Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2009 | Page 64
COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING
countryside
news
life
Compiled by Tony Ridd
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64
what to
look out
for...
Blackberries
Blackberries are at there best in August/
Sept. There is an old superstition that you
should never pick Blackberries after October
10th (the old Michaelmas Eve) as on that day
the devil would curse/spit/pee on them (your
choice). It is said that when he was cast from
heaven he fell into a bramble bush so every
year on the anniversary of that day he spoils
the blackberry crop!
back to nature
A countrymans diary
Working outside, I have to admit to loving anytime
of the year, I claim to have a favourite season –
winter, but this is soon forgotten about, when the
chicks start hatching, lambs are born out or certain
jobs come along… ‘bale cart’ is one of these
jobs! Not so much when we are carting hay, but in
August, when the combines are cutting the corn and
large parts of the countryside turn this lovely, dusty
golden colour.
I started on the local farm at the age of twelve or
thirteen. Big balers were yet
to hit our shores so all straw
was bundled up into what are
now described ‘small bales’.
I was lucky because the farm
I worked on had a tractor to
load them onto the trailer, all
I had to do was arrange each
layer alternately, sort of like
laying bricks!
We’d pile the trailers up
eight or nine rows high
and in six weeks (weather
permitting) would move over
thirty thousand bales from the fields and stack them
in the barns. Of course this is all done with big bales
now, and is all loaded and unloaded by tractor.
Today at home, we still need about 100 bales of
straw for the horses and sheep, so I get to play
farm-hand for a short time, loading up the trailer
(by hand) and stacking them in the barn, emerging
an hour or so later looking a little like a thread-bare
straw doll and feeling like I thoroughly deserve a cold
beer or two-ish.