No 15. Stackyard again

RAIN ON MY WINDOW. Morris Pottinger
No 15. THE STACKYARD AGAIN.

Though I wrote “The Stackyard was the very hub of the farm” before, yet I felt I did not do it all the justice it deserved. It was very high on our childhood list of places to go and play. It reflected many other things of the farm. It reflected the different kinds of crops we grew, oats and bere to be sure but also the lea oats and the cleanland. The old well tested pattern of farming was the seven year shift, developed by our forebears in the early days of Agricultural Improvement. This entailed lea oats, next year turnips followed by cleanland or turnip land oats, two names for the same crop. This was undersown with grass seeds and four years of grass followed, the first year being cut for hay. Then start all over again with lea oats. This was reflected in the stackyard by the sheaves of lea oats being much larger, giving a wider stack with the three sheaf rings. The butt ends of these sheaves were rougher giving a coarser look to the lea stacks. The cleanland oats were much neater and shorter, usually with grass in the bottoms from the growing grass seeds, and gave a better and more pleasing looking though narrower stack, Father did not grow very much bere but there was always some, again the stack had a different appearance, the bere straw shinier, glossy, the sheaves usually short and dumpy, making them slippier to build into a stack. My first attempt to build one of bere ended in disaster, it fell!! But that was much later in 1947 at Greenland Mains.
We were always interested in which stack was to be taken in for threshing. The run of the mill were the lea oat stacks, the greater part of the harvest in quantity, rougher straw through the winter months. The cleanland oats were kept till near spring as they provided the seed oats for the next year. When father got some new seed oats onto the farm it was always sown in cleanland, less chance of lodging (going flat), sweeter grain, a more regular crop. These stacks were always built on the raised steathes to keep vermin out. When threshed there was a treasured by-product, clean thistle-free chaff. For the Big House and the farm men as well this was the day for filling the chaff mattresses for your bed for another year. Mattresses off the beds in the morning, open the stitched ends, outdoors of course, wash the mattress covers, dry on the line in the morning, then to the end of the mill and fill with the sweet new chaff to bursting point. Restitch and carry carefully into the house and onto the beds. There we had an adventure. To keep the new-filled mattresses in their best shape for another year it was essential that the chaff be evenly distributed. This we achieved by climbing carefully in over the end of the bed and plumping ourselves in the very centre. Then gently move outwards in every direction until the chaff had settled evenly and there were no lumpy bits. A chaff bed was amazingly comfortable and warm, and, as we settled down to sleep the first nights after filling, an added bonus was the sweet smell of new threshed chaff.
Threshing bere was another adventure. First the back of the drum was packed with straw to give a better rasping of the beater bars of the drum, keeping the grain within the drum a bit farther to achieve a better rubbing effect. Then the hummlers were opened for the bere, the hummler drive belt put on. With its high pitched humming they further removed the bere awns which were the besetting plague of bere or barley. These awns when we were stooking got up your sleeve, went one way only and at times to remove these very itchy pests one had to literally take off ones shirt. That applied also to threshing bere and the bere awns flying and one needed a good neckerchief to keep them out of your inner self. A bit of rough farm mischief was to drop a head of bere down an unsuspecting victim’s shirt; there was no way of extracting it other than taking one’s shirt off. Amused the onlookers, very definitely not the victim.
Among other stackyard adventures we indulged in was to climb a stack. If father saw us we were for it as foot marks on the stack could leave an impression which gathered rain water and led to spoiling of the crop at that spot. Climbing stacks I guess had it’s dangerous aspects too but we did not think of that. Used to have races as to who was first up a stack. Then hide and seek in the stackyard. If you were seen you were “done” so the game was to listen for the fox’s feet around the stack and slip away on the other side to get back to the ”den”. A nice sheltered spot for kids on a rough day.
A clear area in the stackyard near the steading was an arena for the farm men, a place to play a kind of football with tackety boots, a place to practice putting the shot, set out a long jump. We had a bow and arrow made for us by ould Pat Shearer and we set up a target in the stackyard. There was the memorable occasion when we made a bonfire in the stackyard with some bits and pieces and some straw. I will not tell you who lit the match!! Father found us, we never did it again.
The stackyard had another use. At two corners of the yard there were two stone built hen houses. The hens were free range, shut in at night, great gleaners of a steathe after the stack had been threshed, carnivores with the mice we had dispatched. Some flew up the stacks to get a bite, or found a nest site high up and laid their eggs We had to scan the stacks and tell our father so he could remove the eggs and try to dissuade the hen from trying that trick again. Not too easy. In summer the hens would nest among the nettles or other weeds and again we had to find them if we could. Not always successful, as we would find when a hen emerged triumphant from the nettles with a dozen tiny chicks at her heel. She was entitled to a wee smile. A hen with her chicks was a beautiful sight to see and watch, fussing and clucking and gathering them to her, settling them under her wings, chasing our old sheep dog out of sight. Wonderful spirit. Mostly Rhode Island Reds, White Wyandottes seemed more hen-house bound.
Then the birds of the stackyard. Sparrows in profusion, where has the multitude gone. Hundreds of them. Clustering the steathes after threshing, covering the leeside of a stack on a windy day, nesting in all the walls where we searched for their nests, frequently given away by a few hen feathers showing in a small hole in the wall. When we found a nest we would watch till the young hatched, see them grow and then to fly. Blackbirds nested, some thrushes. Starlings were always around. Blue pigeons of the rock variety clad the stacks, flew down to an old empty manse nearby to nest and roost, nested in the eaves of the straw barn. At Isauld we had blue clouds in the stackyard from the Cliffs of Sandside, today very few indeed are left, they are now protected.
Mallard duck came in from the sea below us, parked on the stacks or steathes, flew off at the slightest disturbance. Muscovy Ducks made the stackyard their home, domesticated but good fliers. Herring gulls came in after a threshing day. And the incessant mice and rats, cutting tracks up the side of a stack, leaving chewed bits of mealy kernel or bits of straw to be seen on the outside, keeping the cats happy.
But our pride and joy was an owl that stayed for with us many years, silent in flight, studied stare, usually perched in the rafters of the straw barn.
The life of the old stackyards, like so much else, has now gone far away.