Hay Making in Decades Past.
This was one of the more favourable farming
‘campaigns’ of the yearly cycle of my youth. It was clean, the days were long,
the weather while difficult at times was generally bright and amenable. One
could also achieve a good deal in a day.
In the mid-fifties, the meadow was cut by a
horse-pulled mowing machine. There was little drama in this task. The
corncrakes were often victims of this chore. But nature was not seen in a
studied way then and seemed eternally capable of being replenished. The only
variable in the meadow mowing was the reverse run to ‘take out’ the ‘back
swarth’ adjacent to the ditch or wall.
The cut meadow was left for a number of
days and then the teasing started. If the weather was kind this could be a
clear run of defined tasks. In my boyish days, the swarths were shaken out
manually with hand forks but in my memory, this was short as we had a hay turner
which raised and shook the meadow for proper drying. A kind of curing process.
The only grass which caused some difficulty was the one nearest the
ditch/wall/hedge, i.e. the ‘back swarth’. After a couple of days, the real
action began when the process was advanced to a real saving stage. The big
intimidating horse rake was introduced to rake the meadow into rows. This
required authority and guile to execute well. When the rows were made and had
some more sun in them the next instrument in action, having a medieval look
about it and may not have been a general tool, was what we called a ‘buck
rake’. One could hardly call this a machine, more a device, as it collected the
rowed meadow and by tipping it after say thirty yards it formed a heap which,
when done four or five times, provided the material for the advanced stage in
the whole process. The ‘buck rake’ was an intimidating device and on an
occasion, in the tipping of it, a handle nearly caught me under the chin which
would have been a knock-out blow.
If there were enough people for a decent
‘meitheal’ a number of these activities went on in tandem. If the working
number was small and when material for a small number of cocks was gathered
into a ragged heap, putting this into a cock of hay was the priority. On
reflection, I wonder now when the meadow became hay? Perhaps when it was in its
cocks.
All the above was straight forward while
the gods smiled but when the weather gods saw fit and the rain fell it was a
different game. The bane of hay saving was in having a big field of meadow
‘down’ and being dried out and on the brink of the final press of getting into
cocks and the rain came! It necessitated the second turn of having it in the
right condition to put into cocks again. I had a real dislike of the process of
making little cocks called, with us, ‘hand cocks’. There was a problem with
semi-dried hay being cocked and descending into a process called ‘heating’
which damaged it to varying degrees. Also, the extra work was a psychological
hit. I don’t wish to dwell too much on the negatives as they are water under
the bridge in the memory bank.
Making decent cocks was a reasonable skill. We never over-indulged in that like some neighbours did. My father used to say they are not here to stay that long so they got a short lease. In his later years he did certain jobs such as making the hay ropes with me turning the twister which made the rope strong enough to tie down the cock which could be a victim of the wind.
We had meadow in different locations and
they each provide different pictures for me now. One was on an upland hill area
and it was suggested that on a clear day we could see Croagh Patrick. I was
never convinced of that. I used to lie on my back occasionally and feel that
I was on the edge of the globe’s surface to such an extent that I would slip
off it. Odd but true. This was my mother’s old homestead of Aughtygad. We would
have the kettle boiled in her abandoned home. We should have retained that
house with the fuchsia colouring the gable end and some rose bushes creeping up
in a corner.
In another location, we would actually go to
and be welcomed into Delia Leonard’s thatched cottage to have the kettle boiled
giving strong ‘tae’ with hairy bacon sandwiches or whatever for lunch though
that term was hardly used then. Delia lived with her brother the tailor.
As in the bog the small boxes of Galtee or
Calvita cheese were a treat and because it was warm the memorable drink of the
hayfield was the flagon of Cidona. We would give it a shake and open the cork
and let the fizz propel into the nose.
The introduction of the blue and red
Fordson Dexta tractor 7249 - on our farm in 1957- changed the pace of all those
elements. The horses and the horse machines were side-lined. They are still to
be seen, as if in a machinery graveyard, in a small field near farm sheds there
today while the Dexta still survives in a hay shed with its age apparent.
Speed was now the mantra though it took
decades to arrive at the cut and wrap efficiency of today.
That transformation saw the Weetabix bale,
followed by the round bale, the intimidating silage heap with its molasses
accelerant, the silage wrapped black bale with ‘Up Roscommon’ emblazoned on it
near Fuerty and so on.
The haymaking of yore is now part of
folklore and is illustrated through relics of related machines in museums such
as Turlough Park near Castlebar and Kennedy’s in North Leitrim or in occasional
farmyards reflecting sentimentality for the past.
For me, it was another segment of my youth
which I remember with the nostalgia of age.
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