Farms and farming

A high proportion of those interviewed, especially around Doagh and Toome, came from a farming background. There were, of course, huge variations is the type of farming and the scale of the individual farming operations. While many made their living entirely from farming, others had to combine farming with another activity to make ends meet.

While most farms were passed on from father to son, Billy Robson’s father was the son of the local schoolmaster. Norman Robson was, however, determined to go into farming and so a farm of 23 acres on the Burn Road, Doagh (in the townland of Ballyhamage), was purchased in the early 1920s. He lived on his own for a number of years before marrying Ada Mahony who was from Ballyronan, County Londonderry, and who had come to the Doagh area as a poultry instructor with the Ministry of Agriculture. They started up a poultry unit which as Billy says, ‘was not so land dependent’. Billy recalls his father delivering eggs and chickens to customers in Belfast on a Friday.

During the interwar years, there were times when farmers were under huge economic pressure. Billy Robson commented, ‘During the late 1920s things became very difficult for everybody. … Times were very hard, land became almost worthless.’ However, the Second World War gave a boost to local farming and especially to food production. Mary Ann Higgins remembers that there was more work during the war with better prices for crops, while crop production was increased due to compulsory tillage orders.

Livestock

Most farmers would have kept one or two dairy cows for their own use, while for others dairying was the main activity on their farms. The Millikens, who farmed near Whitehead, milked 50-60 cows, but most dairy herds were considerably smaller than this. Sixteen cows would have been considered a large herd.

The dairy industry experienced huge changes in the middle decades of the twentieth century, both in terms of technology and cattle breeds. One of the most significant innovations was the introduction of automated milking machines based on an electrically-powered vacuum pump system. By the early 1940s the Robsons were milking 12-15 cows and Billy recalls the introduction of an automated system.

Billy Robson remembers the introduction of automated milking

I can just remember the milking machine being installed. … I think the first milking machine in the byre was installed about 1941 or 1942 which made a tremendous change to the labour required for getting the milking done. … It was a tremendous innovation getting the milking machines.

What facilitated this switch to an automated system on the Robson’s farm was the fact that they had electricity installed around 1936-37. At that time the electricity was made by a small company in Ballyclare called Currans. Billy’s parents believed that electricity would be useful to them, especially for the incubators for hatching chicks, and so when the line was brought to Doagh, they had it extended along the Burn Road to their farm. On the Millikens’ farm a windmill provided the power for the milking machine, though they also had a stand-by engine for when there was no wind. Those without electricity continued to milk by hand.

Mary Moore describes milking on her father’s farm:

We had no milking machines – we had no electric. … If there was two or three of you milking eight or ten cows it was good fun … maybe the auld cow would put her foot in the bucket and spilled it, but you just got up and went on with it.



Around 1950 the Stevensons at Thorndyke, Doagh, moved over to dairying and built one of the earliest milking parlours in Northern Ireland. For Willie there was ‘nothing as good as the milking of the cows, for you knew when you started in the morning, and you knew when you started in the evening, and you knew when you finished.’

Willie Stevenson talks about their first milking parlour:

We started to milk and had a lot of heifers of our own to get started. We put in a milking parlour – we started right off with a milking parlour … everybody thought we were mad. Then the cows had to run loose to get self-fed silage and we had to take the horns off them all. We had Ayrshire heifers with nice-shaped horns and they had to come off – everybody thought we were clean away! But that was the only way you could keep them. The milking parlour was a great success. They came from miles to see it. The cows had to walk in and then walk up two steps – they got used doing that.

A major change in the dairy industry was the introduction of Friesian cows. One particular cow that Billy remembers was a red and white Friesan that his father had bought as a heifer calf for £8. The cow was named Diana and she lived to be 18 years old and at one time was producing 11½ gallons of milk a day, at a time that other cows would have been giving 5-5½ gallons. Because of her colouring many people mistakenly thought that she was an Ayrshire. Diana was shown around the country and won many awards. The Millikens also moved over from the Shorthorn to the Friesian, but around 1952 gave up milking altogether after John’s father had a heart attack. Thereafter they concentrated on beef.

Billy Robson explains the changes in cattle breeds and the dairy industry:

In those days through the war, the traditional breed was based mainly on Shorthorns … Immediately after the war the Ministry of Agriculture said that the cattle population of Northern Ireland need an injection of new blood – there was a lot of very poor quality stock in the country. They encouraged farmers to import dairy shorthorns from England. My father brought several in starting I think about 1948 and that was built up over the next 5–6 years. The milking ability of these cows was not what they expected. The Friesian breed had come into the country in the late 20s/early 30s and they had a reputation for producing more milk so there was a gradual change I think from about 1951/1952 on from the Shorthorns to the Friesians.



The milk on the farms usually went to the local creamery. A common sight for those who rose early in the morning was the milkman making his rounds. For a while Mary Moore’s father did this. Derek Lorimer remembers the way milk was delivered: ‘They were mostly pony and traps and they had a couple of churns of milk on. It wouldn’t have been in bottles. You went out with your pint can and they would have filled it for you.’ The milk cart was one of the last horse-drawn vehicles that Brian McKenna remembers in Whitehead. For some time Graham Andrew had his own milk run. As he and others pointed out the milkman has all but disappeared from our roads.

Many farms made their own butter. Greta Milliken recalled that on their farm there was an apparatus for churning the butter driven by horses walking in a circle. Later an end-over-end churn was used and later still an electric one. There was a well in one of their fields which produced ice-cold water which was used for steeping the butter. Once made the butter was sold from their home or supplied to grocers. Greta recalls that one customer wanted his butter unsalted.

‘Every farm had a few pigs’, notes Billy Robson, ‘and actually nearly every cottage house in the country the man would have had a sow or maybe two sows and sold the small pigs off.’ Pigs were generally killed at home on the farm by a peripatetic pig butcher. Hugh Pat Boyd was well known in the Toome area as a pig butcher. Mary Ann Higgins that a pig killed in the winter would have provided them with bacon for most of the year. Nothing was wasted. Roisin McLernon’s recalls her mother making black pudding. The Gribbins had a place at Anahorish called the Slaughterhouse where they killed and cleaned out the pigs.

Mickey Gribbin talks about killing pigs:

These boys reared pigs until they were ready for killing and they had a place up in Anahorish called the Slaughterhouse. Roddy was the butcher for the most part. … There was one end where there was a boiler and it boiled water and the water was then put into a submerged bath. And the dead pig was dipped in that until they were sure that it would shave off. Then it was hauled off on to a platform and scraped clean – they all had gutty knives and wee pouches for them. Then it was put on to a hook and chain and put on to a rail – in the slaughterhouse there were several rails. And the pig’s inside was cleaned out. Then it was washed down and it was eventually taken to Belfast.

The liver would have been taken to the local priest as a gift. The Slaughterhouse appears in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Anahorish 1944’ in which he wrote:

We were killing pigs when the Americans arrived
A Tuesday morning, sunlight and gutter-blood
Outside the slaughterhouse. From the main road
They would have heard the squealing,
Then heard it stop and had a view of us
In our gloves and aprons coming down the hill.

Now the slaughterhouse is the base for Anahorish Preserves Ltd, founded by their nephew Malachy.

Billy Robson points out that there was a revolution in the pig industry in Northern Ireland in the 1950s. The traditional Northern Irish pig was the Large White York. There was also a Large White Ulster breed which became extinct. In 1953/4 some farmers began to introduce the Landrace breed from Sweden, which was a superior pig. Around 1955-56 the Robsons bought a few Landrace sows and it was not long until all their pigs were Landrace. Today there are probably only around a third of the pigs in Northern Ireland compared with the early 1960s.

Crops

The main cereal crop was oats. Graham Andrew remembers his father sowing oats with a fiddle. A bag was attached to the fiddle which held two bucketfuls of seed. Graham’s job was to help refill the bag from the large sacks of seed that had been left across the field.

Cahal Boyd described the harvesting of corn: ‘A field of corn was mowed by a scythe and a boy went after him tying it up. And then you had to stook it, and then hut it [build the stooks into a small stack], and then carry it in if you hadn’t a horse.’



In some places a little wheat was grown, while barley did not become popular until the late 1950s. Other crops grown included turnips, cabbages and kale. Billy Robson recalls his father growing mangels, a crop which resembled sugar beet and which was used as a winter feed for livestock. Around Toome the growing of grass for its seed was important. ‘Grass seed was a great thing’, remembers Edmund O’Donnell, adding, ‘there was a great demand for it’. George Laverty echoed this, pointing out that there was a good trade for it. As John Milliken pointed out, Islandmagee ‘wasn’t really a cropping district’ and there were not large acreages of potatoes or cereals so the harvest was not as important there as elsewhere.

Hay was the main fodder crop. Frankie Dale remembers that haymaking, which he describes as ‘six weeks’ steady, heavy work’, was an anxious time of year for farmers due to the unpredictability of the weather: ‘The worry of saving hay long ago shortened people’s lives cause you could lose your hay, and if you lost your hay, where were you? … People don’t understand the pressure the farmers were under … the pressure was intense.’ ‘There was many a field of hay lost’, reflects Mary Moore. The following extract from the Kilbride preachers’ book of 1 August 1920 illustrates just how wet one summer of yesteryear was: ‘It has rained almost constantly for the last six weeks. A severe thunderstorm today and the heaviest rain seen for years.’ Although silage became increasing popular in the 1950s and 1960s, John Milliken points out that hay had its advantages in that it was more portable. Most beef cattle would have been kept outdoors for the majority of the year and it was easier to take hay out to them in the winter.



Billy Robson commented that buck-rakes attached to the backs of tractors greatly helped with silage harvesting for it saved having to lift silage by hand using forks or graips. A subsequent innovation was the ‘green crop loader’ which was like an elevator that lifted mowed grass up on to a trailer where two men built it. In the early days of silage production, silage was made in round containers which were roughly 12 feet in diameter and 12-15 feet high. Grass was forked into these containers – and forked out again. Later on silage was put into trenches with a wall built along each side. The silage was graiped off the trailer – these were the days before hydraulic tipping trailers – and then levelled and flattened with another tractor.

Flax

For hundreds of years flax was one of the main crops grown across much of Ulster and provided the basic ingredient of the province’s linen industry. This continued to be the case up until the 1950s, having been given a boost during wartime. However, by the end of the 1950s the quantity of flax grown in Northern Ireland was negligible.

The flax harvest, which took place at the end of the hay season, was one of the high points of the summer and was one of the main occasions in the farming year in which outside help was brought in. Roisin McLernon remembers that 20 or more men could be on their farm to help with harvest. ‘It was always a great day for us’, she recalls, with much excitement generated by the arrival or so many people, all of whom received an ample tea.

Flax – or lint as it was frequently referred to – was pulled, not cut, and this was a laborious job. There was ‘mair work with it than enough’ remembers Mary Moore, while Frankie Dale called it ‘backbreaking’. Although neighbours frequently provided the labour, professional flax pullers could also be employed. Edmund O’Donnell recalls a firm of lint pullers in Ballymena who were paid so much an acre. He remembers that pulling lint was ‘a very rushed job’. When he was a schoolboy, Graham Andrew recalls, he and his brother were asked to pull a field of flax. They were paid a penny per ‘beet’ – 12 beets made a stook. The pulled flax then had to be tied up into sheaves. Bessie Quinn recalls that while she did not pull the flax, she did help with the harvest by going round the fields with the bands for tying up the sheaves.

The flax was then put into a dam; most farmers had their own dam. The water supply to dam had to be cut off and then the sheaves of flax were placed in the dam and covered with stones to weigh them down. The dam was then flooded with water to cover the flax. This process was known as retting and what everyone who experienced it remembered was the pungent smell of the retted flax. While in the dam the flax was tramped, a task Bessie Quinn and Frankie Dale remember doing. The flax remained in the dam for a week to 10 days, or perhaps a fortnight. Then it had to be thrown out; this was ‘a stinking enough job’, remembers Graham Andrew. The retted flax was then carted to a field and spread out to dry. Afterwards it was lifted and taken to a scutch mill where the fibre was separated from the woody stems.

In the early to mid twentieth century there were still significant numbers of scutch mills in the County Antrim countryside. John Cushinan remembers three scutch mills within a short distance of his home in Derryhollagh. There were also several scutch mills in the vicinity of Doagh and Cogry. Robert McConnell vividly remembered the scutch mill at Fourmileburn and the men who worked in it. He pointed out that scutching was a dangerous job and that the scutchers’ hands could easily be hurt.

Robert McConnell recalled the scutch mill at Fourmileburn:

If you looked into a scutch mill, in through the door, there were two of them in there – yin of them roughing and the other finishing the flax. You couldnae have seen them. You talk about health and safety. You couldnae have seen them for stour! Nae masks or nothing. Whenever they came oot that was all clinging on to their beards, their clothes, their eyelashes and everything.

One of the scutchers at Fourmileburn was a one-eyed man who was known as ‘Slasher’. During a fight part of his nose had been bitten off – he had bitten off part of his opponent’s ear. Robert recalls that he had a loud voice – ‘you’d have heard him at Doagh’. The Magiltons also worked in the scutch mill. Robert recalled the Magiltons burning the ‘shows’ (the waste from the scutching process) in their home fire which left a strong smell. Robert’s mother always knew where he had been if he had called with the Magiltons and there was a fire burning at the time.

Leslie Bell’s father grew flax, though this was not for the linen industry, but rather for thatching the house they owned at Gloverstown which was dismantled and reassembled at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. The house had been an inn at the side of what was then the main road from Belfast to Derry. Later it was used a court house with a ‘whipping post’ for punishment. After that it became the Church of Ireland rectory for Duneane parish. The flax grown by the Bells was dry-retted, not dam-retted. Leslie’s father supplied other thatched houses with flax for thatching. In fact, one of the first places that Leslie delivered thatching flax to, when he was 17-18, was the Mellon homestead near Omagh in what is now the Ulster-American Folk Park.

Horses

Horses continued to be used widely on farms until the 1950s. Ploughing was one of the most important activities for which they were used and a man good at working with horses was highly valued. Graham Andrew’s father had a reputation as a first-rate ploughman who was in high demand for opening drills.

Farmers would have had him make a start on the drills so that they could carry on from where he left off. Horses also pulled carts and farm machinery such as the ‘tumbling paddy’ which was used in haymaking. Horses also pulled the binder which was used in harvesting oats. Graham does not have fond memories of this: ‘The worst bit was when they were cutting corn … there were three horses on the binder and sometimes you had to ride the middle horse and the sweat would have burned the legs off you’.

Leslie Bell remembers his mother’s family – who were the last to use horses in their district – cutting corn with horses, and spraying potatoes with a horse and cart – one man drove the horse and another pumped the sprayer which was bolted on to the cart.

One of John Milliken’s neighbours was one of the few people in the Islandmagee/Whitehead area who continued to work with a horse into the 1960s. John remembers him coming to their farm with his horse-drawn ‘tumbling paddy’ during haymaking.

John Cushinan tells a story about a neighbour’s horse:

They were very intelligent animals, horses. The neighbour next to us … Andy Greer … Andy was a bachelor, but he employed an old lady to look after him and he employed a horse-man. The horse-man maybe could have been two field lengths away from the house at lunchtime at 12 o’clock and this lady had a powerful calling voice. She called them and the men never heard her, but the horse snickered, the horse heard her, so they knew immediately that it was 12 o’clock. … The horse was just as keen as them to get in for a feed!

Frankie Dale describes working with horses:

I did not like horses. I wasn’t fit to work with them and they made a fool of me – I was too young. Horses are clever. They ruled me, I didn’t rule them. … Besides they were dangerous. I know of three people who were killed with horses in the area. They were unpredictable. No, I didn’t like horses.

Roisin McLernon remembers the last horse on her family’s farm:

The last horse my brother had – it was when he got the tractor and didn’t need the horse any more. It was a great old pet. It was sold to somebody up in the Glens. A week later we looked down the lane [and saw] the horse coming up the lane, coming home – all that distance!

Farm workers

The owners of the larger farms employed workmen and labourers to help with the work. Some of these men specialised in particular tasks. Of particular importance was the horse-man. Robert Chesney remembers very well the horse-man who worked on his father’s farm.

Robert Chesney recalls the horse-man on his father’s farm:

A horse-man got more money than other people. … A good horse-man always fed his own horses. In our case we were ploughing ground with horses right up until 1945-46 because we happened to have a horse-man at that time who wouldn’t drive a tractor, would hardly sit on a tractor and he was an excellent horseman … my father kept him on and kept two horses. … He was in the stable every morning at the busy time at 6.30am.

Farm labouring, according to Robert McConnell, was ‘hard work, sore work, and nae money’. The Gribbin brothers commented that a farm labourer who was paid 12 shillings a week plus his food was counted as well off. Cahal Boyd remembered two labourers on a neighbouring farm who were paid only around 8 shillings a week.

Roisin McLernon recalls one particular man named Ned McGuigan who worked for them on the farm as a seasonal labourer. He was, according to Roisin, a ‘very clever man’ who knew Latin and Greek. Gerry McCann also remembers Ned, whom he describes as a ‘very smart man’ and very good at drawing.

For a number of young men around Doagh, farm labouring alternated or was combined with working in the local mills. While Leith Burgess was waiting for a job to come up in Doagh Mill he worked for the Robsons and even after finding work in the factory he continued to work for them in the evenings and on Saturdays. Farm work was also carried out by women for, as Wilma McVittie points out, her mother worked in farmhouses and out in the fields, stooking corn, gathering potatoes, etc.

Robert McConnell remembered his father’s life as a farm labourer:

My father ran about for a couple of years and couldn’t get a job. Them was the bad times, the early thirties, really bad. [A neighbour] told my father about this boy looking for a man over at the Fourmileburn. So he went over to see him. He didn’t start him, he said ‘I’ll see you in Ballymena on Saturday’ – that was Ballymena hiring fair in November. So he had to go to Ballymena and he hired him. Well, he had 18 shillings in the week, that’s 90 pence … and you had the old house which wasn’t up to much, but was a roof. If you left the job, you left the house. … And you got a pint of milk or a taste of milk every day free … and we got spuds in with theirs in the field, but you had to work them yourself, what done you a year, and you got as many sticks as you wanted to keep the fire going.

Blacksmiths

A blacksmith’s forge was once a familiar sight around the countryside. Billy Robson remembers a number of blacksmiths around Doagh. One of the best known was Robert Reid whose blacksmith’s shop was near the Methodist church hall. Billy is aware of quite a few old gates around the country stamped ‘R. Reid, Doagh’. Another well known blacksmith was Charlie Patterson at Burnside whose forge Leith Burgess would later buy.

In the 1950s there were still many horses at work that needed shod. Graham Andrew explained that a horseshoe might have lasted 5-6 weeks. Graham remembers that he was sent by his father to the blacksmith in Burnside to have the horse shod: ‘He just threw you up on the horse’s back and away you went down to the blacksmith, and he lifted you off it, shod the horse and threw you on again, and away you went home’. Blacksmiths also helped to adapt farm machinery from horses to tractors.

Around Toome the work of the McKees as blacksmiths was described in glowing terms by many of the interviewees. ‘There was only one place to go’, observed Frankie Dale, who acknowledged that there was hardly a farmer in that country who Jim McKee had not done some work for. Jim specialised in welding which he enjoyed for ‘you never had the same thing to do twice’.

Jim’s father was also a blacksmith and Frankie calls him ‘an unbelievable man’. When it came to the time it took his father to shoe a horse Jim recalled: ‘Some of them you’d maybe get them out again in half an hour and some of them it would be an hour … and if you got a rough one it maybe took you far longer.’ The McKees had a blacksmith’s shop on the Quay Wall in Toome where the boats came in. Cahal Boyd remembered that they ‘hooped’ the cart wheels that he had made ‘with a big fire and a big steel plate’, afterwards dropping them into the Bann to cool down.

Tractors

One of the biggest changes in farming over the lifetime of those interviewed has been the advance of mechanisation and in particular the introduction of tractors. The Gribbin brothers commented on the scale of the changes that they have witnessed in their lifetimes, from working with scythes to the advent of the combine harvester.

While tractors were used on some farms in the 1930s – Willie Stevenson recalls his father acquiring his first tractor (a Ferguson Brown) in that decade – there was a dramatic increase in the numbers acquired during the Second World War. At the beginning of 1939 there were 550 tractors in Northern Ireland. By 1945 this figure had risen to 7,300.

A number of those interviewed indicated that a tractor was acquired for their family’s farm for the first time during the war. The Lorimers at Holestone bought their first tractor around 1941 – a Fordson. Derek remembers that it came with steel wheels rather than rubber tyres. A previous tractor ordered by Derek’s father had been lost when the ship carrying it had sunk in the Irish Sea. The Robsons at Ballyhamage acquired their first tractor at around the same time. Before this Billy’s father had taken the Alvis car that he had used to deliver eggs to Belfast and made it into a cut down car and effectively used it as a tractor. Lorry tyres were attached to the ordinary car tyres and the Alvis did quite a bit of work in the fields. Other farmers were doing something similar on their farms, and Billy notes that considerable ingenuity was shown by farmers at this time. John Milliken’s father acquired his first tractor around 1950. It was an Allis Chalmers which sat higher than either a Ferguson or Fordson and, as John points out, was better for going through crops.

Neighbouring

For most of the farming year, the work was carried out by the farmer with the help of his own family and any labourers he may have employed. At particular times of the year, however, a farmer would have to call on his neighbours for assistance and he in turn would help them. ‘There was what they called neighbouring’, explained Cahal Boyd, ‘You helped the man next door and then he helped you.’

The term used by Roddy Gribbin for this was ‘morrowing’. Especially during the harvest upwards of half a dozen men might have been required for a particular task.



Owen Gribbin describes working on a thresher:

On the thresher there had to be a couple of boys forking, two men feeding the thresher, a man taking away the grain and maybe a couple of men taking away the straw and building it – so it had to be a neighbourly thing.

In addition to offering labour, farmers would also borrow horses or machinery from their neighbours. Derek Lorimer points out that his family owned two horses and as three were needed for the binder so a horse would have to be borrowed from a neighbour – in return they would have cut their neighbour’s corn. Cahal Boyd recalled that they did not have a horse of their own and so if they needed a horse, they borrowed one from a neighbour. This horse was used to bring the turf home or harrow the field for corn. There also a friendly rivalry between farmers. With reference to the farmers around Toome, John Cushinan pointed out: ‘The farmers years ago, they were very, very jealous of each other.’ The sight of a farmer cutting a field of hay could prompt his neighbours to do likewise. John also commented that farmers liked to outdo each other. In his words, they were ‘acting like weans’.

Markets and Fairs

Visits to the local markets and fairs were a regular part of the farming calendar. Such occasions provided opportunities to buy and sell livestock as well as socialise with other members of the farming community. Robert Chesney’s father had a small lorry which was used to transport cattle to and from markets and fairs.

Robert has happy memories of travelling in the lorry to pick up cattle that his father had bought in Cushendall and other places. John Cushinan remembered the monthly cattle fairs in Bellaghy and Antrim, both about 8 miles from their farm. Leslie Bell can just about remember Bellaghy fair. He recalls walking to it from his grandfather’s farm near Bellaghy and the large crowds of people who had gathered at it. For him it was ‘like being at a carnival’.

John Cushinan tells a story about Bellaghy fair:

My uncle had a bit of an experience. … One morning he went over to fodder the cattle and the gate was lying wide open. And it suddenly struck him – it was Monday, Bellaghy fair day. And he headed for Bellaghy. He got his cattle in Breslin’s yard in Bellaghy. They had been bought by a cattle dealer innocently enough and he had to give the name of the man he had bought them off – and he paid dear for it … six months or something. Those cattle had been driven into Bellaghy and my uncle had to drive them home again!