Ni 77. Lighting in the Steading.

No 77. LIGHTING IN THE STEADING.

As the dark days of Mid-winter close around us, and I see lights from horizon to horizon, I think of my early days and the wee glimmers that saw us through a winter to next summer. You might see a light in a far off cottage window, or a dancing light as someone carrying a lantern crossed to the steading. We did not think on lighting in the steading, we knew no other than the square paraffin oil lantern and the occasional Tilley lantern possessed by many if not most of the farmers. There were also a number of other makes of Hurricane Lanterns, I cannot recall the makers.
The dwelling houses of course had good lamps, some very ornate indeed, at least good enough to read by. Single wicks and double wicks in some fancier ones. Green or clear glass oil bowls which let you see the oil level, clear glass chimneys in many forms from totally utilitarian to very ornate indeed. Glass bowl chimneys on some. Fancy shades on some, but the one at the top of the stairs sitting in a recess outside our bedroom door was quite simple, basic you could say. On his way to bed our father blew that one out. No more reading in bed through a chink in the door jamb with the book held sideways to catch the light. These are now collectors pieces.
We did not have a Tilley lamp but they did give good light. The steading ones were a bit heavy on fragile gauze mantles which did not stand too much banging around, but they were good stationary lights. There was a house version on a high stand for sitting rooms and one for setting on a table or sideboard, and of course the outdoor version capable of withstanding the fiercest storm. Most of the men had them, but I think our mother could not stand the everlasting hissing of the Tilley, soft though it was. She preferred Aladdin Mantle Lamps which gave a kindly and very good soft reading light, though capable of sooting up and actually going on fire. Could leave a room needing repapering, at least once to my recollection!!. Or was it a good excuse for some new wallpaper !!
The ubiquitous square red paraffin-oil lanterns would give a slender warm glow where-ever they were in the steading, but their range was limited. Every building had at least one, normally a lot more, hung on high from small pulleys with metal wheels or just a polished groove in a wooden pulley block through which a thin cord ran to raise or lower the lantern, tied securely to a small bracket high on the wall. These pulleys would be as high as possible to give the maximum spread of light, suspended either from the cross beams of the rafters or the couple legs themselves, high enough to be well out of risk of accidental damage. In the byres they were positioned more at the back wall out of the way of pitchforkfulls of straw or hay being thrown into the cattle hecks or racks over their heads.
The feeders byre, with the milking cows in their stalls at the end next the house and the dairy, our first stop on many a morning, had one next the connecting door into the adjacent turnip shed and four spaced along the byre. Most buildings had several along their entire length. A box of matches was obligatory. The thrashing mill had one just above the feeder at the drum to better let him see what he was doing, though his instincts were sharp. They needed to be. I knew one man, Bob Lennie of Nearhouse, who had a hand taken off at the age of 19. Years later his remaining hand was like a vice if you were stupid enough to shake it.
These lanterns were serviced in a wee shed well away from the rest of the buildings, part of the free standing cart sheds. Health and Safety would approve I think. Soft clean cloths to clean and shine the lamp chimneys and the glass sides and a can of paraffin lamp oil and a filler to refill the bowls. The paraffin was usually got from one of the Vans. There were always a few spare lanterns with newly trimmed wicks and ready filled, the total number on the farm must have been great. I think one of the house girls looked after them, neater and tidier than most of the men anyway!!!
In use the lamps had to be watched, a wick could get over exited and the lamp go up in smokey flame. Wicks needed fairly frequent trimming too, had to be level to give good light. .
The Annual Ploughing Match of Vintage Tractors with Andrew Mackay at West Greenland when the old timers get going, both men and machines in some cases, brings back to me the warm evocative smell of paraffin oil, not unlike that of the lanterns. The soft whisper of the old petrol / paraffin tractors is worth listening to in the field as a change from the hammering diesel of modern tractors. The starting handle sticking out the front is an added punctuation mark reminder of Times Gone By.
In Stronsay there were knackey men who fitted a small wind generator to their house gable end and had electric light from a bank of Sulphuric Acid batteries. I think Stroma was much in that category too.
Time moved on, and at Greenland Mains in the Spring of 1951 we finally got a Lister Electric Instamatic Generator. Farm House only. It started automatically when a light was switched on, stopped when the last light was switched off Installed by Aulds of Halkirk, who also wired the House. If any of us came home late, tiptoe in and DO NOT switch on a light. After the Hydro Board installed Mains power about 1953 that Lister Instamatic finally found its way to Stronsay, who got it I cannot recall. I think one is still working in Rackwick in Hoy where they have no Main Line electricity. We were at Rackwick last summer and I heard the old familiar Lister song from one of the nearby houses.
At Lower Dounreay we had a lighting plant with a really sweet diesel engine, put in pre War by the late Jack Davidson, running quietly for an hour or so a day to charge a range of large glass acid batteries to give us 110 volts for lights in the House, though no power points. No supply to the steading where we had what I grew up with, the ubiquitous paraffin lantern. Filled in the oil shed next the massive Campbell Thrashing Mill engine, but do not mix the paraffins. Lamp oil was cleaner.

Only in May 1956 when we moved to Isauld did we get Hydro Power. The Hydro Board said they would not put it into Lower Dounreay as we were scheduled to move out of our first home shortly anyway to make way for the U.K.A.E.A. Isauld House and Farm Steading were wired and we moved in to switches and floods of light everywhere. Power points too. Quite a change.

No 83. MOVING GRAIN FROM THE MILL..pb 10.11.2010

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.

Moving grain from the Thrashing Mill.

There was a time when physical strength was a feature of farming. Far too great a subject to cover, but I might mention a few aspects. The word back breaking had real meaning. At Whitehall my earliest memories are of the everlasting lifting of the days before machines took over. Handling grain was one.
We start with the back of the Mill. There the grain came out of the delivery openings and into 4 bushel hessian or jute sacks, held open by two fixed hooks either side and a flyer. An eye had to be kept on that operation and there were two alternate openings with slides to open and shut and divert and direct grain into an empty sack while the filled one was being removed and replaced. Then the full sack had to be lifted away.
Take a good grip of either corner, lean back, take the weight of the sack on your knees, walk it, or shuffle it, over the floor to the wall and lean the sack against it. Make sure that it was firmly set on the floor. This was a full time job for one man while the thrashing progressed, though he would have time to move the chaff back and take a look at the strumps - (broken bits of straw and chaff) at the other end of the Mill so they did not build up and choke the outlet end.
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When full the four bushel sacks held 1½ cwt of oats or two cwt of barley, or bere as our Northern barley was still called, though these weights were for selling. For ordinary thrashing and ease of working a bit less would do. .

. A spanker, a two-wheeled two-handled sack trolley still in use in many ways other than farming was always part of the barn fittings, usually several of them. First ones I knew were iron wheeled but later we got rubber wheels. They were used to wheel the bags across the floor but some men found it as easy to do without next the Mill. .
Edge the front plate under the sack, ease back with a steadying hand on top of the sack till balance was achieved, and wheel away to store against the wall. Take care that it was firmly seated on the floor, tip it inwards a little, otherwise it just might fall back and spill grain out of the open top. Did happen, annoying at the time, and hard words exchanged with the culprit.
. Sometimes a weighing machine was standing ready and bags were weighed as thrashing went on. There was just enough time for a man to do so, but only done when grain was to be sold or sent direct to the Mill for meal.

Filled sacks had to be taken up to the loft, often enough just on a man’s back and up the solid wooden stairs. Hard work and keep your balance with the sack balanced on your shoulders, a hand rail beside you for support. Or a very thick rope as a banister.

At Lower Dounreay and again at Isauld there was a simple winch upstairs made of a large motor bike wheel mounted on a round wooden roller axle, a rope on either making a good and effective windlass. Home made usually
It was fitted above the rafters above a loft floor hatch of two opposing lids that opened either way as the sack came up through the floor and then fell back once the sack was high enough, giving a solid floor to let the sack down to be taken away. Similar winches can be still be seen in many an old Meal Mill today, and much used in the past.
The sacks would then be wheeled along one or more lofts on a spanker, tipped onto the floor and the loose grain shovelled into a nicely shaped heap.
There would usually be ample space for storing different varieties, including seed oats at the far end, or sometimes into a special loft.
Progress saw elevators carry the grain upstairs, an endless belt fitted with grain cups. There it could be again bagged off in sacks to be wheeled along the lofts. Saved the labour of carrying full sacks up a stairs.
At Whitehall Davie Davidson of Scarths of Kirkwall fitted a shaking grain trough to take the grain under the rafter backs over the straw barn and through a stone wall into a grain loft that held the bruiser as well. The delivery end was high enough to hold a full thrashing with no need to clear away, saved a man for other work. It lay loose on the floor, take it away at your leisure ready for another day. Or bruise direct from the heap.
Later at Greenland Mains Davidson put in a grain carrier to take the grain along the Long Loft, hatches at salient points allowing grain to be delivered just where needed. An endless belt with wooden cleats dragged the grain along a trough.
At Lower Dounreay after Nov. 1953 when we went there no such aids were available. The bags were filled at the end of the Mill and then had to be laboriously carried away. There were two other lofts to be reached by carrying outside and again up stairs, a stone one across the yard and a wooden one to a small loft above a neep shed, and very handy for seed.
The same lifting of bags through the floor by windlass pertained at Isauld for our first year there in the winter of 1956 but by the next year we were very well fitted out by the UKAEA with a superb new Garvie Mill with all the trimmings, double fanners, wire sizing screen.
Two men could thrash, the sheaf trailer sitting just beside the Mill inside double doors which could be closed on a rough day. Sannie Sinclair on the trailer forking directly to Jamie Wares at the drum. From there the straw went by chain and flight trough carrier down the barn, dropping off by itself at the hatches, fill one and carry on to the next, automatic.
The grain was carried, by an endless belt and bucket elevator, upstairs onto a chain and flight grain trough carrier which ran the length of the loft, with various drop off points. . At the far end it could be dropped into a hopper for bagging and taking into a side loft, seed oats usually, needing an extra man.
There was a two way hatch which allowed grain to be diverted into the bruiser, the overflow still going along the loft, so bruising was done at the same time as we thrashed.
Then the combine came in the early 60s, the Mill sat unused in splendid isolation till a fire in August 1997 consigned it to a Viking’s Funeral.
But we had come a long way from humping heavy bags up the stone stairs.