Hay Making

A water pump on Main Street, 2006

Interviewer: Tell me something about making hay.

Mr Bevin: My recollection of making hay, it always rained. It was cut with a mower, used to have all the family there with a hand rake to turn it and turn it and turn it. You’d just get it ready for picking up when down came the rain and start all over again. There was a lot of hand labour involved in hay making. Then he got as he bought a ‘swathe turner’, that was drawn by a single horse which would completely turn the hay over, well two rows at once, or you could put two rows into one with this. Oh, that were a wonderful thing that was.

Interviewer: So that made it a lot less work, less raking.

Mr Bevin: And horse rake to rake up afterwards. I don’t know whether it was ‘cos he was very thrifty or whether it was the thing to do. When they were picking up the final rakings they’d have a man, or a strong lad, picking up every single bent that was left by what we called the ‘bonny’ rake or the ‘drag’ rake, they never left a bent in the field when they carted the hay. Nowadays you go with the bailer, if the bailer misses a lot, well it’s just left.

Interviewer: Who would work on the farm?

Mr Bevin: Well, you see, as I say he had five sons. The oldest left school, he stopped and helped his dad; when the next left school the older one had to get a job somewhere in the village. My dad was the second son and when his brother below him left school my dad went out helped at the rectory gardens for a start, gardener’s boy and so forth. Then when another son left, that was Sam, he got a job as a part-time game keeper on the estate, when the youngest lad came in, and of course the youngest lad he got invalided out of the war in the Yeomanry, the Leicestershire Yeomanry.

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