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!!!
Friday, 18 November 2011
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.
Friday, 21 October 2011
No 103. A Burden of Straw.
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 103. A Burden of Straw.
In my early days straw came loose from the threshing mill in the barn, no balers to make it into neat bundles, no bunchers to pack it into handy packages, no straw carriers or blowers. At Whitehall making windlins was a constant task, large windlins for the feeder and cow byres, medium for the yearalts, small windlins for the calfie byres. An early morning task before it got light enough to see outside in winter, the paraffin oil lanterns warm flickering glow making shadows dance on the barn wall.
Rats scurrying out of sight, mice too, rustling in the straw. A pigeon resting on the easwas, maybe a few. Easwas for the uninitiated is the flat ledge on the top of the stone walls on which the rafters sat, handy for storage of many things in a low building but too high in the straw barn.!!!] A nesting place for the pigeons later in the year, though they did nest over the long spread of summer. I do not remember sparrows resting there though we had hundreds around. More often sitting on the rafters among many other places.
Doors kept the gale outside, cosy. Oddly in William Tait’s Diaries he makes no mention of making windlins though making simmins was a frequent enough task for wet days. Usually the cattlemen who made their own windlins though on a bad day the other men could be found doing that task, storing the windlins in high stacks around the barn walls.
The stable at Whitehall was blessed by having a door directly through a wall into the back of the straw barn so carrying along a wind swept passage in a howling gale was not required. All the rest of the stock accomodation was fiercely exposed around the square.
Windlins were not just handy but took care of loose straw in the wind. The men could carry quite amazing burdens of windlins under each arm, how they did it I never did learn. Load up in the barn, ease sideways out of the door and off to whatever byre needed. Saturday was a day when straw windlins would be carried to the byre for the cattlemen, gave them a slightly easier Sunday. No half days then, though I do remember when they came in. “Id’ll never work, bhoy!!”
I do not remember any loose straw being carried at Whitehall except loading a cart for a crofter or “Building oot”. The cattle buildings were in a square around the central dung midden, out one door and in at another.
Later at Greenland Mains I was introduced to carrying a “burden” of straw. The steading was all enclosed, passages leading directly from one building to another. The only outdoor bit was a short step to the Back Court, out and in a few yards and sheltered. Much straw was carried there to bed the cows that usually went out during the day to the Flats beside Loch Heilen. Sometimes if we had a surplus to get rid off it went into that Back Court to be trampled under.
A “burden” was built up in the barn with a four-toed graip, layers of loose straw being carefully stacked pancake-style man-high just so. Then a shoving of the graip into the base of the burden, helped in by a tackety boot, making sure it was deeply embedded.
A careful lifting and tipping towards the man, carry some of the weight on his hip. It was a balancing act, if not done properly the whole heap would fall away to be redone.
In my days at Greenland Mains I worked with the cattle during the winter with Jock Coghill the cattleman, a expert and monstrous burden carrier. The only byres were the milking byre and the sucklers cum feeders byre, otherwise it was all loose courts. Straw was carried along the narrow passageways to fill the straw racks and also to throw over the racks into the courts for the cattle to half spread with a toss of their heads, and we would finish it off ourselves. The cattle did a pretty good job of head down into the loose straw, they had a Ball.
The other method of carrying a burden of straw was with a length of rope, enough to lay on the ground in an “off and back” loop. On that loop the cattleman built a burden of straw, then took the loose ends back over the top and through the loop, pulled tight and off we go. It took a bit longer to build than a graip burden but held more, and was more secure for the great outdoors. The amount of straw carried was unbelievable.
That same method was used for many tasks World wide. I once saw in 1979 some Chinese women carrying huge burdens of firewood over the Border from China into Hong Kong using the same technique. There is nothing new under the sun.
No 103. A Burden of Straw.
In my early days straw came loose from the threshing mill in the barn, no balers to make it into neat bundles, no bunchers to pack it into handy packages, no straw carriers or blowers. At Whitehall making windlins was a constant task, large windlins for the feeder and cow byres, medium for the yearalts, small windlins for the calfie byres. An early morning task before it got light enough to see outside in winter, the paraffin oil lanterns warm flickering glow making shadows dance on the barn wall.
Rats scurrying out of sight, mice too, rustling in the straw. A pigeon resting on the easwas, maybe a few. Easwas for the uninitiated is the flat ledge on the top of the stone walls on which the rafters sat, handy for storage of many things in a low building but too high in the straw barn.!!!] A nesting place for the pigeons later in the year, though they did nest over the long spread of summer. I do not remember sparrows resting there though we had hundreds around. More often sitting on the rafters among many other places.
Doors kept the gale outside, cosy. Oddly in William Tait’s Diaries he makes no mention of making windlins though making simmins was a frequent enough task for wet days. Usually the cattlemen who made their own windlins though on a bad day the other men could be found doing that task, storing the windlins in high stacks around the barn walls.
The stable at Whitehall was blessed by having a door directly through a wall into the back of the straw barn so carrying along a wind swept passage in a howling gale was not required. All the rest of the stock accomodation was fiercely exposed around the square.
Windlins were not just handy but took care of loose straw in the wind. The men could carry quite amazing burdens of windlins under each arm, how they did it I never did learn. Load up in the barn, ease sideways out of the door and off to whatever byre needed. Saturday was a day when straw windlins would be carried to the byre for the cattlemen, gave them a slightly easier Sunday. No half days then, though I do remember when they came in. “Id’ll never work, bhoy!!”
I do not remember any loose straw being carried at Whitehall except loading a cart for a crofter or “Building oot”. The cattle buildings were in a square around the central dung midden, out one door and in at another.
Later at Greenland Mains I was introduced to carrying a “burden” of straw. The steading was all enclosed, passages leading directly from one building to another. The only outdoor bit was a short step to the Back Court, out and in a few yards and sheltered. Much straw was carried there to bed the cows that usually went out during the day to the Flats beside Loch Heilen. Sometimes if we had a surplus to get rid off it went into that Back Court to be trampled under.
A “burden” was built up in the barn with a four-toed graip, layers of loose straw being carefully stacked pancake-style man-high just so. Then a shoving of the graip into the base of the burden, helped in by a tackety boot, making sure it was deeply embedded.
A careful lifting and tipping towards the man, carry some of the weight on his hip. It was a balancing act, if not done properly the whole heap would fall away to be redone.
In my days at Greenland Mains I worked with the cattle during the winter with Jock Coghill the cattleman, a expert and monstrous burden carrier. The only byres were the milking byre and the sucklers cum feeders byre, otherwise it was all loose courts. Straw was carried along the narrow passageways to fill the straw racks and also to throw over the racks into the courts for the cattle to half spread with a toss of their heads, and we would finish it off ourselves. The cattle did a pretty good job of head down into the loose straw, they had a Ball.
The other method of carrying a burden of straw was with a length of rope, enough to lay on the ground in an “off and back” loop. On that loop the cattleman built a burden of straw, then took the loose ends back over the top and through the loop, pulled tight and off we go. It took a bit longer to build than a graip burden but held more, and was more secure for the great outdoors. The amount of straw carried was unbelievable.
That same method was used for many tasks World wide. I once saw in 1979 some Chinese women carrying huge burdens of firewood over the Border from China into Hong Kong using the same technique. There is nothing new under the sun.
Friday, 7 October 2011
No 104. Water No 104. Water. A simple enough thing now to get water, turn on the tap and there it is. But to my first memory it was not so. At Wh
No 104. Water in the Well.
A simple enough thing now to get water, turn on the tap and there it is. But to my first memory it was not so.
At Whitehall we were privileged in the Big Hoos and had at least water in the Farmhouse pumped up from the Reservoir which served the Village. We had a bathroom with hot and cold taps, a back boiler in the kitchen stove which worked intermittently.
We also had an outdoor water tank filled with rain water from the roof gutters, softer water and better for the Washhouse. There was a largeish stone walled water tank I remember our father building at the steading, again filled with roof water. At Airy he built a similar but much larger watertank with quarried stone from the Hundy Quarry, rendered inside with layers of cement until water proof. That was built around 1939 I think. He sold Airy to the Spences of Millfield in May 1943. Sharon and I were back in Stronsay in July 2009 and the big stone tank is still there, still holding roof water for the steading after 70 years.
The men and their wives in the cottages at Whitehall had no tap water, a well just up the road at the back of the stackyard had to do them for buckets of drinking water. They all had water barrels at the corners of their house, again filled from the roofs. Clean enough for washing clothes but it was not used for drinking water. Too many sea gulls perched on the roofs!!
The byres had no water bowls or taps and all the cattle had buckets of water carried to their heads in the stalls. The feeders byre cattle were let off their asks - neck chains - and went to the horse pond for a drink, then back to the byre and up each into their own stall. There were feeding cattle that only got a big basket of turnips twice a day and no water, but there was enough water in the turnips. And as has been said many a time, “Gey good water!”
Hen houses often had a water barrel and a gutter to collect the roof water when it rained. If not, and with dry weather, it had to be labouriously carried in buckets, sometimes quite a distance.
Much more pressing was water for the cattle when out in the fields in summer. The horse drawn water-cart was much used to carry water to a field trough, again hard repetitive work for two men filling it with buckets from the water tank at the steading.
One of the fields with no water, Blackha, suggested a well might find some. Our father decided to dig at the bottom of the field near the shore. Jamie Moad from Airy, a master hand of almost everything, came over to supervise the task. They dug down into the rock with simple hand tools, sledge hammer, pick, pinchbar, heavy punch crowbar drill. It was all hard work which went on as other farm work allowed in summer. Eventually the well was deep enough to find water seeping in from the surrounding rock.
Then they build a stone wall around it, covered it with large flagstones and mounted a pump at the top of a long iron pipe which went down to the bottom of the well. It had a long curved iron handle, a piston with a thick rubber washer to fit the pipe. Operating it was a simple up and down pumping movement but a bucket or two of water had to be first poured into the pipe to prime it and create suction. Got the priming water out of the well with a pail on a rope, though dropping it face down just so in order to fill it was an art to be learned.
A water trough was also built beside the well cast in concrete and the pump emptied into it. Pumping water was a daily task in summer when cattle were in the field and we kept hen houses near that well for the water supply which saved a lot of carrying of pails.
The well is now disused as time has moved on and water is piped by our successors from a County Water Supply to all the fields and all the houses.
Digging wells was a constant task in Stronsay in William Tait’s Diary at Rousam with our grandfather on 27th June 1899 he writes “ Master and Peter Stevenson digging a well in Doonatoon.” On 28th July 1899 they quarried & carted 11 loads of stones for the well at Doonatoon.
On 22nd June 1900 he refers to digging a well in the field called Geogar. So digging wells was a steady job when time allowed from other farm work.
Wells were everywhere, some near a house, others quite a bit to go. Carrying buckets of water with two buckets and a square wooden frame to keep the pails off your legs was a constant task for the women of the house. I do not remember ever seeing a man carrying water.!!!.
A simple enough thing now to get water, turn on the tap and there it is. But to my first memory it was not so.
At Whitehall we were privileged in the Big Hoos and had at least water in the Farmhouse pumped up from the Reservoir which served the Village. We had a bathroom with hot and cold taps, a back boiler in the kitchen stove which worked intermittently.
We also had an outdoor water tank filled with rain water from the roof gutters, softer water and better for the Washhouse. There was a largeish stone walled water tank I remember our father building at the steading, again filled with roof water. At Airy he built a similar but much larger watertank with quarried stone from the Hundy Quarry, rendered inside with layers of cement until water proof. That was built around 1939 I think. He sold Airy to the Spences of Millfield in May 1943. Sharon and I were back in Stronsay in July 2009 and the big stone tank is still there, still holding roof water for the steading after 70 years.
The men and their wives in the cottages at Whitehall had no tap water, a well just up the road at the back of the stackyard had to do them for buckets of drinking water. They all had water barrels at the corners of their house, again filled from the roofs. Clean enough for washing clothes but it was not used for drinking water. Too many sea gulls perched on the roofs!!
The byres had no water bowls or taps and all the cattle had buckets of water carried to their heads in the stalls. The feeders byre cattle were let off their asks - neck chains - and went to the horse pond for a drink, then back to the byre and up each into their own stall. There were feeding cattle that only got a big basket of turnips twice a day and no water, but there was enough water in the turnips. And as has been said many a time, “Gey good water!”
Hen houses often had a water barrel and a gutter to collect the roof water when it rained. If not, and with dry weather, it had to be labouriously carried in buckets, sometimes quite a distance.
Much more pressing was water for the cattle when out in the fields in summer. The horse drawn water-cart was much used to carry water to a field trough, again hard repetitive work for two men filling it with buckets from the water tank at the steading.
One of the fields with no water, Blackha, suggested a well might find some. Our father decided to dig at the bottom of the field near the shore. Jamie Moad from Airy, a master hand of almost everything, came over to supervise the task. They dug down into the rock with simple hand tools, sledge hammer, pick, pinchbar, heavy punch crowbar drill. It was all hard work which went on as other farm work allowed in summer. Eventually the well was deep enough to find water seeping in from the surrounding rock.
Then they build a stone wall around it, covered it with large flagstones and mounted a pump at the top of a long iron pipe which went down to the bottom of the well. It had a long curved iron handle, a piston with a thick rubber washer to fit the pipe. Operating it was a simple up and down pumping movement but a bucket or two of water had to be first poured into the pipe to prime it and create suction. Got the priming water out of the well with a pail on a rope, though dropping it face down just so in order to fill it was an art to be learned.
A water trough was also built beside the well cast in concrete and the pump emptied into it. Pumping water was a daily task in summer when cattle were in the field and we kept hen houses near that well for the water supply which saved a lot of carrying of pails.
The well is now disused as time has moved on and water is piped by our successors from a County Water Supply to all the fields and all the houses.
Digging wells was a constant task in Stronsay in William Tait’s Diary at Rousam with our grandfather on 27th June 1899 he writes “ Master and Peter Stevenson digging a well in Doonatoon.” On 28th July 1899 they quarried & carted 11 loads of stones for the well at Doonatoon.
On 22nd June 1900 he refers to digging a well in the field called Geogar. So digging wells was a steady job when time allowed from other farm work.
Wells were everywhere, some near a house, others quite a bit to go. Carrying buckets of water with two buckets and a square wooden frame to keep the pails off your legs was a constant task for the women of the house. I do not remember ever seeing a man carrying water.!!!.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)