Footsteps in the Furrow. Andrew Arbuckle
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in which to wash the clothes and blankets. Many were not connected to an electricity supply until the mid-1950s, and before rural areas were connected to the national grid, many received their power from the generator on the farm.
Before electricity came along, the lighting came from paraffin lamps or even just candles. In those pre-electric power days everyone was more accustomed to going to bed early, especially in the winter months. Without electricity, the hobs on the fire were used for kettles and for cooking the meals. Sometimes a hanging chain was used for the cooking pots over the open fire.
The diet of farm workers has been described as basic, but as early as 1893 it was reported that they had given up the old diet of oatmeal, potatoes and bannocks (oatmeal cakes), and were buying meat, sometimes as much as 5/-, or 25 pence, worth every week. Vegetables from the garden supplemented basic foods such as potatoes and oatmeal, and this was especially true in the winter, with leeks, carrots and kale helping to make the base for many a plate of soup.
For any other food, there were two buying options: these were the circus of small vans, or prior to them the horse-drawn grocery and butcher-meat carts. On farms close to built-up areas, there might be bakers’ and butchers’ vans every other day. One housewife declared that such were the number of vehicles selling around the farms, ‘Yer hands were never oot o’ yer purse.’
And yet they had to be, because until the 1940s wages were paid only at the end of the first 6 months in work. Normally there would be no income until then and most households survived by local van men allowing credit to be built up until the wage was paid. This cycle of debt was then repeated on a 6-monthly basis. To go cap in hand to the farmer and ask for money to be advanced in order that the family might get through to the next payday was seen as proof of a wife’s fecklessness with money.
For the working man, his morning ‘piece’ would usually be sandwiches with fillings of cheese or jam. Fillings such as corned beef or fish paste were also favourites. As was often said in a parody of The Beatitudes, when the men sat down for their morning break, ‘blessed are the piece makers for they shall inherit the earth’. The pieces would normally be wrapped in a sheet of an old newspaper or some greaseproof paper. They would be put inside a tin so that the farm dog, or any vermin, would not be tempted to have an early feed at the ploughman’s expense.
After World War II, every piece seemed to be carried in an ex-army khaki coloured knapsack, which often served the secondary purpose of providing a dry seat on a damp field headland during break time. Former military clothing was also used by many farm workers during the post-war years: before cabs became an integral part of the tractor, it was quite common to see the driver swathed in an army greatcoat as he tried to keep the cold or the rain, and sometimes both, at bay.
At least these coats were an improvement on the old sacks that the horsemen threw across their shoulders in wet or cold weather. Sometimes, during a heavy shower or spell of rain, the horsemen would actually take shelter under the belly of their horse.
Summer wear was invariably the bib-and-tucker set of dungarees. It took a long time for the non-farming public to adapt to denim with their wearing of jeans and they have still to adopt the bib part of the dungarees.
If they were working in wet muddy fields, the workers would invariably wear ‘nicky tarns’. These were created by the simple measure of tying string just below the knee, thus keeping the top half of their trousers clean and dry. Some workers, who had been in the Army, also wore bands of protective material around their legs in the manner of puttees. Today’s farm workers also wear a uniform. Generally it is an overall that keeps most of the dirt and dust out; often complete with a sponsor’s, or tractor manufacturer’s logo. To top this off, most of today’s workers wear a baseball cap, an import from the USA.
The importance of agricultural employment
Despite remaining one of the main industries in Scotland, over the past century farming has seen a slow, but consistent fall in the numbers of people employed. One hundred years ago, some 209,000 people worked the land. That was equivalent to more than 10% of the total workforce. By 2000, there were fewer than 30,000 full-time workers on Scottish farms, just over 0.5% of the total population.
The first major decline in the numbers employed on farms came during World War I. Recruitment posters with Lord Kitchener pointing out, ‘Your Country Needs You’, along with a heady dose of patriotism, saw the biggest-ever reduction in manpower on farms. During that period, one local Union chairman said, ‘There was no doubt that agricultural men were of the best type. They had more stamina than two men. It was strong men that were needed for the war effort.’
Within a matter of four years, more than a third of all male farm workers had enlisted. And where did they end up? The answer is both simple and desperately sad: the vast majority ended up under the soil in a foreign land, as anyone who visits the vast yet neatly kept cemeteries close to the battlefields in France and Belgium can see.
To fill the gap, more women were employed and the same period saw the arrival of the Women’s Land Army. The same Union chief also had a view about female labour on the farm: ‘They have already proven to be very useful and I have heard very good reports of women, but they are no use for driving a pair of horse.’
After the Armistice in 1918, when the surviving troops came home, few former farm workers returned to the land. Initially, wages rose as farmers who had made big profits in the latter years of the war attempted to ensure that their farms were in full production with full staff complements. However, as imports swamped the home market and prices plunged, wages were cut and discontent emerged.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the numbers of farm workers continued to dwindle. This was not a profitable time in the industry and wages meant money going out of the farm. Many of the West Coast farmers setting up in Fife attributed their survival in these hard times to being able to work the farm solely with members of their own families.
World War II saw another drift of farm workers from the land as they went off to fight the enemy. Meanwhile, those left behind picked up the skills needed to operate the tractors and other labour-saving machinery. This post-war surge into more and more mechanisation underlined the fact that the days of having large farm staffs were gone forever. However, there were still some shortages and the Union felt obliged to try and recruit workers from local towns. This had mixed success. One farmer reckoned town dwellers thought that ‘any duffer can do farm work – but that is not the case.’
More recently, Fife may be one of the few areas where employment connected with farming and food production has stabilised. The introduction of labour-intensive commercial soft fruit and vegetable enterprises has brought with it a need for large numbers of harvesting hands. These seldom go into the full-time employed category and the official agricultural employment statistics do not reflect their numbers.
Hierarchy
There was a real hierarchy of workers on the farms, but at the top of the tree was the ‘grieve’. He was in direct contact with the farmer and in charge whenever the farmer was away. One farmer was heard to pronounce that if he was given good gaffers, or grieves, he could farm the half of Fife.
Many of the best of them might have been farmers themselves and often they knew the farm, and definitely the farm workers themselves, better than the farmer. They were men of strong opinion and the relationship between farmer and grieve was often fraught. One story with wide circulation in North Fife related around Jim Duncan, grieve at Rathillet farm and in charge of more than a dozen men.
One day, on his return from market, the farmer, Joe Harper, said that he had bought a hydraulic loader for the tractor. This would take much of the hard work out of jobs such as emptying dung from the cattle courts. Jim Duncan thought all this a bit modern and when the new piece of equipment was delivered, he hung it from the shed couples, or rafters. It apparently stayed there in pristine condition for more than a decade as the farm staff continued to empty the courts by hand graip (forks).
While he may have come off second-best in that instance, Mr Harper evened out the score by wearing