Day: September 3, 2024

Dia is Mhuire dióbh go léir a cairde and welcome to my Report.

Welcome to the month of September. When our climate was fairly predictable, September was the month when we reaped the fruits of our labour. By the end of this month the hay would be long stored into the haybarns and the last of the grain crops, the wheat and the oats and the barley would have reached the stage of full maturity.  September was a busy month, but then as the farmer lived hand in hand with the weather, every month was a busy month. Cold weather in winter, when Mother Nature sent frost and snow to turn everything off and let the land rest in preparation for the planting and growing seasons ahead. There was no forward predicting of the weather like there is now and I can often remember seeing my Dad with a worried look in his face as he tried to find the best was forward and saying in a low toned voice, ‘May God direct me’ and He did because we survived. By September the turf which was won from the  bog in Caherdowney, five miles away, was drawn home by animal power. The horse and crib, by the grown men or the old reliable humble donkey by my growing brothers. The potatoes which were dug and stored in shallow pits in the field were  temporarily covered with a light covering of earth and straw. Very often children got days off from school for this important work and even with breaking backs we still looked on it as being better than going to school.  With the corn threshed and the all important grain, stored in the loft it was time to go back to the  potato field and sort the spuds. Needless to say on the day that they were dug, we emptied our buckets into the pit big ones and small ones all together. Hence the task of separating the big from the small later on. One of the coldest places on earth is when you go on your knees around the pit in an open plain with where was no escaping the icy breeze. There you knelt hour after hour sorting the big from the small. The call for the dinner giving a welcome respite before returning again.  The small potatoes or the waste as they were called were dumped in a shed where they were fed to the pigs and the geese and the fowl.  How we loved watching the ducks as the swallowed the small ones whole  and we could see them moving down along  inside their long necks until the ‘lump’ went into the crop and waited for the next one. The right-sized spuds were carefully loaded on to the horse and butt and transported into the yard and carefully stored, either indoors or in an outdoor pit but well protected from the winter frosts and the marauding rats. The supply had to see the family and the animals fed, well into  the next year. Like the wheat and the oats, hay, straw (for bedding the animals)and the turnips and the mangolds . Every month was important but September was special because it was a culmination of all that was done in the previous months. In many places Harvest Thanksgivings or Harvest dances were held when as they used to say, the cares of the year was over.

[read more …] “Eily’s Report – 3rd September”