Month: March 2017

When I was growing up in Maghera in the fifties and sixties we were given time off school in October, known as ‘the potato gathering holiday,’ This provided an opportunity for us children to participate in the potato harvest – that is, those of us who were willing to take up the challenge and earn some extra pocket money in the process.

On my first day in the field I was gathering for a fair-minded man called Willie Paul. The work was steady throughout the day, and with the approach of evening, Willie duly decided it was quitting time. I received from him the much-loved, and later greatly missed, little ten-bob-note. To put this into perspective, my pocket money at the time would have been one shilling, while a quality bar of chocolate would have cost sixpence. This was the first time in my life that I had earned any money and I arrived back in Maghera, after walking home with my friends, a proud boy. I decided to buy a present for my mother and purchased a small bottle of perfume for 1/6 in Bobby Martin’s Chemist shop, which left me with 8/6 – a small fortune to me.

Conditions varied greatly from farm to farm. I can recall gathering at a farm on the verge of the town on the station road with my good friend Mervyn Cochrane and other children. This was one of the hardest day’s work we ever did. I can remember gathering to meet Mervyn and the large amount of potatoes lying between us. We had to go to the house to be paid, with the two of us receiving ten shillings but with some of the younger children receiving considerably less than this, perhaps as little as five shillings. This caused a bit of a stir when some of the youngsters arrived home, with one or two of the mothers considering going to the house to protest but then, I think, they decided to grudgingly accept it.

I was keen to gather potatoes during these years, even doing so after school, walking down the Mullagh Road with my good friend William Anderson to work on Marshal’s farm. It would have been common at that time for the farmers to have cruised about Crawfordsburn on a Friday night booking gatherers for the next day. If we were heading out into the country to a farm, getting to and from the field was, on occasion, verging on the comical. I was often amazed at how many gatherers could be transported safely in the back of a mini-van.

We gathered the potatoes into a large wooden creel, which two of us could lift, moving it forward of the potatoes yet to be gathered. It was wise to take time to scrape the muck off it as we worked, keeping it as light as possible. If the potatoes were being transferred from the creel to the bag that would have been the wrong time to share a joke, as this could have meant the potatoes toppling down the side of the bag instead of into it!

The small grey Massey Ferguson tractor was popular amongst the farming community in Maghera at that time – even for taking the wife into town to do a bit of shopping. This tractor, with a digger attached, dug the potatoes for us to gather. Once a drill had been dug, if the farmer was in no great hurry, he waited until we had gathered it all before digging the next one. This allowed us to have a short break before resuming work. Alternatively, if the farmer was in a more determined mood, he would have been digging the next drill while we were still gathering the previous one, what we would have referred to as ‘digging two ways’. This, of course, meant no break for us between one drill and the next.

I previously mentioned about the difference in conditions from farm to farm – a difference I still remember to this day. One pleasant day still stands out in my mind, I was gathering for Linton in the townland of Grillagh, and we were gathering ‘blues’. The pace was leisurely and the countryside was peaceful. As we gathered the potatoes they were placed in a heap forming a neat line. They were then protected from the weather by soil and straw. This process was known as pitting. The ‘blue’ potato was well liked and more common at that time than it is today – rather like a plain white unsliced loaf with a hard top and no wrapping paper! It was good to eat and, not being too small, easier to gather. In the middle of the day the woman of the house brought the food to the field in a large basket. I can remember so well the delicious egg and onion sandwiches we had that day along with the good strong mug of tea. It was almost like having a picnic. I received twelve shillings and sixpence for that day’s work. For a young gatherer like myself this was as good as it got.

Arthur Houston visited the Heritage and Cultural Centre on the 16th February 2017 to deliver a scholarly and educational talk on the historic Old Bleach Linen Company based in Randalstown. Arthur has researched the subject in great depth and his enthusiasm was evident in the work that went into the preparation for this very interesting lecture. We are very grateful for the time and effort put in and all who attended the talk
have come away with a greater understanding and appreciation of the subject based on the range and depth of the information presented by Arthur.

Autumn was a very exciting time on the farm for myself and my four brothers. At that time of year there was always something interesting happening when we arrived home from school. One of the most exciting activities for us was reaping the corn. Then the neighbours would be there to help with tying the sheaves while myself and my brothers would take turns at sitting on the rear seat of the reaper operating the gear lever that engaged the driving mechanism.

We had lots of fun playing hide and seek around the stooks, watching and learning from the men mowing the hay, gathering sheaves to make stooks and later on ‘carrying in’ to my father when he was building huts of corn. These were the more enjoyable tasks for us when we were young but we also felt that we could have much more fun in the cornfield if none of the older people were around.

On Sunday, after Sunday school, when all was quiet we would disappear after dinner and head outside to make our own fun and have a good time. Uel, my older brother, whom we knew as the ringleader would always devise something. One Sunday he noticed that our neighbouring farmer had just cut his field of corn and of course, the recently built stooks had not yet wilted or bent over.  They were standing very upright as if in a military stance. Uel decided that these stooks were just exactly what we needed to have our game of leap frog. The stooks were of uneven height some had four sheaves others had three, so of course we were daring each other as to which one of us could jump the highest without knocking over the erect sheaves. We played for hours, had a great time but did not realise that half of the field of stooks were demolished as a result of our activities.

We headed home and on arrival we were asked by mother where we were, to which our reply was, ‘Just playing in the field’. ‘What field’? asked mother. ‘Ah just out the lane,’ was Uel’s reply. ‘Alright then, now get ready for bed and don’t forget you have school in the morning’.

Monday morning arrived, we were packed of to school and on the way we passed by the field we had so much fun in the previous day. Perhaps at the same time as we were having our mid-morning break the neighbouring farmer arrived in with my father for a chat and to discuss the problem he had experienced during the night with his field of corn. ‘Sam, did you hear the storm last night, the wind must have been fierce?’ No, I didn’t hear a thing’, was the reply. ‘That’s very funny, because do you know that field of corn we cut on Friday? It was completely flattened last night, must have been the wind. I’m surprised Sam that you didn’t hear it.’ My father would have thought for a moment or two and silently said to himself, ‘I know what happened to your field of corn stooks’.

The autumn was a favourite time of the year for most farmers. That was when they could harvest the crops that had been planted in the spring. By now the long hot summer was but a distant memory, the days were becoming shorter and the nights much longer. The golden landscape, the trees shedding their leaves, the pigeons coming home to roost in the beech trees before their last leaves fluttered to the ground were signs that a long harsh winter was approaching. Autumn brought the threshing of the corn and seed hay – the result of nature having done its duty over the earlier months.

At threshing time neighbouring farmers would arrive at the farm with an implement of their choice to take up their position around the haystack and threshing machine carrying out the task which they felt most suited them. It could be forking sheaves, taking off and tying bags of corn, threading the baler, feeding the thresher or maybe just wandering around not committing to any task in particular, but having a good craic with everyone. Father would often make the comment about such a person, ‘Sure he’s only here for his dinner’.

At 12.30 my mother would blow the whistle letting everyone know that dinner was on the table. The old Fordson tractor’s revs would be lowered, the drive belt pulley disengaged and, with a snatch of Freddie Caldwell’s sleeved arm, the belt driving the thresher would hit the ground at about 10mph. With the result of its rotational movement, the belt would screw its way along the ground and come to rest many yards away from its working position.

Dinner at midday on a working farm was a very formal affair, each worker entered the kitchen, after removing their cap (which they placed behind them on their seat) and took up their position around the table, the same position they had taken in previous years when helping at threshing time. One particular very close neighbour, Hugh McKeown, arrived every year with his pitchfork with the intention of forking sheaves of corn from the stack up on to the thresher. Normal protocol dictated that whoever was forking from the stack ensured the bottoms of their trouser legs were tied tightly with a piece of binder twine, this of course was to prevent any mice or small rats making their way up the wearer’s trousers. My father often told the story about Hugh, who one year unfortunately forgot to tie his trousers at the bottom with of course the inevitable happening. So, at this particular threshing event, when Hugh was sitting at the dinner table enjoying his well-earned meal, a little mouse made the journey from the leg of his trousers up through his waistcoat and shirt eventually popping out on to his shoulder where it sat wondering what to do next. Then a neighbour from across the table shouted ‘Hugh there’s a mouse on your shoulder’. Suddenly, at hearing the noise, the mouse took one giant leap into the unknown and landed straight in the middle of Hugh’s plate of stew. I think my father exaggerated a little here when he went on to say that Hugh picked up the mouse by the tail, wiped it down with his hand and then threw it out through the door, returning to carry on with his dinner. My father’s final comment was, ‘You see, Hugh doesn’t like to waste good food.’