of the various parts of the binder, although I do remember the words were often, as they say, colourful.
Sheaves were lying on the ground and the grain not yet fully ripe, so they were built into stooks to complete the ripening. The technique for stooking required picking a sheaf up in each hand and then putting one under each arm; the next move would be to clamp the two down together, intending to semi-bind the tops of the sheaves together, while at the same time ensuring the butt ends of the sheaves were correct. Five pairs of sheaves made a stook, which were always built facing due south so that the drying sun would get to both sides. If the crop was thin, it was not unknown for farmers to reduce the number of sheaves to only four pairs, as nosey neighbours could always see a sparse number of stooks, but they would not always notice the number of sheaves had been reduced. Stooking was not seen as a highly skilled job or one where great physical effort was needed. Often it was left to the women folk, the orramen and the loons to carry out the work.
The favourite crop to handle was wheat, although it was always reckoned to be ‘hard on the hands,’ but barley easily took the award for most disliked because the sticky awns would lodge in the sleeves and jackets. A close second prize in those irritation stakes were the sheaves containing thistles in the days before chemical weed control.
More annoyance was caused when the farm staff had to re-build the stooks blown over in a harvest gale. Often this would happen on a damp morning, thus producing a memorable combination of damp, soggy and sticky clothing. In extreme wet weather, temporary fences were erected in fields so that sheaves could be laid against them to dry.
There were other concerns when the sun was up. Stooking could be a hot, dusty job and one of the most anticipated perks would be the tin can holding the ‘oatmeal’. The simple recipe for this was plain oatmeal added to cold water. It slaked the thirst for the workers, who then left the boys to slurp the soggy, cold oatmeal.
After about ten days in stooks, when the grain had ripened and the ‘heat’ gone out of the straw, ‘leading in’ would start. This was a co-ordinated operation, with teams hand-forking sheaves onto carts. These were especially adapted by the removal of the normal sides and their replacement with straw ‘flakes’ giving a bigger area on which to build the sheaves. The carter always took pride in ensuring his building would not only look good, but would ensure there was no sloughing off, or loss of sheaves on the bumpy farm tracks leading to the stackyard.
Integral to the leading in the field was the boy, who would drive the tractor or lead the horse between the stooks – a job which required a gentle foot on the clutch pedal or gee-up of the horse. Any jerky start or stop would encourage an oath or two from the cart builder as he tried to keep his balance atop a cart full of sheaves.
For those in the field, the best and most remembered part of the day’s work was going home on top of the last load of the day. With a soft bed of straw below and the setting sun sinking over the horizon, it is part of harvest life that is deeply etched on the mind. Muscles were tired, but the satisfaction of the work done triumphed over the weariness.
The stack yard was always reckoned to show the wealth of the farm and the skill of its workforce. Thus it was the pride and joy of both employee and employer. A stackyard full of well-built stacks would be witnessed and admired all around the district. Weekends would see a gentle tour around the neighbourhood by men on their bikes and by the farmers in their cars. The skill of building stacks was one of the highest in the farm worker’s list. Curiously the advice given to stack builders was that passed on to those making roads: ‘Keep it braw and fou [full] and weel [well] rounded in the middle and the sides weel redd [tidy] and there’s nae [no] fear o’ ye’. The man with a reputation for building good stacks could always ensure an excellent fee from farmers, who not only valued the appearance of a good stackyard, but knew it helped ensure good-quality grain when the mill came around.
Sheaves were forked from the carts into the reach of the stack builder. It sounds simple and easy, but the sheaf had to be presented the correct way round and at just the right distance from the stack builder. He worked in a clockwise direction around the stack, with every layer called a ‘gang’. Any slackness in delivering the sheaves was rewarded with a torrent of abuse directed at the luckless forker, or craw, as the deliverer of sheaves was called. Thus, I learned a language to this day never repeated in school.
For the connoisseur, the stacks in Fife were built differently from those north of the Tay. To understand the difference it is necessary to know that the moving binder did not leave the finished article with a square butt end. There was a long end formed at the start of a sheaf; this unevenness helped with stooking and stability as the long ends were kept to the outside.
The stooking practice was common throughout Scotland, but when stacks were built, Fifers preferred keeping the long ends to the top at all times while Angus farmers took the opposite view, with the shorter ends uppermost. In both cases, the aim was to prevent rain entering the centre of the stack, thus spoiling the grain.
North and south of the Tay, topping out of a stack was common, with the topmost sheaf turned upside down and then folded over. Unlike other parts of the country, there seemed to be little ceremony about topping out a stack, perhaps because stacks were more commonplace in Fife.
For stacks that were to be kept through the winter, the next operation was thatching, which was intended to keep both grain and straw dry. Normally, long-stemmed wheat straw was used, but some farms on the coast used reeds. In both cases, the intent was to shed rain off the stack. In some East Neuk farms, old sails were used as short-term covers for stacks to be threshed before Christmas. To hold the thatch in place, ropes made from imported esparto grass were used. These ‘sparty’ ropes had no great pulling strength but were eminently suitable for thatching. And that is how the grain was stored until such a date as the farmer, or sometimes the banker, made a decision.
Threshing
Some 200 years ago, it was reckoned there were more than 300 threshing mills in Fife. It was claimed there was at least one in every parish. They were installed in the period when the price of grain was good and money was invested in agriculture. Where there was an adequate flow of water, these early models used it as a power source, but for the majority, power came from horses or cattle harnessed to a central drive shaft walking round and round. There are still a number of these horsemill hexagonal shaped buildings in farm steadings in the area.
The next development was the travelling mill, which was powered by steam. One of the first travelling mills was paraded through Cupar in 1851, on its way to a number of smaller scale farms that could not afford their own mill. The framework of the travelling mills was wood and often they were painted salmon pink with red post-office coloured frames. The travelling mill was a specialist two-man operation, moving from farm to farm, with the mill pulled by a steam engine. During transit, these vehicles also had a small wooden bothy linked to the back of the mill.
Most mill men did not go home in the week and they ate and slept in their temporary home.
Often this forerunner of the modern-day road train was further lengthened with the addition of a straw baler. The weight of the mill, baler and caravan could total 8 tons, or 7.2 tonnes. Such was the damage done by this heavy machinery to primitively tarred roads in the early days of the century that proposals were made to ban the vehicles.
The National Farmers Union and the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture both took up the cudgels on behalf of travelling mills, arguing they were essential to the farming economy. Seeking a compromise, local authorities then suggested that the vehicles could move early in the day or late in the evening – both times were chosen because tar on the road would be harder than under the midday sun when it could be torn up by the large iron wheels. As it was, the mills often moved after working a full day, reaching the next farm
