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Jack Hill, born 1926, lived on The Gables Farm with his parents in the 1930s, and now takes us through the old harvesting methods used then.
Before the binder could be taken into a field of corn, the first width around the field had to be scythed clear and collected by hand into sheaves. The scythe was a fearsome tool with its sweeping blade, which required a deal of skill to keep it at the correct angle to avoid digging the point into the ground.
Nowadays the combine has its cutters immediately in front so just starts where it enters the field. Tying up the sheaves at this stage was usually achieved by using a twist of stalks.
I used to handle the scythe when I reached the age of ten, but only for cutting thistles in the grass pastures. I remember one occasion carrying the scythe behind me and cutting the rear of both legs. Fortunately the cuts were shallow and not much blood was seen.
The biggest headaches were presented at frequent intervals by the knotting device. This part of the binder had a large, curved, hollow needle that passed around each sheaf as it was being set up on the sloping platform and pressed into a tight bundle. The string passed around and then the knotter was supposed to complete the fastening.
A malfunction would allow loose knots to be made and these would burst open when the ejector came into play. Often after many attempts to rectify the fault, the decision would be made for John to carry on cutting and Dad would follow after and tie each sheaf by hand.
Unskilled labour i.e. me, Mother and Hollick would then be called upon to collect the sheaves lying on the ground and erect them into stooks or shocks. A shock would contain up to ten sheaves standing vertically in two lines supporting each other. Thus air could pass through the base and hasten the drying of the green plants mingling with the stalks.
The shocks were allowed to stay for up to a week and then, depending on the weather, would be gathered up and taken to a stackyard or abandoned if the corn had begun to sprout.
For the actual corn gathering the large-wheeled tipper cart was transformed into a wagon by the addition of a front framing with two extra wheels and shafting for the horse. Extra strakes were added to the ends and sides to enlarge the carrying capacity.
The wagon was created in the workshops of Joseph Insley, who was married to Dad's sister Lilian. Small girls or boys were recruited, nay coerced, into working on the carts to place the sheaves for a secure load.
Sheaves were hoisted up two at a time using wide-tined forks with long handles, and the sheaves had to placed in such a way as to overlap and stay in place on the longish journey back home. Just to be on the safe side, the load was always secured by hemp ropes, but sometimes when negotiating a dip in the ground the sheaves would slip.
Rebuilding a load en route would always create a bad feeling, but no swearing as this was taboo. Once in the stackyard the sheaves had to be offloaded and placed in a stack. This work was always labour intensive and back-breaking, involving as it did the throwing of the sheaves across the stack to the far side.
Later in the year, but usually sometime in the spring, a thrashing contractor named Bowley would come up from Newtown Unthank with his equipment towed by a steam traction engine manufactured by Fowlers of Leeds. The thresher would be sited a metre from the stack, jacked level and then coupled to the engine by a 150mm wide canvas belt which passed over the flywheel with one twist to keep everything in place.
When brought up to working speed the belt would wave up and down in the air with no form of protection for anyone who dipped under it.
The machine was magical to a small boy with its various hums and burps and whines when sheaves were pushed into the feed box The delivery end was closest to the steam engine, trash fell directly below whilst straw was ejected from the rear and was carried by helpers to a new stack nearby. From this stack it would be used for bedding for the cattle.
Working on the unthrashed stack was hard work as the sheaves tended to cling to each other, and so it was a matter of unpicking to keep the sheaf tied until it reached the feed box.
This was the time of year when mice hunts began in earnest and a barrow load of dead mice would often be the result of these forays. As a child with the motto live and let live I closed my mind to this slaughter for the common good.
Sometimes a rat would dash out of the stack and would cause tremors of fear if cornered in the kitchen garden next door to the stackyard. Sometimes a nest of tiny white baby mice would be exposed and this would present a worse problem of killing. But in the end the little beggars had to go.
Good quality grain was fed into large bushel-sized sacks, which required either the use of a sack barrow or John Richardson's broad shoulders via a sack-lifting hoist worked by a handle. John would carry them up to the barn where they were placed on boarding to keep them above the dampish brick floor.
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