Footsteps in the Furrow. Andrew Arbuckle
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models had bagging units as part of the combine. Sacks were filled on the combine and, when full, were then allowed to slide down a chute onto the ground. There, they were loaded onto trailers by men using a strong stick or pitchfork shaft. One man each side of the sack lifted it upright, then each holding an end of the stick, the bag was allowed to fall back onto the stick before a grunt from each person accompanied it being lifted onto the trailer floor. There were few objections from farm staff when bulk tanks on the combines and large silos on the farms removed much of the physical effort that accompanied cereal harvesting.
Combine harvesting and bulk grain handling brought with it the need to dry the grain. The old method of stooking and stacking allowed a natural method of drying grain so that it would keep through the winter, but the grain coming straight off the field from the combine often required to be dried. In the early years when the combined grain was in sacks, some farms and merchants made artificial floors in their sheds. Hot drying air could then seep through the grain sacks lying on metal grids on the false floor.
As bags went out of fashion and were replaced with bulk grain, special dryers came onto the scene. These brought the moisture level of the grain down prior to its storage in large silos. As always with new technology, there are pitfalls and more than a few samples of grain were well and truly roasted on their passage through the early driers. By burning up any chance of germination, the farmer reduces his selling options. The grain cannot go for malting as germination is an integral part of the process, neither can any that has been burnt in a dryer be used for seed – again, germination is vital. This reduces the market to one of animal feed, which may have been an important sector in the early years of the last century but now only plays a small role in the final destination of the grain crop.
Sowing and growing
In the early days of the last century, playing the fiddle brought no music to the fields. However, if it had been played correctly, then a good, even crop of grain would result, the fiddle in this case being a stringed bow that turned a small plate in front of a hopper carried by the sower. The principle was simple: seeds falling onto the spinning disc were thrown out onto the soil, hopefully in an even pattern.
The fiddle took over from the method of sowing grain adopted by man since biblical times. A rhythmical swing of alternating hands full of grain as the sower walked steadily up and down the field had scattered the seed for thousands of years. In fact, it was said that ploughmen could be recognised when they went to town as their hands swung from side to side rather than back and forward, but I am sure there were other, more telltale features that revealed the rural dweller.
Later in the century machinery came into its own, with seed barrows pulled first by horses and then with the removal of the shafts and the insertion of a tractor linkage point. Nowadays the seeder combines with various cultivation equipment to create what is unimaginatively if accurately described as a ‘one-pass’ seeder.
After seeding, the fields had to be cleared of any stones that might blunt a scythe blade or bend a finger in the cutting bar of the binder. This stone collecting was generally considered women’s work and small gangs of them would be seen gathering together piles of stones that would later be loaded onto carts heading for a dump.
Stone collecting was always the most dispiriting of jobs. Every year there would be another crop to collect and on Logie Farm we would regularly lift 200 tons, or 180 tonnes, of stones off 150 acres every year. The arrival of more and more stones was not, as was often suggested, because they grew, but because of frost heaving them upwards, and the point of a plough or cultivator then lifting them to the surface. On my stone collecting stints, the instruction from the old grieve was not to pick up any stone smaller than my head. That was all right, but I don’t think the grieve realised that picking stones was a head-shrinking exercise! Nowadays, there is virtually no stone collection in cereal fields. Cultivators tend not to prise them out of the soil, and where they are a problem heavy rollers are used to thump them beyond the range of potential damage.
One other job relating to cereal growing, which thankfully slipped off the agenda before my time, was the requirement to hand-hoe weeds from the growing crop. This required some nifty work with long-handled hoes which was essential before selective weedkillers were available. If a crop of cereals was badly infected by weeds, drastic action was sometimes taken with a spray of sulphuric acid. Because many of the weeds were broadleaved, they would generally soak up far more of this killer chemical while the young cereal plant shoots would avoid the worst of the treatment.
Such was the significance of the arrival of selective weedkillers that the local paper reported in 1949 that Mr Adamson of Friarton Farm, Newport-on-Tay had that year sprayed half his cereal acreage with MCPA, one of the first generation of herbicides.
THE first time I found out there was money in potatoes was when I was still in my short trouser days. It might seem a bit youthful to be trading in tatties, but if that is the case then a misunderstanding has crept into the statement.
The learning occurred in the days when trailer loads of potatoes came in from the field and reversed into the sheds. There, after the trailer tipped and emptied as much as it could onto the heap, an Irishman would empty the rest with a graip, throwing them up as high as he could to make best use of the space in the building.
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