brushes accidentally splashed preservative onto our skin. This routine work was not enjoyed. In addition to the discomfort experienced by wayward splashes and drips, working clothes were marked. There being no overalls in those days, the general practice was to cut a hole in the base of an old jute sack and then stick your head through it, leaving the wearer with the latest fashion: a bag advertising Bloggs Grain.
From the food troughs, with a slightly acrobatic swing we could get into the slatted hay haiks above the troughs. On some farms, there was a direct connection with the loft next door so that hay or oat straw could be fed through the boles. Crawling through these boles would then take you into the loft with its shiny wooden floor; smoothed and ribbed by years and years of forage being dragged along as it was filled and gradually emptied.
On some farms these lofts would be filled by straw conveyers slung from the roof rafters straight from the threshing mill; others had conveyors that took the bulk grain into the dry feed store that was also filled with sacks of various foods for livestock. In both, bags or bulk, there were a thousand dusty hidey-holes where youngsters might conceal themselves when playing hide and seek.
The loft was accessed by a set of stone steps. These steps were worn away by the tackets, or short nails in the soles of the boots of a generation of men who carried sacks of grain weighing more than 100 kilos. Pre-Health and Safety Executive days, there were no handrails on the steps and so, if brave or foolish enough, we youngsters could jump off the top step onto the cobbled yard below.
Below the loft was the cart shed where the coup carts, and later small tractor trailers were housed; each with its own beautifully constructed archway of stonework built in an arc with a keystone. At the highpoint of the arch was a hook, on which the carter would hang the shafts of the cart. Alongside each cart were hooks on which the extra cart sides were stored, in case the work involved a bulky crop. Above, on the wooden rafters were the flakes used when carting hay and straw.
At the other end of the loft were the cattle courts and again, we, as children out of sight of adult restraint, would climb into the troughs running along each side of the raised gangway. We would then climb into the hay haiks and up onto the couples, or roof rafters. From this high vantage point, it was a test of courage to crawl along these wooden batons looking down on the cattle below. Then, in a game of dares we would hang from the beams until an unsuspecting bullock wandered below. The aim was to land on its back, but more often we missed and fell onto well-trodden dung.
As we stepped from rafter to rafter we had little thought of the joiners of a previous century possibly having skimped on their nailing. In our escapades, we believed that accidents were for other people; any superficial damage would sort itself. That is why short trousers were always worn because skinned knees were cheaper to sort out than tears in long trousers.
Below us were the cattle that were spending their winter being fed and watered as part of the fattening process. Fife was, and still is, an area for finishing cattle and winter housing was required for this purpose.
On farms with breeding herds there would be some smaller buildings with stalls, where the cattle would be tethered by the neck. These buildings had large, vertical flagstones separating the stalls. There was a food trough in front and a dung passage at the back, where the day’s animal waste, as we never called it, could be swept along to the end of the shed before being barrowed out to the midden – the heap of waste and animal dung.
Milk cows were also tethered in the same type of stalls so that milking could be carried out in relative safety with only the danger of a kick from the hind legs, if the cow did not relish the milking process.
When we tired of the cattle courts or the milking stalls, with their warm, moist, sweet smell, we would play in the turnip shed, which was handily built next door so that the cattlemen had only short trips to make between shed and trough. The turnip shed was less fun and invariably led to excursions onto the roofs of the steading itself; the route was through a broken roof light, then a clamber up the pantiles, trying hard not to dislodge them.
Again, we seemed to care little for the robustness of the roofs. We could see down into the sheds, but never thought that the whole roof might be somewhat unsafe. The brave walked along the ridges, from where they could see the whole layout of the steading, all the time hoping no adult would see them.
Many of the old farm steadings were built in a U-shape, with the farmhouse often helping to fill the gap in the ‘U’. From a high point on the roof, our eyes followed around. First, the stables, then the loft and cart sheds, and onto the cattle courts, always bounded in by the turnip shed.
Many of the smaller farms had a horse mill. This was a separate hexagonal building, in which the power to drive the threshing mill was generated by a single horse pulling a shaft that drove a central hub or capstan. The old steadings were built for, and by, horsepower, though on the larger farms steam engines may have puffed away, turning the wheels of the threshing mills.
The majority of the steadings in the arable parts of Fife were built in the middle and late 1800s. Most of the farms were tenanted and landlords, keen on improvement, built farm steadings for their tenants. Stone was the main material used in the construction and the buildings were built of local sandstone or harder whinstone. Because of the cost and effort of transporting stone, many quarries were created purely to supply material for farm steadings and cottages.
In that busy building era, most of the parishes had several stone masons. The buildings they created reflect the agricultural priorities of the area, as well as the relevant importance of both the farmhouse and the farm cottages. But even in my youth, there were additions to these traditional steadings, thus proving the old adage that no farmer, however intelligent he claimed to be, ever built his steading big enough or his field gates wide enough.
The latter point related not just to the ever-increasing scale of farm machinery, but also to the fact that generations of ploughmen, farmers and farm students have notoriously been unable to guide a tractor or implement into, or out of, a field without touching, scraping, or even the downright breaking of a gatepost. The arrival of the tractor saw great ugly holes being punched through the original stone walls as the old stable door had not been built wide enough to allow access for mechanical vehicles.
Some of the earliest additions to farm steadings were former World War II buildings, which were given a second lease of life as implement sheds, henhouses or pig-fattening buildings. Many of these were made of corrugated iron; others were pre-fabricated buildings.
On some farms, silage towers had been built in the 1920s and 1930s. These were often made with concrete and a few examples such as the one at Collairnie Farm, Letham still exist. Then, as new materials came along and more knowledge of silage making came into use, fibreglass sealed silage towers soon pierced the skyline. With less demand for grass-based forage, there were always fewer of these in Fife than in dairying districts of Scotland.
The boy on the roof of the old buildings in the 1950s could also see the first bulk grain bins built close to the steadings. These came in with the combines when lifting heavy sacks fell out of favour. Conveying grain electrically by auger and elevator was found to be far more efficient and much quicker.
The first of the specialist potato sheds also came into being in the post-war years. These were brick-built, with asbestos sheeting over steel trusses. As technology advanced, later models dispensed with the trusses, replacing them with steel beams. This allowed farmers to maximise storage space by stacking the potato boxes higher than previously imagined.
Today’s modern potato shed comes with ambient temperature control that removes the old problem of tuber diseases spreading through the crop when the potatoes overheated after being lifted in wet conditions. It also stops the sprouting of potatoes in warmer weather.
