A DAY TRIP TO DEVON

DAY TRIP TO DEVON

Tony had to do a couple of bat and barn owl surveys of farm buildings in Devon so I went along for the ride. We had what my father called ‘clearance weather’: sunshine and some cloud, a frisky breeze and lovely air, a change from the overcast, damp muggy weather of the past week.

Only 50 miles from home made a difference. We passed through country with open generous curves. What strange names villages and hamlets have in different areas.  During the journey I saw Black Dog,  Box,  Frost,  Newbuildings,  Hole,  Three Hammers  and Tree. Each with a history story  to explain the name, if only I knew.

Many buildings are thatched and we had the nostalgic sight of fields of stooked corn  --  long-stemmed wheat specially grown for thatching. I was a girl during the transition from reaper-binders to combine harvesters (tractor-drawn then). Happy memories are mingled with the stinging-itching of arms sore from the corn stems mixed with thistles in the sheaves as we placed them butt end down in pairs leaning towards each other in stooks of 4 or 5 pairs in neat rows in the field. Woe betide us if Arthur the foreman, ever watchful, noticed a collapsing stook or one out of alignment!

Oats was traditionally cut under-ripe and the stooks left in the field “ to hear 3 Sundays’ churchbells” before being carted and stacked.

Wheat and barley were dried in the stook before again being stacked and thatched for later threshing.

The threshing drum went from farm to farm. A huge machine, driven by a wide canvas belt from the pulley wheel on a stationary tractor. There was a traditional pecking order among the labourers where I worked. The general farm hands pitched the sheaves onto the top of the drum, a job that became harder as the day wore on and the stack got lower. Johnny the head tractor driver caught each sheaf, turned it the right way and cut the bond as he passed it to Arthur the foreman who trusted no-one else to feed the corn evenly and steadily into the hopper above the drum. The whole affair shook and roared, dust hung in the air and after some hours of toil everyone would be hoping for a slipping belt (rectified with dabs of Stockholm Tar) or a blocked drum, giving a much needed break for a few minutes.

One man stood by the corn chutes, bagging off the grain and loading the one hundredweight sacks onto a waiting trailer (one and a quarter cwt if wheat) two men stacked the loose straw and I, as ‘the boy’ had the foul job of bagging up the ‘cavings’ the dusty sneezy chaff blowing out of the back end of the threshing machine.. These sacks were bulky but not heavy. Happy days!

Transition years.Harvesting in 1952. Tractor-drawn combine on left. On the right, the first self-propelled combine in Hertfordshire! But we still also used a reaper-binder for cutting corn to thresh later, to give thatching straw.