No 11. The Stackyard pub 22.02.08

RAIN  ON  MY  WINDOW, TEARS  IN  MY  EYES.  Morris Pottinger
No 11. THE STACKYARD.

The Stackyard was the very hub of the farm, open to the gaze of everybody, friend and foe alike. There was no place to hide mistakes. After harvest it mirrored how good a crop you had gathered, or had not. The number of stacks was compared by passers by to last year, their size, the building thereof, whether your stacks were over-run by rats and mice, or growing green if badly built, or showing signs of heated corn. Came the Spring and comments that your stackyard was looking pretty empty, could it hold out till the grass came in Spring for the cattle. Conversely of course it might be quite full with spare stacks for all to see, a reflection of a good harvest last autumn and no pressure to get the beasts out too soon onto bare grass fields. A full stackyard was a matter of warm justifiable inner pride, the farm rose or fell by it’s appearance, the reputation of the farmer likewise. It was also there for visitors. After a good feed at your dinner table you could ask your men guests if they would like a look around the stackyard. A bit of showing off naturally, forgiveable between friends, utterly reprehensible otherwise. I am sure I have done my share of it, and I remember doing just that at Isauld in 1958 with my late father- his last year - justifiably proud of the stackbuilding prowess of two good men Jamie Wares and Geordie Allan. Sixty stacks that year at two per week for 30 weeks, a very satisfying start to the winter. I think my father was as proud as myself.. Said so anyway.

There you would be told how good your builders were, the stacks would be measured by pulling out a small handfull of straw as a marker and then your guest would girth the stack around till he came back to his marker, finger tip to finger tip of the outstretched arms making a fathom of six feet. A six fathom stack was 12 feet in diameter, a common Caithness width, seven fathom was 14 feet, an Orkney stack, wider in the base but lower to the intakes where the stack began to slope inwards. These bottom heavy Orkney stacks took the gales the better. From that measurement a valuer would calculate how much grain the stack held, much needed at term time of 28th November when farms changed hands and the crop yield was estimated by a man of skill, to be paid for by the incoming farmer. The other method of so doing was to have a man appointed who attended every threshing day and weighed the grain on behalf of the outgoing farmer, be it tenant or owner. At Whitehall when we left in Nov.1944 Jamie Moad, a former employee, did that for our father through the ensuing winter.

Stack building was a fine art and a good stackbuilder a man of note. In the stackyard one cart to a stack, one man on the cart pitching to another building. Begin with a 14 foot wide circular steddle, or steathe as we called it in Orkney. Some of the steathes were of flagstones on top of pillars of stone with a flagstone covering over each pillar, this to stop rats or mice from climbing into the stack. Worked well. Other steathes were of stones laid out on the ground and at times a very tidy farmer would have the stones stacked in a small cairn in the midst ot the steathe in the summer, to be laid out again at harvest, as we did at Whitehall.. Looked tidy and kept the weeds from taking over, and each year at harvest the stones were relaid. Some stackyards had an iron steathe, very posh and stylish and expensive but only on bigger farms. These raised steathes, iron or stone, were usually round the outside of the stackyard with inner stacks being built on ground level, looked impressive to passers by, but had a functional use in that they were the last stacks to be threshed out in Spring and kept infestation by varmints away from what was often your seed oats for next year.
Begin the stack with a sheaf in the centre, then clockwise round and round we go until there were three rings of sheaves, always keeping the centre high so the outer rings settled with a downward slope which kept rain out, a natural thatching.. Caithness men usually built on their knees with sacking pads, otherwise their dungarees would rapidly be holed. In Orkney we built standing up laying the outer ring of sheaves without standing on it, giving a better slope than Caithness when the stack settled, who built on their knees to the edge. I myself did just that in due course, taught by my father when I built stacks at Greenland Mains. This concentric building went upwards until at a certain height the intakes were begun – in Caithness about 12 ft high on a 12 ft steddle, in Orkney much lower though wider, shaped like an egg sitting on it’s top. This tapered the stack narrower and narrower until the final sheaf was split over the top and a stacknet called for, spread round the stack and fastened down in a variety of ways such as putting a heavy stone or other weight into a loop of net or partly pulling out a handful of straw and tying the net thereto. If the latter method then as the stack settled the net had to be further tightened down on a daily basis until it had finally settled.

Even then not finished by a long chalk. Stacks were very mobile, settling at their own speed, sometimes slewing off to one side or the other, or would have if the watchful eye of the builder did not see what was coming and shoved a wooden prop or two or three into one side or the other. Could be about a week at least of that, sometimes more, before the poles could be taken away when the stack had settled into it’s winter’s shape. It was an evening chore for the builders, going back to the stackyard and adjusting the props as need be, more or less, push one further in, ease one slightly away.
. Then there were hot stacks. Even if the sheaves looked dry enough at carting there were days of quiet muggy weather which meant a really watchful eye on the stacks to discern the very first signs of heating. Sometimes one’s nose would tell you that a stack was suspect, walking to the lee side and sniffing the air when the sickly aroma of heating corn caught the breath. Other times put one’s arm as far into the stack as possible and at full reach find the warmth, or pull out a sheaf and feel the heat. At other times the stack would slew one-sided, the head nodding to the North usually, a dead give-away that heating had begun. At its very worst a stack would be taken down and entirely rebuilt, ferociously time consuming, steam rising to tell your neighbours you had a hot stack, reinforcing that they had said that had been a bad day for the leading, but you would not listen. Other ways of dealing with it was to put a prop or two into the side of the stack and pull out some sheaves, letting air into the stack through the resultant hole. Worked sometimes, but we knew that come threshing day for that stack there would be a problem, of which I will write more later in “Threshing day.”.
Finally on stacks, at Lower Dounreay we had a stackyard sitting on top of a sand dune exposed to all the winds off the sea, standing high above the steading. Every breeze from any direction caught it, the stacks dancing to the breeze, and we never had a hot stack. They literally breathed. It was one of the best stackyards in Caithness.