Monday, 26 December 2011
Sunday, 25 December 2011
No 110. PEAT REEK.
No 110. PEAT REEK..
Cutting peats was not one of our tasks at Whitehall, though our father many a time got a cart load of peats from one or other of his old friends in Rousam Head, usually getting in return a cart-load of straw. It must have brought back memories to him of his early days in the Bu of Rousam, 1893 to 1913.
Peats went on the sitting room fire on special occasions, or more often on the dining room fire where our Granny held sway, it being her “State Room”. An occasional blow down of the chimney in a storm emphasised the peat reek aroma, once smelt, never forgotten. Our main fire fodder was coal from Davie Chalmers in the Village where coal was easily available. From Whitehall to Rousam Head was about six miles and in the days of horses a long way to go. There were no other peat grounds on Stronsay.
We went to Rousam with our father on occasion and every house there was peat fuelled. The crofters on Rousam were on the doorstep of the peat moss, indeed they were part of it living on the edge of the Hill ground. Good black peats they were too. The peat reek permeated all their houses, even their Sunday best. The fire never went out, a big damp boorag being laid on the fire at night and next morning just needing a wee blow with the hand bellows to spring to life. There are tales of fires that lasted 100 years without ever being cold.
William Tait’s Diaries for 1897 when he was working at the Bu’ of Rousam gave a good insight at how much time was expended on peat cutting. On June 16th 1897 the Bowmen were at the Hill cutting peats. These were the farm workers having a day to themselves to cut their own peats. With a long six day working week on the farm and no work done on Sundays the men would have needed time off to cut their own. Getting a peat bank to cut in their own time was part of their meagre wages, and set down as such.
June 18th and 19th that year was again cutting peats, which would have been for the farm house of the Bu’. Peat cutting usually came in the brief period between sowing the neeps and them being ready for singling. There may have been other days at the Hill but if so then not entered in the Diary of 1897.
Peat cutting was all hands to the Hill for the whole day. Everyone available would go, women as well, and it could be quite entertaining even if it was hard work. It was very labour intensive.
Evenings might have been useful but after a long day at work on the farm there would be little enough time left to go to the Hill, though the Island evenings were long. No doubt it must have been done. And the crofters were right there.
My own personal experience of peat cutting was years later at Greenland Mains where we cut peats on the farm peat bank on the Greenland Moss. Poor peats they were, “funcless” was the Caithness word, full of old birch wood and a sulphurous smell when burnt, with much red ash to clean out of the fire. We later cut a bank on Burifa Hill on Dunnet Head, hard black peat like coal, a treasure.
Peat cutting itself was first cut or clean the drain from last year’s working from the previous year to let any water away. Then turr (turf) the breadth to be cut with the flaughter spade, the heathery or grassy turfs being thrown and regularly spaced out flat on the lowside of the bank previously cut. These would in time grow together and leave the surface as before, though at a lower level. Then according to which kind of peats one was cutting, take the appropriate tool. At Greenland Moss where we cut peats after coming to Caithness we used the spade peat, simple enough and leaving a flat peat which was then spread out flat on either side of the peat bank to do an initial drying. According to weather, which could be good or bad, the peats were turned after a few days to dry the other side. They were then stacked in small four peat cones for a further final dry. There were various tools used, tusker peats, sheil peats and the spade peat. The spade peat on Greenland Moss was flat and the peat of a consistancy that did not stand too much handling.
On June 28th 1897 there were 4 carts from the Bu’ at the hill for peats. Again on July 5th 4 carts at the hill for peats. George Logie, one of the Bowmen, had 7 loads which would have been for himself. Every day bar Sundays from Aug 2nd to 13th they were at the hill for peats, August 13th being the last entry for peat carting to the farm. Between these dates there were some entries for peats, either cutting or carting. There were occasional later entries during the autumn for carting peats to others, probably their own banks.
Not all the peats were taken home, there were entries in the Spring some years of going to the hill for peats. Not unknown, these peats would have been stacked in the hill to over winter, a waterproof build. With the approach of harvest peats not yet carted would have had to be quickly stacked at the peat banks to over winter.
So it went on, carting peats for other people every now and then throughout the year. Thomas Miller, a Bowman for our grandfather at the Bu’, was feed (hired) for 12 months at £7.5/- for six months, and he had to cut his peats for himself!!
Cutting peats was not one of our tasks at Whitehall, though our father many a time got a cart load of peats from one or other of his old friends in Rousam Head, usually getting in return a cart-load of straw. It must have brought back memories to him of his early days in the Bu of Rousam, 1893 to 1913.
Peats went on the sitting room fire on special occasions, or more often on the dining room fire where our Granny held sway, it being her “State Room”. An occasional blow down of the chimney in a storm emphasised the peat reek aroma, once smelt, never forgotten. Our main fire fodder was coal from Davie Chalmers in the Village where coal was easily available. From Whitehall to Rousam Head was about six miles and in the days of horses a long way to go. There were no other peat grounds on Stronsay.
We went to Rousam with our father on occasion and every house there was peat fuelled. The crofters on Rousam were on the doorstep of the peat moss, indeed they were part of it living on the edge of the Hill ground. Good black peats they were too. The peat reek permeated all their houses, even their Sunday best. The fire never went out, a big damp boorag being laid on the fire at night and next morning just needing a wee blow with the hand bellows to spring to life. There are tales of fires that lasted 100 years without ever being cold.
William Tait’s Diaries for 1897 when he was working at the Bu’ of Rousam gave a good insight at how much time was expended on peat cutting. On June 16th 1897 the Bowmen were at the Hill cutting peats. These were the farm workers having a day to themselves to cut their own peats. With a long six day working week on the farm and no work done on Sundays the men would have needed time off to cut their own. Getting a peat bank to cut in their own time was part of their meagre wages, and set down as such.
June 18th and 19th that year was again cutting peats, which would have been for the farm house of the Bu’. Peat cutting usually came in the brief period between sowing the neeps and them being ready for singling. There may have been other days at the Hill but if so then not entered in the Diary of 1897.
Peat cutting was all hands to the Hill for the whole day. Everyone available would go, women as well, and it could be quite entertaining even if it was hard work. It was very labour intensive.
Evenings might have been useful but after a long day at work on the farm there would be little enough time left to go to the Hill, though the Island evenings were long. No doubt it must have been done. And the crofters were right there.
My own personal experience of peat cutting was years later at Greenland Mains where we cut peats on the farm peat bank on the Greenland Moss. Poor peats they were, “funcless” was the Caithness word, full of old birch wood and a sulphurous smell when burnt, with much red ash to clean out of the fire. We later cut a bank on Burifa Hill on Dunnet Head, hard black peat like coal, a treasure.
Peat cutting itself was first cut or clean the drain from last year’s working from the previous year to let any water away. Then turr (turf) the breadth to be cut with the flaughter spade, the heathery or grassy turfs being thrown and regularly spaced out flat on the lowside of the bank previously cut. These would in time grow together and leave the surface as before, though at a lower level. Then according to which kind of peats one was cutting, take the appropriate tool. At Greenland Moss where we cut peats after coming to Caithness we used the spade peat, simple enough and leaving a flat peat which was then spread out flat on either side of the peat bank to do an initial drying. According to weather, which could be good or bad, the peats were turned after a few days to dry the other side. They were then stacked in small four peat cones for a further final dry. There were various tools used, tusker peats, sheil peats and the spade peat. The spade peat on Greenland Moss was flat and the peat of a consistancy that did not stand too much handling.
On June 28th 1897 there were 4 carts from the Bu’ at the hill for peats. Again on July 5th 4 carts at the hill for peats. George Logie, one of the Bowmen, had 7 loads which would have been for himself. Every day bar Sundays from Aug 2nd to 13th they were at the hill for peats, August 13th being the last entry for peat carting to the farm. Between these dates there were some entries for peats, either cutting or carting. There were occasional later entries during the autumn for carting peats to others, probably their own banks.
Not all the peats were taken home, there were entries in the Spring some years of going to the hill for peats. Not unknown, these peats would have been stacked in the hill to over winter, a waterproof build. With the approach of harvest peats not yet carted would have had to be quickly stacked at the peat banks to over winter.
So it went on, carting peats for other people every now and then throughout the year. Thomas Miller, a Bowman for our grandfather at the Bu’, was feed (hired) for 12 months at £7.5/- for six months, and he had to cut his peats for himself!!
Friday, 2 December 2011
No 109. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE pb 02.12.2011
No 109. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IN FARMING.
Today we have such plethora of food labelling - “origin of product”, “sell by “ dates , “best by” dates , “cook by” dates, store in fridge, store in freezer, thermal cold bags from shop to house, how to cook, how not to cook, heat to 82 C. degrees. How our mothers managed without a thermometer I do not know. It is quite possible none of us should now be alive.
I remember a certain Caithness farmer standing before the Sheriff in Wick trying to explain how his cows’ milk was a bit thin with too low a fat content and too low in “solids not fat”. He reckoned that his old mother must have inadvertently knocked the water tap in passing on her way to the dairy with the bucket of milk!!! “Good one”, said the Sheriff, “Guilty as charged. £10.”
That farmer was before his time, now we have thin milk, 1% milk, 2% milk, full cream milk, blue top milk, red top milk, green top milk, double cream, thin cream, whipping cream. Do the cows know, and do they really care!!
Another farmer, or it might have been the same one, was before the Sheriff charged under Potato Marketing Board Rules, trying to explain that the undersized potatoes he had been selling must have been that the van driver picked up the wrong bag of tatties which he had set aside for the pigs!! Today he would have got the Queen’s Award for Industry as being before his time in tapping the market for baby potatoes!!
Same verdict, £10.
On a later appearance he tried to explain that the blue stained potatoes that he was selling cheap were a variety called Black Hearties, or Forty-fold, blue inside when cooked and very tasty. Again he was in advance of his time. The possibility that they could be confused for surplus tatties blue stained by the Potato Marketing Board and disposed of by them very cheaply to be used for for stock feed only, had never occurred to him. Or so he said. Tasted the same anyway if eaten in a poor light!! Guilty. £10.
The potato peelings that he threw to his pigs were missing by many years the much more rewarding and modern market for potato skins, a money-spinning by-product of the oven-ready potato chip industry!!!
There was a great pig industry built on feeding swill mostly from Hotels and Restaurants. Our father knew a man from Orkney called Brass who had been feeding pigs on swill in a big way on a small farm just outside Edinburgh. When asked by father if he was still in that trade he said no, not any longer. When father asked him why he said that when he was dirt poor he could stand the smell, but once he had made enough money he could stand the smell no longer, bought more land, and was now more of a gentleman farmer. Did well at that too!! Swill feeding is now banned!!
Oliver Drever, who had emigrated in 1908 from Stronsay to Carnegie, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, wrote 4/10/1908 in a letter to his brother-in-law Wm Tait in the Bay Farm, Stronsay:-
“In my opinion Willie Croy ( Stronsay ) is about the most particular farmer I see anyway near here. He does make the best certainly of everything. He has a big garden & he told me he had 150 dollars for onions alone & he has a great lot of strawberrys & all kind of berries which they do up in jars & sell in Brandon. He has a right managing wife & makes a big lot of butter & eggs. Bob Scott (probably Stronsay too ) farms well & people say he has improved his farm a lot since he went on it.
He also wrote “One man here had seed from Scotland last Spring & sowed it on breaking (ploughing land) & thrashed 115 bushel to the acre, that's about the best I've heard of. Oats in general goes anywhere from 40 to 80.(bushels)”
( 115 bushels would be just short of three ton an acre, a very good yield in 1908 anywhere.)
Nearer home during the 1939 War when the Royal Navy was hugely in Scapa Flow there
was a dearth of vegetables in the Far North. Cabbages were making good money. Our
father grew a fair bit at Whitehall and shipped them in to Kirkwall. Cabbages finished, but
no matter.
He cut the green shaws off the Swedish turnips and sent them in to Kirkwall to Charlie
Tait of J.and W.Tait who had the contract to supply the Navy. Seemed all right till many
years later I was sitting in the waiting room of then Motorway Tyres in Thurso while getting
new tyres fitted. An elderly English gentleman, retired by then and now living in Port Skerra,
was there too.
We talked, and he referred to my writing in “Parish Life on the Pentland Firth”
about the Swedish turnip leaves. I was quite proud of our father’s enterprise until my new
friend said:- “I was in the Bloody Navy in Scapa Flow during the War. Never did get used
to turnip shaws. Always wondered where they came from !!! “
Private Enterprise was a great thing.
Today we have such plethora of food labelling - “origin of product”, “sell by “ dates , “best by” dates , “cook by” dates, store in fridge, store in freezer, thermal cold bags from shop to house, how to cook, how not to cook, heat to 82 C. degrees. How our mothers managed without a thermometer I do not know. It is quite possible none of us should now be alive.
I remember a certain Caithness farmer standing before the Sheriff in Wick trying to explain how his cows’ milk was a bit thin with too low a fat content and too low in “solids not fat”. He reckoned that his old mother must have inadvertently knocked the water tap in passing on her way to the dairy with the bucket of milk!!! “Good one”, said the Sheriff, “Guilty as charged. £10.”
That farmer was before his time, now we have thin milk, 1% milk, 2% milk, full cream milk, blue top milk, red top milk, green top milk, double cream, thin cream, whipping cream. Do the cows know, and do they really care!!
Another farmer, or it might have been the same one, was before the Sheriff charged under Potato Marketing Board Rules, trying to explain that the undersized potatoes he had been selling must have been that the van driver picked up the wrong bag of tatties which he had set aside for the pigs!! Today he would have got the Queen’s Award for Industry as being before his time in tapping the market for baby potatoes!!
Same verdict, £10.
On a later appearance he tried to explain that the blue stained potatoes that he was selling cheap were a variety called Black Hearties, or Forty-fold, blue inside when cooked and very tasty. Again he was in advance of his time. The possibility that they could be confused for surplus tatties blue stained by the Potato Marketing Board and disposed of by them very cheaply to be used for for stock feed only, had never occurred to him. Or so he said. Tasted the same anyway if eaten in a poor light!! Guilty. £10.
The potato peelings that he threw to his pigs were missing by many years the much more rewarding and modern market for potato skins, a money-spinning by-product of the oven-ready potato chip industry!!!
There was a great pig industry built on feeding swill mostly from Hotels and Restaurants. Our father knew a man from Orkney called Brass who had been feeding pigs on swill in a big way on a small farm just outside Edinburgh. When asked by father if he was still in that trade he said no, not any longer. When father asked him why he said that when he was dirt poor he could stand the smell, but once he had made enough money he could stand the smell no longer, bought more land, and was now more of a gentleman farmer. Did well at that too!! Swill feeding is now banned!!
Oliver Drever, who had emigrated in 1908 from Stronsay to Carnegie, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, wrote 4/10/1908 in a letter to his brother-in-law Wm Tait in the Bay Farm, Stronsay:-
“In my opinion Willie Croy ( Stronsay ) is about the most particular farmer I see anyway near here. He does make the best certainly of everything. He has a big garden & he told me he had 150 dollars for onions alone & he has a great lot of strawberrys & all kind of berries which they do up in jars & sell in Brandon. He has a right managing wife & makes a big lot of butter & eggs. Bob Scott (probably Stronsay too ) farms well & people say he has improved his farm a lot since he went on it.
He also wrote “One man here had seed from Scotland last Spring & sowed it on breaking (ploughing land) & thrashed 115 bushel to the acre, that's about the best I've heard of. Oats in general goes anywhere from 40 to 80.(bushels)”
( 115 bushels would be just short of three ton an acre, a very good yield in 1908 anywhere.)
Nearer home during the 1939 War when the Royal Navy was hugely in Scapa Flow there
was a dearth of vegetables in the Far North. Cabbages were making good money. Our
father grew a fair bit at Whitehall and shipped them in to Kirkwall. Cabbages finished, but
no matter.
He cut the green shaws off the Swedish turnips and sent them in to Kirkwall to Charlie
Tait of J.and W.Tait who had the contract to supply the Navy. Seemed all right till many
years later I was sitting in the waiting room of then Motorway Tyres in Thurso while getting
new tyres fitted. An elderly English gentleman, retired by then and now living in Port Skerra,
was there too.
We talked, and he referred to my writing in “Parish Life on the Pentland Firth”
about the Swedish turnip leaves. I was quite proud of our father’s enterprise until my new
friend said:- “I was in the Bloody Navy in Scapa Flow during the War. Never did get used
to turnip shaws. Always wondered where they came from !!! “
Private Enterprise was a great thing.
Friday, 18 November 2011
No 107. Bindertwine.
No 107. Saving Twine.
Nothing wasted on a farm in my early days. Nor on a croft either. Binder twine was initially used for the binder for cutting the grain crops and tying the sheaves of oats and bere, or barley. The binder with it’s binder twine was an advance in the twisted band of new-cut straw formerly made for tying the sheaves of grain after cutting by a scythe, or for harvesting with the reaper, either side delivery or back delivery.
There were many makes of twine, not all had a good reputation. It was talked about by many a farmer as to his results with Red Star, or Bluebell, or any of the other makes whose names have now slipped past me. Red Star was our long-time trouble -free favourite. Sometimes one got a bad bit in a ball, but not often.
It was made with sisal from North Africa. Only after I was farming on my own did plastic binder twine come in, sometimes with disasterous results in the early days until we got the knotters on the binder adjusted to the new feel. Thinner cord than sisal, and slippier, it needed a lot of TLC at the beginning.
Binder twine was used for almost everything on the farm. It was used for tying around your trousers below the knee to keep them tidy, it was used as a belt to keep your trousers from falling down, or round a jacket to keep it neat if you were working where a loose jacket could or might get caught, for a running repair on a torn coat, almost anything.
In a stormy harvest day doing stook drill, which was setting up sheaves knocked down by a gale, and often on a wet stormy day too, oilskins were kept tight around the waist to keep the wind out and the wearer a bit warmer. Oilskins did not have belts. It could be used to replace a broken boot lace.
Almost all of the farm men had a bit in their pocket, and until lately I was not surprised to put my hand in my own pocket to find a bit there.!! Useful, you never knew when it might come in handy!!
Gates of fields were often tied with a bit, very much not too safe but handy at the time. Not too long ago we met some cattle coming up a farm road, the temporary twine gate fastening made by that farmer till he got a proper fastening from the Town had not stood the test of a bunch of sturdy bullocks. No harm, we got them safely back into his field before he came home, and met him coming down the farm road with a brand new gate fastening!! Well worth the dram in his house as recompense!!.
Fences were often temporarily repaired with a length, fix it later, sometimes much later. I have seen a broken telephone line held together with a short length until the linesman appeared. Worked well with a bit of fencing wire to bridge the metallic gap.
Threshing was the great time for twine gathering. Some farmers and many crofters took the twine off the sheaf before putting it through the drum, saving it. Cut it beside the knot with a knife to have use of the full length. When a handful had been gathered it was looped through another length of twine and hooked onto a handy nail in the rafters. Some rafters were festooned with multitudinous bundles. Sometimes at threshing there was a “louser” at the sheaf board who cut the twine for the foreman to feed the mill, often a woman of the farm, and who kept the cut twines out of the straw.
Our foreman had a special glove knife which was excellent for cutting his own sheaves at the drum, most useful in preventing the loss of a favourite knife down the maw of the threshing drum. Did happen.
Short hand-woven twine ropes were made with cut twine, came in handy, a bit hairy but strong. Young calves were often tied in the byre to the wall behind their mothers by a length of home-made bindertwine rope, saved proper rope. Doors were fastened with a length. A running repair could be made to a binder canvas at harvest holding a broken strap together to get on with the cutting before it rained. Fix it later.
More serious were the occasions when a calf would get a length of twine and chew it endlessly. Dangerous if swallowed, I cannot remember ever losing a calf with a ball of bindertwine in its stomach but it did happen. Many a time I have taken a ball of well-chewed bindertwine out of a calve’s mouth. Unless saved off the sheaf it was found throughout the straw in the barn as we did not as a rule save the twine unless needed for “tialls” for tying bags of grain in the loft. Just the right length too.
Then the decorative inventiveness of many farm men in making fancy arrangements entirely of lengths of cut bindertwine saved from the mill - a twine doll, tablemats, a doily, a string basket, indeed there was no end to what could be devised. A bit of competiveness came in at times, and there was always one of the men who was an artist and could put all the others to friendly shame!!!
Nothing wasted on a farm in my early days. Nor on a croft either. Binder twine was initially used for the binder for cutting the grain crops and tying the sheaves of oats and bere, or barley. The binder with it’s binder twine was an advance in the twisted band of new-cut straw formerly made for tying the sheaves of grain after cutting by a scythe, or for harvesting with the reaper, either side delivery or back delivery.
There were many makes of twine, not all had a good reputation. It was talked about by many a farmer as to his results with Red Star, or Bluebell, or any of the other makes whose names have now slipped past me. Red Star was our long-time trouble -free favourite. Sometimes one got a bad bit in a ball, but not often.
It was made with sisal from North Africa. Only after I was farming on my own did plastic binder twine come in, sometimes with disasterous results in the early days until we got the knotters on the binder adjusted to the new feel. Thinner cord than sisal, and slippier, it needed a lot of TLC at the beginning.
Binder twine was used for almost everything on the farm. It was used for tying around your trousers below the knee to keep them tidy, it was used as a belt to keep your trousers from falling down, or round a jacket to keep it neat if you were working where a loose jacket could or might get caught, for a running repair on a torn coat, almost anything.
In a stormy harvest day doing stook drill, which was setting up sheaves knocked down by a gale, and often on a wet stormy day too, oilskins were kept tight around the waist to keep the wind out and the wearer a bit warmer. Oilskins did not have belts. It could be used to replace a broken boot lace.
Almost all of the farm men had a bit in their pocket, and until lately I was not surprised to put my hand in my own pocket to find a bit there.!! Useful, you never knew when it might come in handy!!
Gates of fields were often tied with a bit, very much not too safe but handy at the time. Not too long ago we met some cattle coming up a farm road, the temporary twine gate fastening made by that farmer till he got a proper fastening from the Town had not stood the test of a bunch of sturdy bullocks. No harm, we got them safely back into his field before he came home, and met him coming down the farm road with a brand new gate fastening!! Well worth the dram in his house as recompense!!.
Fences were often temporarily repaired with a length, fix it later, sometimes much later. I have seen a broken telephone line held together with a short length until the linesman appeared. Worked well with a bit of fencing wire to bridge the metallic gap.
Threshing was the great time for twine gathering. Some farmers and many crofters took the twine off the sheaf before putting it through the drum, saving it. Cut it beside the knot with a knife to have use of the full length. When a handful had been gathered it was looped through another length of twine and hooked onto a handy nail in the rafters. Some rafters were festooned with multitudinous bundles. Sometimes at threshing there was a “louser” at the sheaf board who cut the twine for the foreman to feed the mill, often a woman of the farm, and who kept the cut twines out of the straw.
Our foreman had a special glove knife which was excellent for cutting his own sheaves at the drum, most useful in preventing the loss of a favourite knife down the maw of the threshing drum. Did happen.
Short hand-woven twine ropes were made with cut twine, came in handy, a bit hairy but strong. Young calves were often tied in the byre to the wall behind their mothers by a length of home-made bindertwine rope, saved proper rope. Doors were fastened with a length. A running repair could be made to a binder canvas at harvest holding a broken strap together to get on with the cutting before it rained. Fix it later.
More serious were the occasions when a calf would get a length of twine and chew it endlessly. Dangerous if swallowed, I cannot remember ever losing a calf with a ball of bindertwine in its stomach but it did happen. Many a time I have taken a ball of well-chewed bindertwine out of a calve’s mouth. Unless saved off the sheaf it was found throughout the straw in the barn as we did not as a rule save the twine unless needed for “tialls” for tying bags of grain in the loft. Just the right length too.
Then the decorative inventiveness of many farm men in making fancy arrangements entirely of lengths of cut bindertwine saved from the mill - a twine doll, tablemats, a doily, a string basket, indeed there was no end to what could be devised. A bit of competiveness came in at times, and there was always one of the men who was an artist and could put all the others to friendly shame!!!
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
No 107. Whin Mills.
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. 107. WHIN MILLS. [ 4 Pics by Picasa ]
Today using that Scottish speciality crop of whins/gorse to feed your livestock seems a myth. How it was done even more so. Anyone who has ever come close to whins knows how prickly they are, even the new season’s fresh green growth. I think they are a more appropriate flower than our Scotch Thistle as our National Emblem. Or should be!!
In Laidhay at Dunbeath and in Corrigal and Kirkbuster Farm Museums in Orkney there are excellent examples of old whin cutters still in superb condition. They had a tough job to do and were built accordingly. Most people today would erroneously recognise these machines as chaff cutters for cutting or chaffing straw, and they were so described in these museums until told recently what they really were!!
In the Spring of the year when grass was not yet growing and winter feed was well over-stretched, whins were often used to eke out the fodder. Whin dykes were part of the farming scene, an earth bank with a deep ditch on either side serving as boundary between fields and between farms. Seeded with whins, they seemed to be always growing, even in winter by a small amount, were and are evergreen.
Whins have the superb facilty of flowering all year round to a greater or lesser degree and you can always find some in yellow bloom. Their sweet heady aroma always gets me, though in winter the scent is muted. They have some green branches always soft with new growth, though still thorny, they also have some very hard stems.
First task was to cut the green shoots, a thorny enough job, then cart them home and put them through the whin cutter into small pieces. Cutting the whin hedges must have been by long-handled hedging knives and the standard two-toed pitchforks for loading the carts. These cuttings were further ground through a whin mill grindstone of which the upper half of one is still at Barrock Mains, but in the garden where it looks well!! The side face of the stone is vertically grooved, I think showing how it was drilled in a circle before being lifted out of the bed-rock in the grey granite quarry, probably in Aberdeenshire.
Wonderfully heavy, beautifully cut, the grey granite as hard as iron, it was driven by two horses with shafts bolted into grooves cut in the top of the stone. It looks to me as if a seat for a man might have also been fitted on top in a fifth groove. He would have ridden round on the stone with the horses and fed the cut whins into the square hole in the centre. Alternatively there might have been a funnel or hopper fixed to the square hole and fed from outside the stone by a fork, but I like the idea of man on top. This grinding produced a green whin pulp which could be made use of straight or mixed with oat chaff or chopped straw for feeding to cattle. I think horses ate the most of it, for all their soft muzzles they can eat pretty sharp material.
Whin mills could also be driven by water wheels where a dam fed off a burn or a stream was available, leaving the horses to do other tasks, or have a rest. Water wheels were always used where possible but not all farms had that resource.
Gorse/ whin is high in protein and in former days was very much used as feed for livestock, particularly in a hard winter when other greenstuff is not available. Traditionally long ago it was used as fodder for cattle, being made palatable by being "bruised" (crushed) by hand-used mallets. Gorse was also eaten as forage by some livestock such as feral ponies, who may have eaten little else in a hard winter. Ponies may also eat the thinner stems of regrown burnt gorse, the new season’s growth being not quite so thorny.
The seeds are oily, capable of lying dormant for 100 years before germinating. They seem to prefer dry thin soil with perhaps a trace of iron. Burning seems to help germinate the dormant seeds, and a section of burnt over whins springs with new seedlings the next Spring.
Whins were introduced to New Zealand by early Scottish settlers who were credited with sentimentally taking a bit of their home-land with them. Not quite so simple. These settlers were as poor as church mice, often cleared in the 1800s off the land that they had long farmed by landlords making larger farms, the so-called age of “Agricultural Improvement”. Whins would have been so much a feed for their livestock in their native Scotland that taking whin seeds with them to New Zealand was quite understandable, along with seed oats and bere.
Whins have now taken over large tracts of land in New Zealand, especially poorer land too thin to be taken into good farms.
There was one area I travelled through in the centre of North Island where the yellow bloom of whins stretched to the horizon, their superb scent hanging heavy in the air, honey bees buzzing over them. I never did get to taste honey from whins.
No. 107. WHIN MILLS. [ 4 Pics by Picasa ]
Today using that Scottish speciality crop of whins/gorse to feed your livestock seems a myth. How it was done even more so. Anyone who has ever come close to whins knows how prickly they are, even the new season’s fresh green growth. I think they are a more appropriate flower than our Scotch Thistle as our National Emblem. Or should be!!
In Laidhay at Dunbeath and in Corrigal and Kirkbuster Farm Museums in Orkney there are excellent examples of old whin cutters still in superb condition. They had a tough job to do and were built accordingly. Most people today would erroneously recognise these machines as chaff cutters for cutting or chaffing straw, and they were so described in these museums until told recently what they really were!!
In the Spring of the year when grass was not yet growing and winter feed was well over-stretched, whins were often used to eke out the fodder. Whin dykes were part of the farming scene, an earth bank with a deep ditch on either side serving as boundary between fields and between farms. Seeded with whins, they seemed to be always growing, even in winter by a small amount, were and are evergreen.
Whins have the superb facilty of flowering all year round to a greater or lesser degree and you can always find some in yellow bloom. Their sweet heady aroma always gets me, though in winter the scent is muted. They have some green branches always soft with new growth, though still thorny, they also have some very hard stems.
First task was to cut the green shoots, a thorny enough job, then cart them home and put them through the whin cutter into small pieces. Cutting the whin hedges must have been by long-handled hedging knives and the standard two-toed pitchforks for loading the carts. These cuttings were further ground through a whin mill grindstone of which the upper half of one is still at Barrock Mains, but in the garden where it looks well!! The side face of the stone is vertically grooved, I think showing how it was drilled in a circle before being lifted out of the bed-rock in the grey granite quarry, probably in Aberdeenshire.
Wonderfully heavy, beautifully cut, the grey granite as hard as iron, it was driven by two horses with shafts bolted into grooves cut in the top of the stone. It looks to me as if a seat for a man might have also been fitted on top in a fifth groove. He would have ridden round on the stone with the horses and fed the cut whins into the square hole in the centre. Alternatively there might have been a funnel or hopper fixed to the square hole and fed from outside the stone by a fork, but I like the idea of man on top. This grinding produced a green whin pulp which could be made use of straight or mixed with oat chaff or chopped straw for feeding to cattle. I think horses ate the most of it, for all their soft muzzles they can eat pretty sharp material.
Whin mills could also be driven by water wheels where a dam fed off a burn or a stream was available, leaving the horses to do other tasks, or have a rest. Water wheels were always used where possible but not all farms had that resource.
Gorse/ whin is high in protein and in former days was very much used as feed for livestock, particularly in a hard winter when other greenstuff is not available. Traditionally long ago it was used as fodder for cattle, being made palatable by being "bruised" (crushed) by hand-used mallets. Gorse was also eaten as forage by some livestock such as feral ponies, who may have eaten little else in a hard winter. Ponies may also eat the thinner stems of regrown burnt gorse, the new season’s growth being not quite so thorny.
The seeds are oily, capable of lying dormant for 100 years before germinating. They seem to prefer dry thin soil with perhaps a trace of iron. Burning seems to help germinate the dormant seeds, and a section of burnt over whins springs with new seedlings the next Spring.
Whins were introduced to New Zealand by early Scottish settlers who were credited with sentimentally taking a bit of their home-land with them. Not quite so simple. These settlers were as poor as church mice, often cleared in the 1800s off the land that they had long farmed by landlords making larger farms, the so-called age of “Agricultural Improvement”. Whins would have been so much a feed for their livestock in their native Scotland that taking whin seeds with them to New Zealand was quite understandable, along with seed oats and bere.
Whins have now taken over large tracts of land in New Zealand, especially poorer land too thin to be taken into good farms.
There was one area I travelled through in the centre of North Island where the yellow bloom of whins stretched to the horizon, their superb scent hanging heavy in the air, honey bees buzzing over them. I never did get to taste honey from whins.
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