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.
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