No 27. Farmyard Aromas. pb 13.11.2009

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.


NO 27. THE FLAVOUR OF FARMING.

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.
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.

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.
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.
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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.
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.


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.
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.
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.
Can I finish with saying the above is but a sample of the Flavour of Farming?

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