Pigs again, feeding ones.

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.

Pigs on our farms Long Time Ago was not just getting them born. After confinement in the farrowing shed for a few days they went with their mother to a larger pen in another building, following in a small herd at her heels with motherly grunts to call them along. Pretty good at following, too. even out in a field. One of the miracles we watched was how even two or three sows together with their litters in the Front Park had their own little following with no mix-ups. Nature is wonderful. Plenty room for little piglets to carry on, which they did. The field had a simple lean-to shed for shelter.
The sows loved nosing into the soil, what they picked up I do not know, but it must have been organic I suppose. They were also in season allowed onto the potato patch after tattie lifting, great scavengers after the odd potato missed, or the small ones not lifted. Waste not indeed.

The little ones stayed with their mothers till six weeks old and then weaning time. Seems a short time with mother against the weaning times of calves at six months and lambs at four months, but that was the practice. Today it is even less time suckling but we have more concentrated specialised feeds available to take the little pigs off their mother. They had feed available in a creep away from mother anyway so were already used to eating from a trough, skimmed milk from separating milk for cream for butter making was usually available from the dairy, a most useful feed for very young pigs. A bit slurpy but they needed no telling. Or whey from cheese making.

Earlier weaning means the sow back again to the boar and speeds up the breeding cycle, though not by all that much. Still, the pig business now is so competitive that every effort to keep afloat is taken. Not always successful.
In summer we had various byres and odd corners available with the cattle outdoors. Into one or other of these nooks and crannies father would fit a sow with her litter. Odd boxes were made use of for feeding troughs, easily moved out when need arose for cattle coming in at Autumn-time. We did not have all that many sows and I cannot remember just how many sows were on Whitehall, but not more than ten, probably less. They were an extra to our normal farming with cattle and sheep.

Pigs were fattened to much greater weights than today, a ten score carcase being sought if not more, ten score being 200 lbs or 90 kilos. The phrase “a good fat pig” lingers on, today anathema to the dietary fanatics. Probably rightly so with so much less exercise being taken or hard physical work being done.

There was, however, the momentous wartime adventure when the Swedish vessel Borkum was sunk, or rather beached on Westray. While being escorted into Kirkwall by a Royal Navy vessel for search as a possible blockade runner during the War, the Borkum struck a mine rather than being struck by a torpedo, though who knows exactly which. The wheat laden ship made it to beaching. The wheat was deemed unusable for human use, some of it was scorched from a small fire on board and salvaging it for human use was deemed impossible. But the wheat was made available for farmers in Orkney to feed livestock, especially pigs.
Father converted a byre at his other farm of Airy to feed a large number of pigs. Jeemie Moad did the work, nothing permanent but using all kinds of scrap and bits of wood unearthed from here and there to make usable pens. Where he got all the young pigs from I do not know, certainly he imported many through Kirkwall Auction Mart and from John T. Flett, doyen of Orkney cattle dealers, as well as buying up any piglets available on the Island.
The grain was filled into stout 2 cwt hessian bags in the holds of the Borkum by men with shovels, very dusty work, hoisted out and lowered into small boats alongside and taken to the pier of Westray. Then by the Earl Thorfinn to land on Stronsay Peir, taken the four miles to Airy by horse and cart. Today it is illegal to work with such weights. But that was when men were men, and women were proud of them, and so on !!! Apart from the Strongest Man Competitions, or at Halkirk Highland Games, you will never again see a man hoist such a weight single handed onto a cart with it’s patient horse waiting. No sweat either!!.
The bags then had to be carried on a man’s shoulders up the stone outside stairs into the loft for bruising with the six inch bruiser fed laboriously with a square wooden box scoop about a bushel in size. Held about 56 lbs (25 kilos) of wheat per scoop if well filled. Wheat was heavier than either oats or bere, our Stronsay barley. Technically oats weighed in at standard quality 42 lbs per bushel, barley 56 lbs, wheat 60 lbs, but in practice these standards were rarely attained save on an exceptionally good harvest with copious sunshine. Usually grain was quite a bit below with variant quality, some farms seriously below. Once in my own early days at Lower Dounreay I sent a load of feeding oats, so called, back to the Sutherland farm it had come from as it was so low a bushel weight a good sneeze would blow it away.
A good measure then was to see how much of the standard grain sack filled with oats to weigh 1.5 cwts would be left to tie in the neck. Plenty left to tie, good bushel weight, grasping to get enough to tie indicated rubbishy grain. In the days when most farms were let to tenants it was normal to see the advertisement state the average bushel weight that particular farm expected. No claim if not achieved but still a good honest guide to incoming offerers. In the USA they still talk of bushels per acre but all grain now is in bulk so it is an out-dated measure. There is a bushel measure in Mary Ann’s Cottage in Dunnet, round and with the Imperial Crown Mark stamped on it denoting it is a true measure.
In Whitehall and again in my earlier days at Greenland Mains, we measured grain with the old official bushel measure, filling it with a grain scoop, rolling the excess off with a round wooden roller, Crazy looking back, but there was no other a way if it was to be sold by the bushel. Usually sold by weight.
Bruising the Borkum wheat was slow and backbreaking work, with the quantity for that once only venture it was a daily task save on Sundays. The old Campbell oil engine thumped away downstairs driving the bruiser with a six inch wide endless belt up through the floor. The belt for the threshing mill was eight inches wide but it was a heavier task, the six inch one saved it from wear on the lighter task of driving the bruiser.
So the wheat was converted into pigmeat for the good of a Wartime hungry population, the pigs shipped on the Thorfinn in to Kirkwall for slaughter by Hornes and converted into bacon. Or sold fresh to the Navy. There was a ready market for the pigs in the thousands of Armed Forces stationed in Orkney so some good came out of the sinking of the Borkum.
It is a great pity that the bacon we today have to eat is not cured in the old manner, no water and salt and preservatives injected into it, no sale by date to indicate that it has a short shelf life and wont keep very long. One supply of bacon I know of was killed on 26th June, arrived in a Thurso butcher’s shop on the 30th June, and had a sell-by date of 7th July. Horne would have turned in his grave if he knew. Perhaps he does.