Farming

The Birch Tree pub in 2006. Compare this with the 1939 photo on the 'Bardon Village' page.

Mr Harris: Of course everything was horse drawn in those days. Take the corn harvest, it was cut with a horse drawn binder which dropped the sheaves out and these all had to be stooped up, put in sixes or eights, and then they had to be carted in to the, probably pulled over to dry sometimes, or re-stooped. If you had a wet period the inside would be turned to the out to dry, and they all had to be carted into the farm in farm wagons, horse drawn farm wagons, and either stacked out made into ricks outside, or if you were fortunate and had a Dutch barn under the Dutch barn. Then the threshing machine arrived at the farm, he was a threshing contractor that went round the farms, and there was a lot of extra labour required, and all the sheaves were taken from the Dutch barn or from the rick into the threshing machine. Straw would be made into battens and latterly they were made into straw bales and re-stacked, so that it’s a very different operation from the combine where it’s all done in one operation. The hay, that was all cut with a horse drawn mowing machine and had to all be turned horse power or hand power, and pitched, it was all manual work in those days. And the roots, a large acreage of mangles and turnips were grown as a sort of main feed. They all had to be gapped and hoed by hand, in those days it was all – there was obviously much, much more labour on the land because everything was manpower.

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