye bears. And efter consideratione had yrannent with his aboverine confessione, They fined and amerciat him in the sowme of Two Hundreth merks Scotts money. Yet notwthstanding, upon his earnest requeist and desyre to the sds Magistrats and Councill for causses knowen to ymselves, they componed the sds fyne for fyftie pounds Scotts moey Juduiciallie payed this day, togidder with thrie boats of whyte friestone for doors, windows with yr Lintalls and sells, to be taken out of the frie quarrel [quarry] in Eday, And brought upon boats to the shoare of Kirkwall free of all cost & expencess to the saids Magistrats but all upon the chairge and expenss of the sd George Baikie, ilk boatfull consisting of the number and quantitie of fourtie eight meills, And yt betwixt the daitte heirof and the first day of August next to come, And faillieing the delyverie of ilk ane of sds boats of stonns to the Thesaurer, to make payment of the sowme of Twentie merks Scotts money, And for the more sure payment of the sds stonnes frie of all expensses as sd is , William Traill, merd burges of Kirkwall, becomes Caur. Lykeways he binds and obleidges him, his aires, exers to cause delyver the saids thrie boats of stonnes at the shoare of Kirkwall at the quantitie befoir mentinat, or Liquidate pryce yrof as aforsd. In Testimonie qrof he hath subtt thir presents the sds Twentie one day of November 1T viH. and nyntie one yeires, It being alwayes heirby understood That the Magistrats is heirby obleidged to procure friedome and Libertie from These Interested in the said quarrel [quarry] for mineing and carrieing away the sds boats of stones. <br /> <br /> Carrick House on Calf Sound was the scene of the capture of the Wick born pirate John Gow by Patrick Fea of Clestrain in Stronsay, who also held Carrick. Gow, born in Wick about 1698, had gone as a small boy with his father and family to grow up in the busy Orkney shipping harbour of Hamnavoe, now Stromness. Going early to sea, Gow in August 1724 joined the ship Caroline at Amsterdam under Capt Ferneau, a Frenchman, serving as Second Mate and Gunner. After lying idle for two months in Santa Cruz, Gow, with most of the crew, mutinied on 3rd November, 1724 and seized the ship. Renamed Revenge, they turned to piracy,<br /><br />He was Capt Cleveland, the hero if that is the right word, of Sir Walter Scott’s book “The Pirate”. In January 1725 the Revenge, once again renamed The George, sailed into Hamnavoe, now Stromness, Gow calling himself Mr Smith.<br /><br />Gow’s ship, after raiding the Hall of Clestrain near Stromness on 10th February, 1725, three days later, trying to get through Calf Sound to visit, or raid, Gow’s alleged old friend Patrick Fea in Carrick House, ran aground on The Calf of Eday. A strategy by Fea of inviting some of the crew ashore to Carrick House and then seizing them allowed them all to be captured. The Revenge was re-floated and taken to lie at anchor in Linga Sound just below Clestrain in Stronsay, well sheltered by our gull’s egg Island of the Holm of Midgarth. So the pirate Gow was part of our Stronsay folklore as well.<br /> Gow was taken to London where he and seven of his piratical crew, were hanged at Execution Dock on the 11th June, 1725. Fea, after a struggle with officialdom, got a small reward for the capture and possibly the later sale of Gow’s ship which was taken to Leith, though it took him a long time for him to get the money.<br />. So our modern sailings through Calf Sound to Westray were through historic waters.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-80447587897810284512009-12-24T11:15:00.000-08:002009-12-24T11:16:11.923-08:00No 60 SHEEP SHEARING pt 2. 25.12.2009A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br />SHEARING THE EWES PART TWO. <br /><br />Shearing sheep was a skilled task. Not everyone was good at it. No matter, someone had to catch the sheep, someone had to look after marking them with hot tar with a marking iron, called a “buist” in Caithness, but if we had a name specific to it in Stronsay I cannot remember other than just a marking iron. Ours for Whitehall was a capital WH joined together, the last leg of the W being the first leg of the H. I cannot print it, but it made a good mark and was also a mark used to clip the hair on the plate of the left hip of cattle being shipped out to Aberdeen, using a nice sharp curved scissors to do so which I still have, a memento of the past!! Someone had to do this, someone had to do that. <br /> Wool bags had to be tied up in place on the upraised shafts of an upended cart for filling. Woolbags had to be stitched when full, woolbags had to be carried to the lower neep shed. Sheep had to be separated from their lambs and driven into the catching pen, dogs barking and snapping or nipping at their heels the while. Much shouting and whistling, but eventually into the catching pen they went. Even the predictable very smart old dodger who had seen it all before!! The modern sheep fanks with wonderful pens and gates and fittings was still much in the future. <br /> <br /> Then catch your sheep. Big Half-bred ewes bought as ewe lambs out of the Island of Eday, and a two man job to haul them from the pen over the grass to each shearer as needed. Often also a two man job to upend them, one man holding and twisting the head, the other reaching under the ewe’s belly to grip the far-off hind leg and a quick heave to turn it over. As if the Caithness Cheviot was not big enough, these Eday born Half -bred ewes were even more massive. Get the ewe balanced on its bum and start clipping. Open at the throat, down the belly and into the left side, clipping towards the backbone. And so on and on into the fleece. keeping on going round in that direction with the sheep going one way and the fleece the other. It left a better fleece for wrapping with no breaks.<br /> That is still the way modern sheep shearing goes, once called the Bowen technique after New Zealander Godfrey Bowen who pioneered modern sheep shearing though his record has been long surpassed. <br /><br />On January 6, 1953 Godfrey broke the world record for shearing sheep: 456 full-wool sheep in nine hours. New Zealand was still living high on the sheep’s back, and this feat turned him into an overnight celebrity. He went on to teach his system around the World, Edinburgh Highland Show and Moscow among other venues.<br /><br />My brother David, now in Western Australia in Pemberton growing grapes, was fortunate in being there watching that day in New Zealand when Godfrey Bowen clipped his historic record. David, then a member of Halkirk YFC, was on a Young Farmers trip to New Zealand though he had to pay his own fare at that time. Great trip, I was quite jealous!! We had both applied for the trip but David was the lucky one. ( see GODFREY BOWEN on the internet, all sheep shearers should see it.) <br /><br />Caithness hand shearing when we came here was anathema to our father. He maintained they did it all the wrong way round, beginning just behind the right ear and taking small bites until the fleece was opened up. Then open the shears for a full bite, shears snipping away with a sharp click, click, click, working from just over the back bone round the right side to the front. Then change over to do the other side. Some shearers fastened a small cork into their shears so they would not quite fully close, and they reckoned the sheep were just that much more settled. A skilled shearer <br /><br /> This Caithness change-over from right side to left side was a risky manoeuvre in most cases. The ewe, sensing a possible chance to escape, kicked and struggled, the fleece sometimes breaking down the back rendering it just that much more difficult to later properly roll it up. Allow a hind leg to kick and it got entangled in the fleece, chunks of wool going every-which-away, at its worst total disintegration. Someone would quickly step over and help restore as best he could the sheep and the broken fleece to their proper position, almost. At times the ewe would seize its chance, a quick twist, get to its feet and take off. The greatest episode I ever saw on that was at Knockdee at the 1949 clipping when we were temporarily tenants of Stemster. The shearing stance was in a field to the right side of the sloping road up to Will Gunn’s Knockdee shepherd’s house. One of the Fraser boys of the other Knockdee, I forget which of them, was last seen taking off down the slope well seated on a half clipped Cheviot ewe and holding on like Lester Piggot. On the credit side he did not let go, and the ewe was eventually taken back from the hedge at the bottom of the field to finish her disrobement. Took us quite a time to get over laughing. <br /> Do not think he was the only one to do so, it happened many a time to a lot of people on a lot of other farms. Worth seeing, provided it was not your sheep!! The principle was not to let go, just hang on, help would arrive, eventually!! A big Cheviot ewe could take some handling. Still do, but todays shearers are very well trained indeed. <br />The Bowen technique is now standard and universal World wide. Sheep shearing owes a great deal to him, and to his brother Ivan, who was at least his equal, sharing the top spots in many shearing competitions. <br /><br /> Having shorn the sheep, and called for a buist in Caithness, mark in Stronsay, the ewe would be put into another pen and a fresh sheep brought to the shearer, usually held ready by the catchers. No time to waste, though many a shearer dodged at times by saying he had to sharpen his shears, whether needed or not. Stretched his back at the same time. <br /> His new clipped fleece would be gathered up by a gatherer, often women or boys and girls helping for the day, or sometimes the shearer himself would sweep up his fleece and deposit it on the wool table. Properly done, this entailed a sweeping throw that spread the fleece out to perfection for the rollers, new shorn side underneath. Then a quick skirting and trimming, rubbishy bits under the table, dags or dirty bits torn off, but do not take too much of the fleece with you. One folding and winding the trimmed fleece from the tail end, the other, because two rolling were usually needed, winding a band out of the wool of the neck ready to finally tie the fleece. Well rolled fleeces were an art form. <br /><br />When shearing was in full flow with a lot of good shearers going full tilt it was no easy task to keep up with the rolling. Unrolled fleeces piled up around the table. Rolled fleeces piled up against the dyke while a full wool bag was taken down and an empty one tied in place. Six inch nails spiked through the tops held full ones together until they could be stitched. Half yoking was well received. End of day meant nothing if the ewes had not been finished. “Clip on, boys, we’re nearly done”. And eventually they were.<br /> Shorn sheep went back to their lambs and out to the field. Lambs looked for their mothers with much bleating, this new clean mama could not be theirs. But after half an hour all was quiet, lambs suckled correctly, sheep spread over the field.<br /> All over for another year.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /> <br /> <br />.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-9737636109107074952009-12-11T06:51:00.001-08:002009-12-11T07:02:22.371-08:00No 59. Sheep shearing pt1.A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br />SHEARING THE EWES PART ONE.<br /><br />Shearing the ewes at Whitehall was a good day, full of adventure. Summer was with us, the sun was shining, the ewes fleeces were dry. Early morning father and the shepherd had been gathering in the ewes, lambs bleating and mothers calling for their little ones as the flock was herded into the yard. Sometimes they were taken in to the yard the evening before and held overnight in readiness for an early start. Or in a small paddock next the steading. Or in the stackyard.<br /> Extra hands were gathering from here and there, some from neighbouring farms for whom the compliment would be returned in due course, perhaps some helpers from the village. We were on summer holidays from school so had a day when we could help, or think we could help. A small coal brazier fire was lit to hold the tar bucket and heat the sticky tar to make it more liquid for marking the ewes after shearing. Hot tar was also used if any sheep got a cut from the shears, being liberally spread on the open wound. Must have stung a bit but it kept the flies away and I never knew of a wound going wrong afterwards. Used for wounded seamen at the Battle of Travalgar on 21st October, 1805, a stump of a leg or of an arm shot off being dipped straight into the boiling scalding tar. First aid of a kind, brutal, but it worked, sometimes.!!! <br />. The shearing stance was on the green space between the high garden wall round the tennis lawn and the tar roofed wooden shed which later did service as a car garage but had been our gig shed previous to the Morris Ten car purchase in 1935. Other parts of the long black wooden shed were stores for this and that and also the padlocked coal shed at the far end. Shearing of the ewes meant much food being prepared and taken out to the very hungry shearers sitting on the green grass in the sunshine, or on a newly packed wool bag. The usual two hour lunch break was dispensed with, time on a good day not be lost. A good picnic with much humour and back chat among friends.<br /><br /> Odd gates and wooden flakes were tied to the spokes of carts deployed across the entrance to the green to act as barriers to contain the sheep. One cart was upended with the shafts high in the air. To this was attached two ropes one to either slider to hold the hessian wool bags of Stewart Bros., Constitution Street, Leith, now vanished into the British Wool Marketing Board and converted into a restaurant. The bags were held at a convenient height for filling, just swinging off the ground at the bottom. The trick was to put a small round beach pebble into each corner of the top of the bag folded over the stone and make a half loop clove hitch around it with the loose end free. Done properly, a sharp tug on the free end undid the loop, do it wrong such as crossing over the rope and all **** broke loose as unsuccessful attempts were made to get it to let go. With fleeces piling up for packing some unkind words were often flung at whoever had tied the bag in place. Tended not to make the same error again !!! But I am ahead of myself with the packing of the wool bags. <br /> This was before modern machine clipping came in, though Greenland Mains had a Lister 4 gang clipper assembly put in by the Dunnet family long ago, at least pre 1933 when they sold the farm to John Scott from Fearn near Tain, where the Scotts are still farming. The Greenland Mains outfit had a Lister engine in the loft driving by a belt through a hatch in the loft floor to a shaft suspended below in the shearing shed with four of the old three-inch wide handpieces. I learned my machine shearing on it. <br /> The shears we had filled your hand, sprung to open the blades as you relaxed your grip. Properly sprung and set, they did not open too far. Some shearers fixed a cork between the handles of the blades so they could not totally close and make a clicking sound, scared the sheep. Worked well too. For sharpening they could be sprung over the top so to speak, allowing each of the blades to be sharpened singly on an oiled sharpening stone, usually at about an angle of 45’. Some men were absolute artists at the art of getting just the right edge, so much that they were much in demand from less practiced hands. One man I knew had a small sharpening stone in his hip pocket, giving a quick touch to his blades between every sheep, the work of an instant while the catcher was taking his next sheep to him. <br /> You can still get these shears for gardening, smaller versions, and any Agricultural Show has them as keen young men - and old - snip away imagined odd bits of wool off an already totally smooth show sheep. But we had no other at Whitehall though in the loft was an old hand cranked Lister clipping machine with a three inch clipper but it needed one man to turn the handle while the other sheared the sheep, and I never saw our father bothering. Waste of time and a good man he reckoned.<br /> There would be a wooden shed door or two taken off its hinges set on a couple of empty barrels to use as tables for sharpening shears or for the tea basket at half yoking time. Or as a temporary bar for bottles of home brewed ale and a bucket of cold water with a dipper for thirsty teetotallers, draped with a wet tea towel to keep it cool and the flies off. Another similar table did service for rolling the fleeces, waist high and set so you could get right round it. <br /> That task was usually done by women who were just that much better and quicker than the men at doing these jobs. Properly and tightly done, the fleece could then be thrown to a man deep down in the wool bag, just his arms sticking up over the edge at first asking for a fleece, gradually building the fleeces under his feet one each way to fill the sides until, bag full, he climbed out and stuck in two sharp spikes to hold the top edges together until finally sewn. Six inch nails were sometimes used but we had two treasured spikes used only for that job and kept in a chest which also held the well oiled sheep shears for the rest of the year. And a heavy sail needle for sewing the lip, curved upwards at the end. A Stewart Bros. label was tied to the final bit of string and inserted just below the opening, a double check on who the bag came from, though each bag had it’s own individual number.<br /> Sometimes the fleeces were just put on a tarpaulin set against the dyke and packed later when time allowed, it all depended on how many helpers you had.<br /> In those days before modern sheep dips, and now pour-on or injection anthelmintics, we had plagues of parasites such as sheep keds. A pretty monstrous big black louse, they could transfer to a shearer and give him a noxious bite. Or crawl under a shirt. Bloodsuckers they were, and a sheep infested with them must have been very uncomfortable. Neither did it take long for keds to appear on the lambs also. The introduction of DDT saw them off. We did not have ticks in Stronsay, not seeing any until we came to Caithness. Sheep lice were another pest. Maggot fly strike we did not have in Stronsay save one year when a warm Southerly wind must have carried them from Caithness!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-45451684490683590802009-11-27T07:01:00.001-08:002009-11-27T07:01:55.281-08:00No 29. DINNER TIMEA long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br />No 29. DINNER TIME. Pb 27.11.2009<br /><br />Today I believe that meals taken as a family are now few and far between. No doubt Christmas will be celebrated round the table, maybe birthdays, but when we were young meals were not a case of snatching something out of the fridge on the way to watch the Tele. We had neither. If we had I have no doubt such practice would not have been allowed by our mother. Eating in the kitchen was the province of the bothy boys and the servant girls as they were called, and for occasional workers such as harvest hands. <br /> At Whitehall our meals were always in the dining room, even on school days, proper sit down meals at proper times. Whatever ploy we had on outdoors, teatime was teatime. Or dinner as we called the midday meal which no one now recognizes save maybe as lunch.<br /> Big solid dining table, horse hair padded chairs, massive sideboard, big mirror on the wall behind it, with a pair of ornate brass candlesticks. A standard oil lamp in the corner. Our in her eighties grandmother, whom we called Ma, ate with us as the dining room was also her day room with a good coal fire going. Above the fire was an ornate mantlepiece with World War 1 odds and ends, a British pomegranate hand grenade, heavy, some brass shell and cartridge cases, empty of course. A few small photos of her two doctor sons in uniform from WW1. Two deep armchairs either side, one for her and one for any visitor. A green-glass-bowl oil wick lamp sat on a small table beside her chair. <br /><br />Meal times were meal times. Hands washed, hair combed, though we boys hair was short enough with but a fringe in front, a dossan we called it, and into the dining room. Many a boy was gripped by the dossan by an irate schoolmaster in those days. Not allowed now I fear. Did not do us any harm. Rather like a Red Indian getting ready for a scalping, little more indeed than a scalp lock.<br /> <br />We usually had three “girls” of various ages at Whitehall. Such were the times that it was normal for most houses to have some household staff, however great or small they were. A girl would leave school at 14 years old in my early days and go into service as it was called. There was no other work to be had in a small island though many would work at home, absorbed into the work of the farms and crofts. And when they married no change in that either.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Some work might be got in Kirkwall, getting into a shop or as an apprentice to a dressmaker, some girls had an aunt in the Toon and would go there to try to get a job. Sometimes it was as a servant girl in some house. Many others of course went in from Stronsay to Kirkwall to the Grammar School to get their Highers and in due course go on to University or to Murray House in Edinburgh to train as a teacher. Some bursaries helped with poorer families, and there was also a competitive Bursary Competition. <br /><br /> Going into service was the norm for many girls as soon as they left school and until such time as they got married. They got a bed, they got their food, good company, hard work, precious little money. Today we would have been accused of being filthy rich to be able to have such a thing, but it was just normal practice in those days, even for poor tenant farmers such as ourselves. Few houses did not have some indoor help.<br /><br />The dining table was set by one of the “girls”. White linen tablecloth, napkins in their rings, our initials on some of them. Still got mine, along with my silver christening mug and the gold half sovereign I got as a present from Mrs Chalmers in the Village when I was born!!! Actually found both when moving out of Isauld House and clearing out so very much after over 53 years in that house. Scary.<br /><br /> Water jug and chrystal tumblers, the water cold from a bucket just drawn from a well down the road which tasted so much better than the piped supply. That piped supply was from the water supply for the Village, drawn from the Ayre of the Mires next the sea, well named. It was fed uphill by a red painted windmill, not todays huge three bladed turbines but the old small multi bladed ones you will still see spinning away in old photographs of the Australian Outback. It turned as the wind dictated, kept facing the right way by a large steering vane at the back, pumping water up the hill to the Reservoir. The Reservoir was covered with an also red painted corrugated iron roof, so too the sides where we used to take a stick and run along making a dreadful clatter. Once we did it while someone was inside doing some maintenance. Not popular but forgiven. He said he had done the same when he was young, made us laugh after scaring us speechless. Did not last, the speechless part!! ! <br />. <br />The day to day work of the Reservoir which fed Whitehall Village by gravity was looked after by our father on his way to the Village. If the levels were down he went to the windmill at the Ayre of the Myres and set it going, then on to the Village, stopping the windmill on his way home. Sometimes he got a man to do that for him. It did not pump a huge amount ot water but working steadily with even a small breeze it did the job. When the herring season was on a lot of water was needed, running almost constantly. The herring steam drifters needed a daily top up and a pipe down each of the two piers gave them the needed supply. A full time job for someone to look after the water at the Harbour and get payment from the drifters. <br /><br /> After Grace said by our father, dinner. Soup, often cock-a-leekie as we had plenty old fat hens. Or potato soup. Real potato soup that your spoon would stand up in!! Then the meat course with father carving the joint, or the hen, or whatever, ostentatiously sharpening the carving knife with the steel which you can still see your butcher doing, but I have not seen one used in a house for a long time. Showing off a bit I guess, but the table was always set with the sharpening steel sitting right beside the carving knife. Vegetables in big tureens with lids in the middle of the table, boiled tatties, whole with early tatties but mashed later in the year, cabbage, neeps. All home grown of course. Gravy, lots of it. <br /><br /> Pudding. I remember rice pudding with raisins or bread pudding with currants. Bread pudding was easy, the baker usually had some loaves past their best but still useful, so father took a few throw-away ones home from the village from time to time, not believing in waste. Made good bread and butter puddings. <br />Curds and whey. Tapioca. Macaroni but with sugar and sometimes raisins, never with cheese. Stewed rhubarb with some tapioca in it and sweet new cream. A big jug of fresh milk. None of your pasteurized attenuated modern watered down or thinned out rubbish, just a good jug of fresh milk straight from the cow with sometimes a layer of cream settling on the surface. Clean up your plates, no excuses. And everything carried through from the kitchen by one of the girls.<br /><br /> We were always on edge to leave the table when finished but not allowed. I fear I have no memory of helping to clear the table, or carrying anything through to the kitchen, but I do remember sometimes helping to dry the dishes for one or other of the girls at washing up time. Sometimes!!!!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-84524027287420674672009-11-13T15:25:00.001-08:002009-11-13T15:28:41.442-08:00No 27. Farmyard Aromas pb 13.11.2009A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br />NO 27. FARMYARD AROMAS or THE FLAVOUR OF FARMING.<br /><br />The very smells of farming long ago seem to have vanished, or at least changed. An odd subject perhaps but so many smells are now different. Sitting in a sound proof tractor cab with at best the smell of diesel even the workers are insulated from the smells of yesterday, some of them still around. They are missing a lot.<br /> We cannot pass the very first I remember, the days when the horsemen were carting dung from the farm-yard middens to either build into field middens to rot down further - now called composting - or to haul off the carts into small heaps in lines across the fields to eventually spread with graips and hard work. That is still the smell most people associate with farming. Many city-to-country dwellers do their best to stop the practice anywhere near their lovely retreats. And some win, particularly regarding pig and poultry slurry. Can’t really blame them either come to think on it. It was important then, and still is, to know from where the wind is blowing. <br /><br />The wind had much to do with savouring the smell of farmyard dung, now called organic fertilizer and very much in favour with the organic farming brigade. The smell would carry a long way, so you knew what your neighbour was doing. There were three different middens at Whitehall, the horse midden, the cattle middens, the pig midden, each with its own aroma, if I can use that word. And each with it’s very own delightful odour, quite impossible to convey in writing. The hen houses did not have a midden as such but still were cleaned out from time to time. Even in the farm house with doors and windows closed we knew which midden was being carted to the land, to add it’s organic flavour to the soil. <br /> The horse midden was, if I can use the word, sweeter, much straw incorporated into it as the horses were straw bedded every night. Some horses would not lie down unless well bedded, a very occasional one would not lie down in the stable stalls at all, sleeping all night standing. We had one at Whitehall but a good horse all the same and he did lie down out in the grass field when off duty. There was always a bit of loose grain in the stable midden so rats made it their first choice. On a frosty morning steam rose high, even if not being carted, always quite hot compared to the cattle middens. <br /> The cattle middens were sharper in smell, much less straw, much more of you know what! They were usually kept quite tidy and sometimes the men just spent a morning squaring off the heap, dressing the midden it was called. Possibly for the benefit of visitors so you got the reputation of keeping a tidy farm. Looked good anyway. Middens were carted out from the steading ones to be remade out in the fields to rot or to compost a bit more, but also to be handily ready for later in the farming year when turnips were being sown and work was pressing. They were even turned over with forks in the field and remade, using up a day when nothing much else was doing. Even a goodly way off from the farm steading the smell could still drift homewards if the wind was right. Did that at Isauld once on the Links Field and it did help the process of rotting down. Quite mad. <br /><br />The pig midden was also quite another smell, but thankfully it was much smaller. Not that that made much difference if the wind was wrong.<br /><br /> Then the hen-house, another smell altogether. Usually it was just shoveled off the hen house floor into a cart standing outside with a patient horse, but sometimes it was heaped outside the door to await a suitable time for removal. Not so large in quantity but still needing doing. Shell sand was usually put down in a thick layer on the new-cleaned floor, kept the hen droppings the sweeter as the lime content partly dissolved the ammonia in the droppings. While still clean the hens would eat some for themselves, scratching around, grit for their gizzards. There would be a heap of shell sand outside the hen house anyway. Free range then, now very fashionable but there was no other system. <br /><br />Dung was a very precious fertilizer, almost the only one available in bygone days other than the sea weed we had easy access to in Stronsay. And that sea weed could really smell too. Just park your car with the windows open on a good day in the lay-by just past Gills Ferry Terminal towards Groats and you will, if the wind is from the North and on-shore, get the drift, if that is the right word!! Well rotted, we called it “yiper”, which word also described the very wet sludgy dung out of the byre or midden.<br />Wrack (sea weed) off the beaches is still much in use in Jersey in the Channel Isles for their Jersey Royal early potatoes, the word lingering on from the old Vikings that took over Normandy, cousins of the Orkneymen. The word is still with us in Rackwick in Hoy and Rackwick in Westray. To keep their beaches clean in Jersey we saw on one visit tractors with trailers being filled with sea weed by Council loaders, free of charge if you wanted it, and also keeping the beaches sweet for visitors. Probably still doing it. <br /><br />In the fields we could get the smell of new ploughed earth, sharp. Nearer sowing time the drier smell of just harrowed ground. The smell of early morning air outside the back door when it was ready for sowing, a lift in the wind good enough to fill your lungs. That was often accompanied with the sea gulls flying by and saying “Get up, get up, it’s time to get the seed in the ground”. They knew. <br /><br /> Growing crops had their peculiar smells, changing as the seasons grew. When the ears of grain came out the smell changed, and a field of bere or barley and a field of oats had quite different aromas. Oats were sweeter. As the season wore on and the crop ripened even that smell changed, a blind man could tell you when the crop was ready for cutting.<br /> In the stackyard a stack of oats and a stack of bere had different scents, quite recognizable. Thrashed straw in the barn, again bere straw and oat straw were different. And a heating stack in the yard was often detected by the smell, sometimes pulling out a sheaf and confirming the ominous sweetish aroma of incipient heating. It had a noxious smell when threshed, but it had to be done.<br /><br /><br />So too potatoes growing in the field with many different varieties and the smells of each, wildly different at times according to variety. Quite pleasant. And turnips, yellow turnips and swede turnips being quite different. Cabbages too, with different kinds. And marrow stem kale which our father grew for feeding lambs in Autumn. All had different aromas. <br /> Hay I have mentioned before, but still worth another sniff. Clover rich, curly doddies we called the flower heads, a wondrously sweet smell when new cut, indeed we still can use the phrase “as sweet as new cut hay”. How many today have ever enjoyed it, indeed we ourselves no longer keep the grass growing long enough to mature to that stage with seed heads. How can we get clover honey if we do not let the grass grow long enough? Flowering clover looked just right, red and white both, and bumble bees in their thousands as busy as only bees can be, a chorus of humming surrounding them and us. Thankfully today there is a trend to sow more clover-rich pastures with less fertilizer used so our honey may still be safe. <br /> <br />.scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-69273868001705214822009-11-13T15:21:00.000-08:002010-04-16T07:26:51.076-07:00No 27. Farmyard Aromas. pb 13.11.2009<br />A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br />NO 27. THE FLAVOUR OF FARMING.<br /><br />The very smells of farming long ago seem to have vanished, or at least changed. An odd subject perhaps but so many smells are now different. Sitting in a sound proof tractor cab with at best the smell of diesel even the workers are insulated from the smells of yesterday, some of them still around. They are missing a lot.<br /> We cannot pass the very first I remember, the days when the horsemen were carting dung from the farm-yard middens to either build into field middens to rot down further - now called composting - or to haul off the carts into small heaps in lines across the fields to eventually spread with graips and hard work. That is still the smell most people associate with farming. Many city-to-country dwellers do their best to stop the practice anywhere near their lovely retreats. And some win, particularly regarding pig and poultry slurry. Can’t really blame them either come to think on it. It was important then, and still is, to know from where the wind is blowing. <br /><br />The wind had much to do with savouring the smell of farmyard dung, now called organic fertilizer and very much in favour with the organic farming brigade. The smell would carry a long way, so you knew what your neighbour was doing. There were three different middens at Whitehall, the horse midden, the cattle middens, the pig midden, each with its own aroma, if I can use that word. And each with it’s very own delightful odour, quite impossible to convey in writing. The hen houses did not have a midden as such but still were cleaned out from time to time. Even in the farm house with doors and windows closed we knew which midden was being carted to the land, to add it’s organic flavour to the soil. <br /> The horse midden was, if I can use the word, sweeter, much straw incorporated into it as the horses were straw bedded every night. Some horses would not lie down unless well bedded, a very occasional one would not lie down in the stable stalls at all, sleeping all night standing. We had one at Whitehall but a good horse all the same and he did lie down out in the grass field when off duty. There was always a bit of loose grain in the stable midden so rats made it their first choice. On a frosty morning steam rose high, even if not being carted, always quite hot compared to the cattle middens. <br /> The cattle middens were sharper in smell, much less straw, much more of you know what! They were usually kept quite tidy and sometimes the men just spent a morning squaring off the heap, dressing the midden it was called. Possibly for the benefit of visitors so you got the reputation of keeping a tidy farm. Looked good anyway. Middens were carted out from the steading ones to be remade out in the fields to rot or to compost a bit more, but also to be handily ready for later in the farming year when turnips were being sown and work was pressing. They were even turned over with forks in the field and remade, using up a day when nothing much else was doing. Even a goodly way off from the farm steading the smell could still drift homewards if the wind was right. Did that at Isauld once on the Links Field and it did help the process of rotting down. Quite mad. <br /><br />The pig midden was also quite another smell, but thankfully it was much smaller. Not that that made much difference if the wind was wrong.<br /><br /> Then the hen-house, another smell altogether. Usually it was just shoveled off the hen house floor into a cart standing outside with a patient horse, but sometimes it was heaped outside the door to await a suitable time for removal. Not so large in quantity but still needing doing. Shell sand was usually put down in a thick layer on the new-cleaned floor, kept the hen droppings the sweeter as the lime content partly dissolved the ammonia in the droppings. While still clean the hens would eat some for themselves, scratching around, grit for their gizzards. There would be a heap of shell sand outside the hen house anyway. Free range then, now very fashionable but there was no other system. <br /><br />Dung was a very precious fertilizer, almost the only one available in bygone days other than the sea weed we had easy access to in Stronsay. And that sea weed could really smell too. Just park your car with the windows open on a good day in the lay-by just past Gills Ferry Terminal towards Groats and you will, if the wind is from the North and on-shore, get the drift, if that is the right word!! Well rotted, we called it “yiper”, which word also described the very wet sludgy dung out of the byre or midden.<br />Wrack (sea weed) off the beaches is still much in use in Jersey in the Channel Isles for their Jersey Royal early potatoes, the word lingering on from the old Vikings that took over Normandy, cousins of the Orkneymen. The word is still with us in Rackwick in Hoy and Rackwick in Westray. To keep their beaches clean in Jersey we saw on one visit tractors with trailers being filled with sea weed by Council loaders, free of charge if you wanted it, and also keeping the beaches sweet for visitors. Probably still doing it. <br /><br />In the fields we could get the smell of new ploughed earth, sharp. Nearer sowing time the drier smell of just harrowed ground. The smell of early morning air outside the back door when it was ready for sowing, a lift in the wind good enough to fill your lungs. That was often accompanied with the sea gulls flying by and saying “Get up, get up, it’s time to get the seed in the ground”. They knew. <br /><br /> Growing crops had their peculiar smells, changing as the seasons grew. When the ears of grain came out the smell changed, and a field of bere or barley and a field of oats had quite different aromas. Oats were sweeter. As the season wore on and the crop ripened even that smell changed, a blind man could tell you when the crop was ready for cutting.<br /> In the stackyard a stack of oats and a stack of bere had different scents, quite recognizable. Thrashed straw in the barn, again bere straw and oat straw were different. And a heating stack in the yard was often detected by the smell, sometimes pulling out a sheaf and confirming the ominous sweetish aroma of incipient heating. It had a noxious smell when threshed, but it had to be done.<br /><br /><br />So too potatoes growing in the field with many different varieties and the smells of each, wildly different at times according to variety. Quite pleasant. And turnips, yellow turnips and swede turnips being quite different. Cabbages too, with different kinds. And marrow stem kale which our father grew for feeding lambs in Autumn. All had different aromas. <br /> Hay I have mentioned before, but still worth another sniff. Clover rich, curly doddies we called the flower heads, a wondrously sweet smell when new cut, indeed we still can use the phrase “as sweet as new cut hay”. How many today have ever enjoyed it, indeed we ourselves no longer keep the grass growing long enough to mature to that stage with seed heads. How can we get clover honey if we do not let the grass grow long enough? Flowering clover looked just right, red and white both, and bumble bees in their thousands as busy as only bees can be, a chorus of humming surrounding them and us. Thankfully today there is a trend to sow more clover-rich pastures with less fertilizer used so our honey may still be safe. <br /> Inside the steading there were the smells of the byres and the stable, each quite different. In summer the cows came in from the grass to be milked and again a different smell, quite sharp, very distinctive. Dare I mention the sickly smell of calf scour, still with us but not feared so much as long time ago. <br /> Can I finish with saying the above is but a sample of the Flavour of Farming?<br /><br />.<br />scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214930727996184199.post-60849732183668424662009-10-30T06:46:00.001-07:002009-10-30T06:47:42.995-07:00No 58. Tackety Boots, pb 30.10.2009A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.<br /><br /><br />No 58. Tackety Boots.<br /><br /> It was in an article back in May 2008 that I touched on the subject of “Tackety Boots”. Well worth another look. Of all the articles of clothing worn by the men in my early days, Tackety Boots was the most worthy of mention. And the most important. Every day and all day the farm men walked at their work, be it in the field with the horses or in the buildings looking after their cattle or the shepherd walking his sheep. A well fitting pair of tackety boots was an absolute necessity, there was no room for “nearlies” about it. Worn they may be, have seen their best days as many a pair had, but functional as only an old friend can be.<br /> Every village had it’s shoemaker. In Castletown after we came to Caithness in 1944 it was John Gunn, in Stronsay it was, among others, Peter Lennie, but I do not know if Peter was a proper shoemaker as such, more of a very good man at repairs. A neat old man when I knew him, he was certainly a good carter for our father during the herring season and a carter in his own right for the whole Island. A warm house along the beach just west from Norton’s Pier, Maggie with the kettle always singing gently at the back of the fire, ready for an instant cup of tea. One of our father’s very regular stops.<br /><br /> I remember father getting a pair made for him by John Gunn after we came to Caithness. Took many days to make in between repairs of a more pressing nature for others. <br /><br />The niceties of boot making are not in my memory except now and again watching some aspect of the shoemakers art. It all looked so easy, but a well made and well fitted pair was an exquisite bit of work. Left foot and right foot could vary a bit, the shoemaker carefully measuring each foot for a new customer. In most cases he just remembered. <br />Made of the best usually imported horse hide, thick and tough. Take a piece of leather, cut the separate parts out to a pattern, a few iron sprigs and tacks, toe and heel plates and a length of strong linen waxed twine. To make a pair of boots out of that was a miracle in itself. Slightly thinner tanned leather for the uppers, thicker leather for the soles and heels. Metal eyes for the long leather strip laces to run through. A thin leather loop tab at the top of the heel to facilitate pulling them on in the morning!! Every shoemaker had his own idea of the pattern of hobnails to be kept on the soles, out of sight no doubt but often identifiable as his hallmark. A final polish in black. <br /><br />The boots today might well look odd, but do not believe your eyes. The curved soles, rising to the turned up toes. The uppers came well up the ankle giving good protection and support. The leather tongue was well sewn in, good enough to be watertight, quite important when walking through wet grass or puddles or pouring rain. Indeed the whole boot was watertight. They were definitely NOT town boots.<br /><br />Simple tools, sharp knife, patterns, a cobblers last of which he would have many sizes, an awl to drill the holes, a tap hammer, a strong needle to pass the thread, indeed two at a time sewing double, which is one thread each way. And that wonderful smell of new leather always around which today’s plastic cannot copy. . A pair would last for so long, looked after and treasured by the men. <br /> The new boots would be admired for a time, then the process of looking after them for many years ahead. A tin of waterproof dubbin, warm the boots at the fire and rub in a layer both on the uppers and the soles. Hard work too, especially on the seams. The long leather laces would be dubbined and run through the hand. Leave a few days to absorb the dubbin, then another coat. Sometimes a gentle warming with a blow lamp turned well down, a near singeing perhaps, just enough to warm the leather. Helped the dubbin to soak in. Sometimes warm a spoon at the fire, handle held in a bit of rag, and smooth the back of the spoon on the leather for a final polish. An Army trick too. The new boots would be put on by the worker for the evening, going nowhere but getting them gently broken in, getting to know each other. Sometimes a gentle joke or two about wearing them in bed. Maybe they did !!! <br /><br /> Most if not every house had a shoe-last in the shed, taken into the kitchen in front of the fire to work on a pair of boots. I can never forget seeing Sincy Shearer our Whitehall foreman with the shoe last stood on the floor and supported between his knees, a tackety boot on it, his specks on his nose, a few hobnails or tacks kept handily ready between his lips, the tap tap as he hammered them home. Why the name “hobnails” I do not know, it must go back in history a long time. Clover leaf head and just so long that they did not penetrate the soles. Spare heel and toe plates as well. <br /><br /> Keeping Tackety Boots healthy was an every day task. Running repairs normally were to check on the toe and heel plates to see if they were firmly nailed on, any loose or missing nails being instantly replaced from the precious tack tin. A lost toe or heel plate had to be replaced right away, or a worn one as soon as possible.<br />The clover leaf headed tacks or hob nails set in their regulation pattern along the soles and heels of the boots were likeways taken care of. The boots really walked on iron, the men walking behind the horses shod also with their own iron horseshoes. When one thinks on it, leather however good could not stand up to the constant walking of farm work. Hence tackety boots. <br /> Consider that the horsemen walked mile after long mile every day all year round following their horses. To plough an acre was a good days work with a pair of horses and a 7 inch wide furrow plough. That meant 15 miles of walking for one acre. Allow for going out to the field and home again twice in the day, going round the ends between bouts, and you are pretty near to twenty miles, Wick to Thurso in a straight line. EVERY DAY SAVE SUNDAY. All on tackety boots. <br /><br /> Holding the stilts of the plough and keeping the line of a straight furrow, looking after your horses though a well trained pair were pretty good themselves at keeping the furrow, and you will recognise why there were very few over-weight ploughmen in old photographs. I remember none at all.<br />Or the shepherd herding his sheep, the cattleman walking up and down the byres. No farm work was done sitting on ones **** as now we do. Boots were the foundation of their day. Tackety boots.<br /><br /> Looking after boots, new or old, was very important. Last thing at night after work was to clean them, wash if need be at the tap or sink or pond using a wisp of straw or a bit of an old sack, dry well at the fire but not too near. On a fine evening set them out on the window ledge or at the back door to dry. I remember one tragedy when a pair were set just too close to the fire, did not do the leather much good. Then a rub with dubbin, especially into the sewn seams. Black boot polish was sometimes used for that final shine. Dubbin was a khaki coloured wax like thick vaseline but could be bought black dyed already.<br /> Tackety boots were every day and all day wear for farm work. Normally the men would have a good pair of lighter boots for Sunday and social events. The tackety boots may have looked odd with their upward curved toes but don’t you believe they were clumsy. Stronsay went to neighbouring Sanday for a football match, the complement (COMPLIMENT ) returned in due course. Tackety Boots did the job just as well as the super brands you see over-advertised today. Trousers tucked into socks, shirt sleeves rolled up, trousers held in place by suspender braces and an Army Surplus belt from the Army and Navy Stores. The men were as good as you could get, some very pretty players indeed. Sanday usually won.<br /><br /><br /> Long years later after I went to Lower Dounreay and looking at old records, I found that the farms of Lower Dounreay and Upper Dounreay had enough men on each farm pre First World War to each form a team, perhaps not eleven men but enough. They played one farm against the other, needle matches. Tackety boots at their best no doubt!!scorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14332788959133475124noreply@blogger.com0