No 38. ALL HANDS. pb 26.11.2010

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 38. ALL HANDS.

I have a double role at present as I find myself swinging between the Transcription of the Diaries of Wm Tait from 1880 to 1941 and my own “Rain on my Window” boyhood memories. Mine were mostly those of a small boy growing up just pre 1939 war. I write of many things but cannot quantify them from my own memory. . So carting ware – seaweed - from the Beach to use as fertiliser on the land I knew about, but just how much ware and just how many days per year the men worked at it I did not. Wm Tait’s Diaries opened Pandoras’s Box of just how much time and effort went into the farm work of 100 years ago.

It will take more than a little time to digest these Diaries which are now mostly available in printed form in Castlehill Heritage Centre, though final editing still has some time to go. I cannot help but refer to some aspect or other as I work through them, crossing as they do into my own early times. It is if the ghosts of the past have come alive as I read of this or that person whom I knew, or heard tell off, including my own grand father and my father, many others.


So very many things in the Diaries, but suffice today 26th Nov. 2010 [ ???] to mention the incredible number of people on yesterday’s farms. At the Bu of Rousam in 1996 in my grandfather’s day I will let the Diary of Wm Tait speak for itself.


SEPT 1896 At the Bu of Rousam, Stronsay. With David Pottinger, tenant. (brother –in-law.)
Sept 24 thur Cutting in Brecks all day, 6 scythes - showery day – 10½ hours.
Sept 25 frid Very rainey day – making simmins all day - evening dry
Sept 26 sat Cutting oats in Brecks & Myers - 6 scythes 19 hands - evening showery - 10 hours
Sept 27 sun Blank (Church Service )
Sept 28 mon Finished Myers, 6 scythes, 18 hands.
Sept 29 tues 6 scythes opening out Furrowend Field - 2 machines (horse drawn reapers) 2 yokes in Cutkelday field, - cut a bit in Doonatoon in evening.
Sept 30 wed 2 machines in Hagar field all day - fine day - 10 hours
Octr 01 thur 2 machines in Hagar field, finished 4 o'clock – - cut evening in Doonatoon – fine day – 10½ hours
And to finish with
Octr 27 tues Carting from Geogar. Finished leading today - 43 stacks - 3½ stacks thrashed
Octr 28 wed Finished potatoes today - thatching stacks - evening rainy - making simmins, dressing oats
Octr 29 thur Finished harvest today - 6 weeks - fine day, hands all intertained to tea & paid


So not one more day’s pay than need be.
Harvest hands at the Bu’. all 19 of them. Some were regular farm hands, most were taken on for the harvest. Some were local, some from elsewhere. Many of the men’s wives put in some hours, their time listed in the Wages Book of the Bu’ which we still have.
“ All hands aloft” was the old sea-faring call, often of desperation in a rising gale as sails threatened to blow to bits. Or actually did. We are not that far from the sailing ship era, and even at Lower Dounreay after we went there in Nov.1953 we saw a fair number of white-sailed four-masters pass along the Horizon, as beautiful as a passing cloud on a sunny day. But the Hands I write about were at the Bu.
Extra Hands came from many places, some outwith Stronsay, there to take up a harvest as casuals. Locals were available with the herring fishing moving on South to Wick, a tiny fishing Village in Caithness!!!. Women helped to take up many a harvest, well depicted in old paintings. A young child would get a little pay, maybe twisting the straw bands for the lifters or gathering forward the loose newly scythed stalks ready for tying into a sheaf. Such work is totally banned today but I do not think it did any of them any harm to get stuck in early to the Real World.
At The Bu’ of Rousam the Dairy tells of 6 scythes,19 hands. A team was one man with a scythe, two lifters gathering behind him and hand tying the sheaves with a quickly twisted band of straw. A heavy crop sometimes demanded just get the cut crop tied, leave the stooking till another day. It was mighty hard work, bent double all day, not many even of the fittest among us could do it now unless a sheep shearer!! .
A hard man would cut one acre a day, the steady sweep and sibilant hiss of the scythe laying the crop to his left to be then gathered. He cut from right to left in about six feet widths or bouts, maybe a little less. His feet shuffled forward with each steady stroke. They could and did go on all day, their only break being a minute now and again to stretch the back and sweep the long round scythe stone with easy practiced alternate strokes along the scythe blade to keep the edge. The stone was carried either in his hip pocket or more usually in the ruler pocket down the right leg of his dungaree overalls. I can close my eyes and still hear that thin grating sound, never to be forgotten. Do not let your edge go, a blunt scythe took a lot of getting sharp again.
Folk lore has it that the Gaelic speaking Highlanders came into Caithness from the West, Strathnaver in particular. They traditionally started at Sandside, sleeping on straw in the barn or on a bed of empty sacks in the loft, fed at the Big House. Perhaps in a Bothy if one was available.
On to Isauld, then Lower and Upper Dounreay, and so on across the County till they finished the harvest in the later area around Wick and the East of the County. Took about a month to get there. Reay was noted as being that much earlier a harvest, it generally still is!!
Or with the herring fishing finished by harvest time people were available.
The numbers of “Hands” appears frequently in the Diaries, not just at harvest time but for other farm tasks. The number of “Hoes” was often mentioned when singling turnips, extra hands much needed to get the work done before weeds swamped the young plants.
And singling turnips was the most entertaining, 19 hoes in a long line with much humour and banter for a tedious task.