 |  | | | Farming Life | There are 6 messages in this section. |
Marjory McQueen from Aberdeen. Posted 12 Mar 2002.
Once we left school we more or less took over the running of the farm, as our father was bed-ridden with arthritis. I did the ploughing with the horses and all the other jobs. I carted dung out to the fields to spread it.
The sowing of the oats was all done by hand, then the field was harrowed. By the time the oats were finished we rolled the field and carted off any big stones so that the surface would be nice and smooth for the binder when it came to harvest. We loved the haymaking, especially if the weather was nice and sunny once it was cut and left in the bout for a couple of days. We took our food to the peat moss with us and lit a small fire of fir pieces to boil the water and cooked the eggs for our dinner. The most annoying thing about the moss was the horsefly, the cleggs had you bitten before you even knew they had landed. | | |
|  | Abhijit Mishra from India. Posted 6 Apr 2002.
I am an Indian working for an American giant in their Indian office. I spent 4 months in Aberdeen for the implementation of a project at a French offshore company. I really liked walking along Deeside and I did lots of walking in Braemar. I also visited Edinburgh, Balmoral, Crathes and Inverness (tried to locate the monster). Scottish people are really good. I didn't feel any racial stuff plus there are lots of good Indian resturants around. The office work culture was also very good. Late night walking was also no problem. I would like to visit Scotland again in the near future.
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| | Jimmy McGregor from Perth. Posted 20 May 2002.
In rural North-east Scotland married farm workers were housed in cottages known as "Cottar Houses" while single men were housed in a Bothy. Frugally furnished, table, chairs, wooden forms and a big open fire, their food derived mainly from oatmeal, milk and potatoes. Sportally inclined, activities in the summertime were quoits, throwing the hammer, putting the stone, pulling the sweer tree and always football. Wearing heavy tackety boots, it amazed me as to how they could chase a ball following a long day, possibly following a pair of horses pulling a set of harrows. Visitors would call from neighbouring bothies and this promoted an element of competition.
Atmosphere and particularly conversation could become a bit crude in the bothy and on this score my brother and I were forbidden to go near it. As boys in the wintertime and the dark nights we would be allowed to go out and play after teatime. A large collection of bicycles outside the Bothy meant visitors and this indicated a Ceilidh. Gliding quietly in music would be in progress, tin whistle, mouth organ, melodeon, Jews harp, and this would be interspersed with Bothy Ballads."The Hash o' Benagok", "Oor Fairm Toun", "Marnan Fair", "Nicky Tams" and a host of others many of which I sing to this very day.Then there would be recitations in the Doric and I still get enjoyment in putting them across to an audience.
Tea would be made in a king size teapot and insufficient mugs and bowls meant certain visitors would take their tea in a 1lb jam jar.The "Piece" would be a thick slice of bread spread with margarine together with either syrup or treacle, very seldom jam.Perchance one individual would have butter if he was friendly with the maid in the farmhouse.
Ceilidh over, time to go home and right away my mother would detect we had been at the bothy. Smell from our jerseys gave us away.The smell comprised a mixture of smoke from Bogie Roll tobacco, sweaty socks and shaving soap. A round of the guns, hands, face and knees washed and then off to bedreflecting on a good night out.
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| | Jennifer Price. Posted 29 Aug 2002.
How many remember the school holidays when we used to go pick the tatties? Getting up at the crack of dawn to be picked up with the lorry to take us to the tattie fields. Some times it was still frosty and we would light fires to keep warm. The digger would come around and we would pick our tatties and put them in a basket which was emptied into a bogey then put into big long tattie pits. I also loved the raspberry picking near Longforgan and loved the wet days where the berries weighed heavier and we got paid threepence a pound. I walked to visit my uncle and aunt and loved it when we spent our new years there. We drank elderberry wine to bring in hogmanay and listened to Joe Gordon's bothy ballads and watched Andy Stewart bring in the new year way back in 1956.
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| | Donald Sutherland. Posted 15 Aug 2002.
I seem to remember 7 weeks of glorious sunshine at the school holidays when I went to work/play on my Uncle's farm near Lochfoot, by Dumfries. At 10 years of age, your memories were all pleasant with very little recollection of bad weather although there were some extremely bad winters. When the harvesting time came round the farmers and their workers moved from farm to farm with the harvesters, thus sharing the work load between them, and also no one farmer had to buy the necessary equipment on his own, as each seemed to have a part like spokes in a wheel which, when all joined together, formed the total unit to deal with the harvest. I well remember my Aunt preparing huge meals for the workers both to take to the fields and also to eat in the farm house. Indeed my Uncle used to take his meal from one plate to save the washing up. He would start with his porridge always with salt, then his main course usually meat and potatoes and finish off with pudding, cleaning the plate as he went along.
Those days seemed always happy and weekly visits to the town of Dumfries in the back of a pick up truck with my cousin to collect the messages were the highlights of the week. I recently met at a wedding in Southern Ireland a cousin from those days who I had not senn for nearly 50 years and had flown over from Canada for the occasion. Her memories of these early farming days are still vivid in her mind, so you can imagine the "blethering" we had.
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| | Brian Ross. Posted 2 Dec 2002.
We had a farm on Donside my best time was pulling in coles with the old fergie at hay time and the hairst was fun, hope u get in touch bye brian
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