During one hot but windy afternoon there was a snowstorm on this field. It was worth seeing. A blizzard just on this field alone. The wild, whirling flakes did not fall from above, they rose from the ground, for they were not made of snow but of thistledown. It was as good an attempt at an artificial blizzard as anything Hollywood could put over.
The final afternoon was memorable and long remembered by everyone. It poured with rain. Our business was now to tie up the beans into sheaves and stook them. We got drenched to the skin. ’E said that we needn’t carry on if we didn’t want to, but there was no definite and concerted movement to stop, so we went on. We were through by four o’clock. All of us drenched. Then, did ’E tell us to go home and get a change? No. He just stood round saying nothing and looking unhappy, while groups of us held little committee meetings. ‘What are you going to do,’ one asked another, and some said – ‘I know what I’m going to do!’ And without anything being said, we all dispersed. Some returned later and did up to an hour’s work, while Harold who lived a good way off returned to put in a quarter of an hour. As for myself, rejoicing for once at my distant habitation, I hadn’t the faintest intention of returning. And as I rode home I thought of the ridiculous scene when we had stood around in grave committee after the job was done, ’E saying nothing, and I thought if I wrote it down my word would be doubted.
35 While Hiling
It was not till 20 August that the weather permitted us to get down to the corn harvest. Now at last we were off. We all rather quailed before the formidable task ahead – perhaps thirty ricks. So we started in on the binding and hiling (not called stooking in this part of the country). Harold and Jimmy carried on with the two binders, and I found myself on the first day hiling with Dick over against Jimmy’s binding.
The binder is an attractive instrument. Especially as seen from a little distance, its gently turning ‘sails’ noiselessly paddling back the lake of corn. At close quarters the ingenuity of the thing is fascinating. To cut at that rate is in itself an achievement; but also to take up convenient portions of what is being cut, and bind it, and then chuck out the bound sheaf – that is something remarkable. Yes, one feels, the cutting was a straightforward invention perhaps, and the elevating of it upward on a moving canvas: but to have it tied firmly into separate parts and then flicked out – how accomplish that with robot fingers? And as a matter of fact the two fingers which do every minute flick out a sheaf, have a rather disturbing effect – there is something too roboty about them.
Having cut the corn down it is necessary to stand it up again. There is hardly a layman who doesn’t know about the job of hiling. It may be all he knows about agriculture, but that much he is aware of, and if he has helped in the fields at any time it is generally at hiling. Yet like all these things it can be done wrong. As the corn will now stand up only if it is propped up by leaning against itself, it will certainly fall over if not treated scientifically. No use doing it in a haphazard manner, for the wind will then lay the sheaves as flat as the cutter did. And the way to avoid this is not by clustering a lot of sheaves together – for then the ears won’t dry. Not more than six at the most, arranged as a tunnel.
This first field of ours was a small one of barley. Barley is the easiest of all types to handle. It makes a short, light sheaf so that you can take two up, one in each hand with great ease and clump them together. Soft and pleasant to the touch, the bunched ears are like flaxen curls on silky heads.
This was one of the very first fields I had had anything to do with on this farm. I had couched and harrowed it with horses and with tractor. It was brown earth when I had left it, and as its situation was right away in a corner, I had not seen it since. Now it had changed to this, now the drooping pennants, now the flaxen curls; the transmutation that never falters and that never palls; the seeming simple cycle; the turn again of the hundred-thousand-year-old Wheel.
Next day we hiled wheat. Wheat-sheaves build well, as they are very stiff, but it is less easy to take one up in each hand, owing to their weight – grappling with two at once is fairly hard work. The bound stalks make almost a bundle of canes. People complain that hiling wheat cuts and scratches the arms badly unless you wear a jacket. I did not find this was true. You can hold them away from you, there is no need to clutch them in your arms. But I did find it often very hard on the hands when thistles were bound up in the sheaves – one would get on quicker with gloves. We hiled in couples, each couple taking three rows, and going round the field. Going round it, not up and down. Once when I was hiling alone early one morning I started by going up and down. When the carter came out I was asked, Was I backhanded? – which conveyed nothing to me till I realized that everyone went round and round and not up and down, since all the sheaves are thrown out in one direction, and it facilitates matters to approach from the stalk end.
I soon sampled what it was like hiling oats, for now we got on to a very fine field of oats, the field which had seemed so incredibly stony to me when I had cultivated and harrowed it. I found oat-sheaves to be much the most difficult to deal with. They were huge and top-heavy, and very much inclined to fall over if poorly put together. One technique is more necessary in this case than with any other corn: you must bump them down on the ground. Holding one in the left, one in the right hand, you don’t just lean them together, you bump them down on the ground at the same time as leaning them together, as if you hoped the stalks would stick in the earth like spikes – which in a sense they do, for a much steadier stook is achieved that way.
We made fast progress over these fields; the fairly frequent presence of ’E serving, no doubt, pour encourager les autres. The person coupled with him was not envied; nor was it good to be going round anywhere near him, since if he was somewhere behind he would soon be bound to pass, and if the ring was getting small, perhaps get round twice to your once. ‘Look where ’e’s got to! ’e’s down the line already!’ someone would say, while everyone kept an apprehensive eye on his progress. On one occasion, after the break for tea, when I was walking towards my hiling companion, who was Dick, I found myself also walking towards ’E who then signed to me to join him. Away we went, ’E and I, grabbing at and dragging the sheaves together at great speed – for, seeing there was no help for it, I even quickened the pace for fun, making our progress even more appalling for the others to witness, so that I could imagine them saying – ‘Look where the bs have got to!’
’E was certainly a real countryman, descending from a line of farmers; but he was not typical in this matter of pace. No calm, steady, leisurely gait such as we associate with the countryman. Yet pace may be the wrong word. For the curious thing was that Robert always gave an impression of great ease and leisureliness, and yet did his jobs much faster than it appeared. Once when we were all spreading the hiles – that is throwing the stooked sheaves on the ground to dry out after rain – the pace was very swift as we went along forking down the hiles, and I found it difficult to keep up. Robert didn’t appear to be making any effort at all, and moved forward with a casual ease that should mean that he would soon be left behind. He wasn’t left behind. He was going slower, but he didn’t lose ground – strange. And I frequently saw him build a straw-rick without seeming to exert more effort with his prong than if he were stirring soup.
36 While Carrying
Now for the carrying. My first experience of this entailed pitching sheaves into the wagons in the field. Dick stood in the wagon loading the sheaves which were pitched up by me on one side and the carter on the other. I had to grasp the technique straightaway. It did not take me long. The sheaves must reach the wagon with stalks pointing outwards, otherwise the loader cannot easily do his job nor the unloaders at the rick do theirs. The thing is to take two sheaves up on your prong and elevate them. The carter took three or four, just to show off and get his side done before mine. Being a very small man he always wished to emphasize his strength. ‘Small men,’ said Dick, ‘have big ideas.’ It was quite unnecessary to
take up so many at once and it made it more difficult for the receiver. I soon found that I could keep pace with him by simply taking one up at a time, since you can do that in a jiffy, while in endeavouring to pick up two or three at a time you often muff the affair and fail to get hold of them with your prong, thus wasting time.
This job of pitching up for the wagons on the field is undoubtedly the easiest of all the harvest operations. The loader’s position is not so enviable. For not only does he lack a firm floor, but every minute the wagon is jerked forward by tractor or horse while the driver cries ‘Hold tight!’ like a bus-conductor in Oxford Street. And the loading is a little art in itself, as a lot of people find to their amazement who have come along in the summer to Help the Farmer in answer to the typically urban ineptitude which exhorted them to Take Your Holidays On The Farm – a slogan met with hoots of derision by every agricultural labourer. But most of my time was spent either on the rick or pitching to the rick; and thither we will now proceed. After the bed of straw had been laid down, as for any kind of rick except straw itself, the first arrangement of the sheaves surprised me. Robert stood in the middle, putting up what looked like a huge hile. What was the idea of this stooking? I wondered – till I saw the point, which was the obvious one that these bottom ears must be kept up somehow, and the middle filled as compactly as possible.
Until later when we began to use the elevator my job was unloading the wagons and feeding the rick. Quite a reasonable job even at the worst of times. And when the rick is low and you are well above it, not a great deal of effort is required provided the wagon has been built properly – otherwise there is the old intensely irritating difficulty of getting the sheaves loose, no matter what plan you improvise. The pitching on to the rick required another new technique. You cannot chuck them down anyhow, for they must lie with stalks facing outwards and crop inwards, and if they alight the wrong way then the men on the rick will have to turn them over and time be lost. Especially is this necessary, of course, when you are dealing out sheaves to the rick-builder himself. Thus in whatever position you may find them on the wagon, your pitched sheaf should fall the right way round if you wish to promote the greatest convenience for the greatest number of people engaged. This is not difficult. A flick of the wrist, as you pitch, easily makes the sheaf turn somersaults in the air if that is what is required. It did not take me long to get into this; for it is not true that all agricultural jobs require a lifetime’s practice to make perfect.
An instructed spectator can generally single out an amateur by observing one particular – namely the way the prong is held by the left hand. Nearly everyone at first has an inclination to put the left hand round it so that the wrist is pointing out instead of the thumb. But I did not do that now. I did, however, at this time do something else which would have enlightened that spectator as to my unprofessional status, something that seems incredible to me now – I wore shoes. The discomfort I went through owing to this unnecessary nonsense still riles me. Rubber boots, of course, were out of the question. But why shoes? I had the fixed idea that shoes in summer were light and cool and restful. But not only was the endless walking about hiling on uneven ground anything but comfortable in shoes, but now when I stood on top of the ripe ears of corn, the grain continually got into my shoes, and I had to keep taking them off to empty them, or stand feeling as if I had pebbles under my socks. Nor could I purchase a decent footing in them. And the remedy? Boots of course. I thought boots were stiff, heavy, hot, uncomfortable foot-pinchers. The opposite is true. They are comfort itself. Their weight doesn’t matter in the least, the firm footing you get is a delight, and no grain ever gets in. When later I took to boots I never even wore rubber ones again, not even in the winter, for if you get leather ones large enough you can still wear two pairs of socks and thus be as warm as you are firm. One must have a firm footing in this world. A steady base is the first essential in agriculture – as it is also in architecture and in literature.
At no time did one need the broad nailed gripping boot more than when unloading the wagons, for one’s footing was often precarious, and it was always a pleasant moment when one reached the floor of the wagon, and could stand once again with ease. We generally had two wagons and one lorry carrying the loads from the field. Thus no sooner was I finished with one lot than another was seen approaching. The unwritten law in this affair is that the rick-builders must ‘hold’ the carriers. That is to say they must always be ready for the new material sent in from the field. It would be a confession of failure if a wagon is kept waiting while the one in front is still being unloaded. Such a situation would get on the nerves of the rick-makers and also lead to the workers in the field being ‘stood up’. On no account must such a calamity occur. Thus if three wagons are going strong the unloaders have to work fast. Sometimes one of us (there being two, myself and the man with the wagon last come in) eased up, and then ’E would become apprehensive of the impending calamity, and say – ‘Let’s have ’em!’ At which Dick’s brow, if this was addressed to him, would darken into night. Sometimes ’E would jump on to the wagon from the rick and unload a bit himself, throwing out the sheaves at the rate at which lesser men in lesser spheres deal out cards.
When the load came in on the lorry it meant that I had Jimmy as my mate in pitching. As I have said, he was a distinctly cheering kind of person to have around, his smiling face and good-humoured manner always creating a good atmosphere. He used to call me ‘Sunshine’. ‘Ah, there is Sunshine,’ he would say, as if it were my actual name. I mention this, for I am not the man to miss an opportunity of showing myself in a good light. But I cannot subscribe to the description, I’m afraid. Never before have I been referred to in that way, and I suppose never again – so I’m anxious to record it here. I think I can understand it, though. I’m careful not to lose my temper unless a given situation psychologically demands it (so calculating have I become), any more than I ever allow pride to get in the way of an ultimate aim; and during these rather testing days I believe I almost deliberately kept to a cheerful and even smiling countenance. This may have been so, because subsequently, when actually questioning Jimmy about his appellation (which was far truer as a description of himself, indeed perfect as such), he said that ‘it required guts to get up on a rick and smile in that way’ – a remark which greatly pleased my vanity. And in all seriousness I took note of the fact that a modicum of even deliberate cheerfulness of expression has considerable effect.
Jimmy’s lorry-load was much larger than that which could be put on an ordinary wagon, and it was always with great relief that we at length dug down to the floor. ‘The parade’, I used to call it, ‘my old pal’s parade’. He had a way of digging down as soon as possible till he stood firmly on a piece of the floor, however high around him the rest of the sheaves might be – ‘I’ve already reached your old pal’s parade!’ he would say, while I was still several feet above it on my side. He liked my names for things. I used to call his lorry ‘the green thing’, and the wagon that was tractor-driven by Harold as ‘Harold’s caboodle’, and he took a great fancy to this nomenclature for such serious agricultural objects.
37 Early Morning Jobs
Sometimes we started the day by making some thatch. We used a machine for this also. It is a kind of large sewing-machine which sews together the straw with which one feeds it into mats which are rolled up and put away until subsequently the thatch-maker unrolls them across his ricks. At a later period I thatched them myself. As I have never thatched with hand-made ones I cannot make a comparison, but so far the traditional sort seem much better. These machine-made ones are much thinner, and also strong wind easily turns the mats into sails, so that after a storm whole sides of thatched ricks are found half ripped off. We certainly made our thatch with a maximum of inefficiency. If you do not feed the machine with an even pressure the result is a mat with gaps in it, thus hopeless in rain. However, like all these things, I suppose that soon machine-made thatch will be well knit, and a
sure device found for pinning it down on the rick.
At other times my mornings began very quietly, and there was not much for me to do except pull up some of the charlock that still remained covering the greater part of a field of swedes – for when I came back from that far field of kale I was astonished at the change that had taken place here and there, especially this stretch of charlock like a great yellow rug which had suddenly been spread out. Sometimes I had little more to do than go through various hiled fields and re-erect stooks that had fallen down, or turn them to dry out after rain. Indeed, after there had been a good deal of wind, quite a number of the stooks were down. On a certain oatfield I was pleased to observe that my own lines (I had particularly noted their position) all remained intact, which proved to me that even in this small matter deliberate, careful building pays.
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 19
