No 17. Making the Hay pb 01.08.08

"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."

. RAIN ON MY WINDOW.
Morris Pottinger
No 17. Making the Hay pb 01.08.08

In summer when I was a boy the sun always shone, or is memory so fickle. Anyway tradition says that is when we make hay. The first year grass was kept as the hay field, set aside early in spring or maybe never grazed at all. The crop grew hugely with masses of Montgomery Red clover and lots of white clover. Fertiliser on grass was never used in those days, organic I guess. Compared to today it was left to grow stemmy and mature, the rich and heady smell of sweet clover, the drift of pollen on the breeze, terns hovering and swallows swooping to catch the insect life there in abundance. Especially in the evenings corncrakes were calling from every part of the field. Migratory they are, but they do not come back to any particular field so today’s philosophy of setting a special field aside in long term grass for the corncrake is misplaced. Farm rotations then saw to it that there was always a field on the farm with a hay crop growing, any field, and there the corncrakes would find their summer home. No doubt at all they returned to the same farm, it is the changing pattern of farming that has played havoc with corncrakes. Don’t get me wrong, fields permanently set aside in grass to be cut late is most helpful to corncrakes and this is encouraged by monetary grants to that effect. It is not good agriculture but it is environmentally friendly.
In my boyhood days the hay grew as a matter of course, not thinking of the corncrake especially, but the more mature grass suited the corncrakes as they could lay their eggs and hatch their brood in safety well before hay cutting.
In July the horse and mower, or reaper as we called it, went into the field, slower than today’s whizzers but steady, and the field was cut. There was a part for us boys to play in chasing corncrakes out of the narrowing uncut bout as the reaper closed in, but keep well clear of the machine. Adult corncrakes were not so much at risk as they would usually explode upwards when cutting was too close, but young birds were in severe peril and many were caught by the reaper. We did our best, and the young half grown corncrakes we chased out of the uncut bout vanished safely and rapidly under the cut hayswath. The smell of new mown hay was wonderful; odd that today it is not there, just the damp smell of green lush over-fertilised grass.
The hay was left to dry for several days with perhaps a turning or two which was done manually by hard work and a pitchfork, a line of men across the field. Not till we came to Greenland Mains did we see a hay turner working, and it was horse drawn. Came the day father said the hay was fit for coleing and the horse rake with man aboard began to rake the hay together. The rake gathered until it was full, then the horseman pushed down a foot pedal which tripped a gadgy which raised the rake momentarily, allowing its gathering to stay behind, then returning to the raking position. This went continuously on across the field and the lined rows of raked hay grew.
In Whitehall we made small coles of hay without simmans to hold them down. Two men with pitchforks to a team, carry hay on and back along the row until enough for a hay-cole, heap it up, trim it down, shape it just so, beat a sort of thatch to run off any rain. The day progressed and the hay was coled. To aid the gathering of the rows of loose hay we had a “Tumbling Tam” pulled by one horse. When full the horseman tipped up the wooden handles and the whole assembly turned end over end leaving the gathered hay ready for coling, hence the name. Father did not use it much, thought it too slow, good men could work as fast. At Greenland Mains we had a hay sweep of long wooden poles with iron capped ends which was attached to the front axle of the tractor. When full just reverse leaving the gathered hay to slip off onto the ground. Worked best without initial raking or turning and gathered enough for a large cole.
Father held the smaller coles dried out better than the larger Caithness ones. These small coles were gathered beside the field gate by dragging them over the ground using a horse with a looped chain around the cole, then re-building them into large tramp coles. This turn over helped to dry the hay by giving it a loosening up. These tramp coles - tramp because a man built them standing on top - were left for quite a time to further cure the hay and were held down by simmans made of the hay criss-crossing the large cole. Perhaps as late as August but before corn harvest these tramp coles were built into very large hay stacks. Father had what we called lorries, low flat-decked non-tipping, four wheeled, horse drawn, lower to pitch-fork onto, and much used for town deliveries in living memory. Also used by father for carting barrels etc at herring fishing time. They took a load twice that of a cart and were steadier on the farm roads. An alternative method of gathering in the large coles used by some was a large wooden sledge with a small ratchet winch at the front and a chain which went round the cole, winch it on and head for the side of the field, or even go home with it. The sledge runners were iron shod and lasted a long time, easily replaced when needed by the local blacksmith.
There were times when the hay was not as good as one could wish so a layer of salt between every layer as the stack was built kept the hay the better, and the cattle loved it. Some farmers used salt anyway as a general practice and some added a sprinkling of molasses as well. Tasty, or so the cows said.
The round hay stacks were large, held down by oversized nets of about nine inch square mesh, made in the farm loft with bought in hempen cord, the trailing ends held down with weights, long flat stones or short lengths of timber or scrap iron. The hay was used throughout the winter, not thrashed in a day as were the corn stacks. It was surprising how hard it could settle, very firm indeed. At times a single long hay gilt was made, used in winter by cutting a section with a sharp hay knife to be carted in. All too often the curse of old-time farming appeared - a heated stack, mouldy, dusty, ready made for farmer’s lung. Not nice at all, but easier to live with than thrashing a heated corn stack. But these were the times.
The hay field after cutting grew well with what father called foggage, abundant clover, rich and wonderful feeding for his Oxford cross lambs after weaning. He used to sow an adjacent field with marrow-stem kale so the lambs could go from field to field as appetite dictated, kept them well into the Autumn, shipped them in November to Aberdeen as pretty heavy lambs, sometimes topped the market. The corncrakes soon re-established themselves in the hay aftermath, and yelled their rasping and raucus delight to us in the evenings. I guess I miss them.