[robert waddell]

the big difference betwean you (singing shearer)and myself is age you are 20 i am 58  you are young and able in days gone by the ideal candidate for a farm labourer      when i was younger than you i could fill a john Deere ep 10 rotospreader and empty it in 20 minutes  give me a graip now and ask me to do it  you will be told to go forth and multiply all these old ways i have done them and would not go back to them  i will not be able to ask you when you are 58 if you prefer the modern to the old ways of conserving crops
it is good that you can do all these backbreaking labour intensive jobs enjoy them while your body can still function 

[SingingShearer]

I would hope at 58 I will still be going strong, what a coincidence my dad is 58 and he is still out working every day and helps me with the hay, he works just as hard as me if not harder at times and enjoys it.

Philip

[FiB]

The old ways may not make commercial sense but needs must!  We dont have a tractor, or infact any sort of useful off road vehicle or trailer (We used our fiat scudo van during hay making this year, much to the utter disbelief of our neighbours!).  Id love one, but I cant imaging how we would get together the money to buy one with associated equiptment and run it.  Last year our lovely neighbour cut and baled our hay for us and I hope he will continue to do so, but I am practicing with my lovely scythe in case not!  I can manage about an acre (in many hour long bursts!), so if I eat my weatabix maybe I could work up to the required 8?  but the baling and moving would be a struggle - I shall be picking your brains on stacking the old way if you can fit our sheep in, Singing Shearer!  We managed to sell our surpless off the field this year, but I think I will try storing more this year so thanks for thread.

[Fleecewife]

Interesting discussion with good points on both sides.  I'm with SS with hand shearing to get as good quality fleece as possible, but where the big sheep owner just needs the wool off, or it's going to the Wool Board for carpets then machine clipping is quicker, therefore cheaper.  For very small scale sheep keeping I see no place for machine shearing at all.
Being even older than Robert  (just) I can remember when we had a dozen men working on a small farm which now would not support a single worker full time.  We had some mechanisation in the form of tractors, combine, implements, no horses as post war, but all jobs such as hedging and ditching, beet singling, mucking out, were done by hard manual work.  Our men were worn out before their time by modern standards, but compared with a hundred years earlier they had it easy.
We built our stacks of bundled straw by hand, and thatched with the same straw.  I remember it as fun and I think it was a high spot for the men too.  They knew how to pace themselves (when my Dad's back was turned) but that is the way to get the work done - slowly but continuously.
I can remember having lots of energy and being able to put in a never-ending day, but nowadays, when most farmers are over 60, that energy is gone and a bit of mechanisation is wonderful.
What neither of you has mentioned is that as we run out of oil, and SS you will be around when this happens, we will have to go back to some of the 'old ways' of manual work using more people.  There are so many unemployed people in Britain that a bit of manual work for them would surely be one answer to both problems.

[Sylvia]

(I do wish that when I've typed a diatribe, read it through and corrected things, then clicked on send, a message wouldn't come up saying I may like to review my message )
Here I go again!!!!!
Robert!! I'm sure you wouldn't really like the traditional methods of agriculture to die out. (apart from working employees to death ) No-one knows when these skills will be needed. Probably not in our lifetime and maybe not in our grandchildrens, but sometime.
I have the feeling that you are finding the winter a bit tedious and like to spice  things up with a bit of  of a row
I remember wire wrapped bales and the bloody welts on your hands after a day carrying. Hemp twine was kinder and had many uses afterwards, halters, doormats and such but this awful plastic stuff that's useful only for a day or so, I find annoying.
Anyway, back to the point! I'm sure you wouldn't really like to see such skills as hand shearing, thatching, dry-stone walling, hedge-laying, ditch digging etc. lost?
Lill find him some hedging and ditching to do

[SallyintNorth]

I remember wire wrapped bales and the bloody welts on your hands after a day carrying. Hemp twine was kinder and had many uses afterwards, halters, doormats and such but this awful plastic stuff that's useful only for a day or so, I find annoying.

I don't like to disagree with you Sylvia, but most farmers and smallholders I know wouldn't know what to do without the year's supply of pink string off the hay and straw bales!  I am never without some, it holds most gates on our farm shut fast and cow- and pony-proof, keeps sacks of feed closed on the quad bike; I've used it as a makeshift belt, shoelaces, dog lead, horse halter, tow rope, it ties the lambing hurdles together to form the lambing pens, hobbles a lamb in the trailer so that mum will jump in to it ... We collect and save ours and give the odd sackful to horsey folk who use big round bales of hay and no longer have copious amounts of baler twine to use for the rest of the year.

[robert waddell]

Sylvia when i was at college we had to keep a diary of the work done one guy every day for 3 months digging ditches
if the old methods die out they will be revived when and if they are ever needed again there are stacks of books written from the 1830s about agriculture and how to improve it
fleecewife   yes farms used to have a large labour force some even up to 40 workers imagine a farm today employing 40 men even at the minimum wage that is some wages bill for not much return
as to oil running out they have the technology for engines to run on water  no not steam  but the oil companies hold the patents on it  how are we going to bail out Europe if we are not taxed on oil
thatching just love the chocolate box houses down in illiminster
dry stone walling still going  you come and lift the stones that are in the walls here you will get a hernia very envious of people that have flat stone to build walls with
hedge laying is on the increase with the grants to pay for the labour intensive reconstruction
ditch digging that is more in line for me  now where is that trapezoidal bucket for that excavator with bog tracks fitted with a heater and radio 1 

[robert waddell]

forgot about the baler twine heard of the old guy that used twine for everything so when it was his funeral the coffin lid was tied down with  yes you guest it baler twine

[SingingShearer]

I find it easier to learn from a person who has spent years learning and has actually had experience in doing something rather than someone who has read a book and thinks that they are some sort of expert.
Also methods differ from county to county and from person to person, someone from Devon will lay a hedge different to someone from Yorkshire.

[MAK]

back to the hay.

How long will the hay keep in a dry barn with good ventilation. I inherited some and wonder if I can give a bit to the pigs.

Any thoughts?

[Sylvia]

Sally, do you remember hemp twine? It was not only useful for all the things you mentioned but rotted down in the dung heap as well. I admit I wouldn't like a life without baler twine, my pockets are always full with it. They do say that without it half of the world's farm machinery would come apart and all it's fences would fall down I can well believe it!
It's just the way plastic twine shreds in no time and what to do with it then? Put it into landfill (and you couldn't make a kitchen mat from it! )
Robert my neighbour( who can do everything, he's just built a beautiful eco-house and..........If he wasn't so nice I could hate him has, with his young son built a dry-stone wall to the entrance of his farm, well, not so much a dry-stone wall as a Devon bank, which takes as much skill. It's a thing of beauty.(and not a hernia in sight )
My elder son is a dab hand at cutting and laying a hedge ,as is my brother, they do it for the love of it.

[Sylvia]

back to the hay.

How long will the hay keep in a dry barn with good ventilation. I inherited some and wonder if I can give a bit to the pigs.

Any thoughts?

Have a sniff of it, MAK, if it smells good and not musty then it's fine.

[robert waddell]

it is whin stone or dolerite heavier than granite i worked with a dyker years ago he came from peebles and his men came from dumfries the first think he warned them about was the weight of the stones they are hernia inducing
the Devon bank is that the same as was shown on countryfile last sun
hay if stored dry will keep for years it usually draws damp from the bottom that is why some people put pallets down  also if it is next to walls it draws the damp from them
my pigs wont touch hay they prefer straw

[MAK]

Shelf life of hay......

Thanks all. All I have to do is to climb up onto the first floor of the barn , position wooden planks over the bits of the floor that have collapsed and twinkle toe over to the hay. I even have a pitch fork to dump some in a large cardboard box before the return trip , down a ladder, out the barn, through the snow, over the electric fence then back into the barn/piggery.

Its A Knockout  Again !!!
 

[lachlanandmarcus]

Shelf life of hay......

Thanks all. All I have to do is to climb up onto the first floor of the barn , position wooden planks over the bits of the floor that have collapsed and twinkle toe over to the hay. I even have a pitch fork to dump some in a large cardboard box before the return trip , down a ladder, out the barn, through the snow, over the electric fence then back into the barn/piggery.

Its A Knockout  Again !!!
 

are you going to be dressed in padded national costume then? Can we come and watch?