The COTTAGE FARM: Month by Month by F. E. GREEN

Author:F. E. GREEN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHE Media Ltd
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Summer by Carl Larsson

VII

JULY

MORE haste, less speed” is a tiresome maxim, usually levelled at the impatient young by the jogtrot elderly, but it is one which has to be respected when hay is being made. Every wisp of green hay lying in its damp bed must be turned and shaken on to dry ground, and turned again, until it begins to rattle with the crispness of bank-notes. Snowey, the autocrat of the hayfield, always insists upon the swathes being turned “against the machine” and not from the “butt” ends, and in shaking hay with a fork he “holds” with tossing it against the wind, so that the bents cling to the prongs. Yet hay should not be bleached and spoilt by over-much sun. I always think that if there has been no rain the best hay is made on a cloudy, windy day, when it becomes green hay, or, as Snowey observes, “tells the truth,” by returning to its nature.

Though “making” cannot be hurried, carrying, especially when heavy clouds are beating up under a sou'-wester, can be taken with as much speed as sailors work the ropes before an impending storm. How like a three-decker is a waggon, heavily freighted with hay, roped fore and aft, and axle-trees creaking like spars, moving across an inland sea of grass rippling with curling windrows; and under what dirty skies have we had to make and carry our hay in the last week of June!

As I write, half of my ten-acre meadow is safely carried, but the other half is only cocked and rain is falling steadily. This latter half was mowed one morning and cocked by 8.30 the next evening. During the whole day we managed to turn, and then shake out with forks under a drying wind, the five acres of grass, and after tea to rake the hacks into waggon rows and quickly run these into the cocks as every speck of blue sky vanished out of sight. The crescent moon peeped out shyly for one moment behind the storm-wracked sky as we bent our tired steps across the cold, dewless grass to the stile, where the beer-barrel rests under the ash trees in the hedgerow. The glass was falling rapidly, but Snowey informed us that he “don't take no notice of them things.” It's another kind of glass which he appreciates much more, and this he drains with avidity. It is as stack-builder that Snowey shows to the best advantage, as he keeps his corners well out, and the wall opposite the waggon high, as it is on this side that the stack is always inclined to slip.

Haymaking with us begins only after the early morning's work of picking in the strawberry garden before breakfast is over. Few growers welcomed the Coronation festivities whilst the blockage of traffic resulted in the drop of prices a week ago to a half-penny per pound for strawberries in peck baskets. At least, that was the price I saw quoted at Evesham on the eve of crowning George V.

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