Traditional Farming Documentary -- Farm life in Ireland during the 1930s - "Preserving the Past"

[Music] more crows traditional farms are situated in the center of Killarney National Park and are only coupla hundred yards muckross house they were forced opened in May 1993 the houses the Boren's and feed structures were built on a 70 acre site and they're an exact copy of a town's land environment ahead of Kanani founder set up with a view to preserving the crafts and skills of rural Ireland at muckross traditional farms we invite you to take a stroll down memory lane to attain before the advent of electricity Norwalk was carried out using traditional methods to a great extent the lives of the country people were ruled by the natural world around them each season brought its own set of activities in the house in the Faramir and on the land these activities were governed by the weather and the requirements of the animals and crops the film that you're about to see is muckross traditional farms reenactment of the rural farming year based on the nineteen thirties [Music] a fine dusting of snow on the distant sleeve mesh mountains give an indication that winter was already announcing her early arrival and yet for men like Patrick green this could easily have been the end middle or beginning of a season such was the never ending and continuous cycle of the farming year few if anyone nowadays would have this unsightly heat outside their back doors and yet back in the 1930s a pile of farmyard manure was a common sight and thus necessary then as the sunshine and showers were for growing the yearly crops good farmyard manure needed time to mature it needed lots of oats or barley straw which had been well trouble and domed on by the cattle and horses for an entire winter then turned out on to the Haggard and left to rot for another year this organic fertilizer for that is what it was would have been about two years old and on like modern days slurry would be almost odorless [Music] Patrick and his helper john sheehan would spread a cartload every our this fee would be played in a few weeks time and would produce a crop of green potatoes or turnips however regardless of which crop the dressing of manure was always the sim the frost and winter weather would soon break down these lumps and in a couple of weeks they would have been absorbed into the soil the ideal time for plowing would have been November or early December this was most important if potatoes were to be grown for potatoes needed grown well broken up and there was no better way to achieve that result and to expose the land to a winter of frost snow and rain it was said that during the 1930s the summers were better under winters colder indeed it was often usual that ground could have been frozen from Christmas until the end of February it was also common for ground to be so wet during winter that it would have been impossible to take a team of horses onto the ground until early March since medieval times there have been few agricultural implements better documented than the plow evolving from a pointed stick simply scraping a furrow through the ground the horse-drawn plow had by the middle of the 18th century been modified many times changed and adjusted depending on the type of soil in a particular area this plow a Pierce ar1 with a wheel for depth control and the disc for cutting the furrow was probably made in Wexford around the 1920s from the early 1930s and on into the 1940s Pierce flows were dominant at much plying and the company awarded a certificate of merit to Plomin who won matches using their clothes it has also learned that the English blow makers ransom a dozens of varieties on the market at the same time whatever the make or model the clothes had all the sim function to perform to turn over the earth bury the grass and wheats and leave the soil to be broken down by the weather flash the larger of the two share of horses is 11 years old stands 17 pounds and 1 inch tall and has feet so large that his shoes cannot be bought off the shelf all his shoes have to be forged from flat iron by a blacksmith Doudna the other share is six years old and stands 16 hands one inch tall in an it are day these powerful animals could plow an acre of ground bodied oil Loch Lomond would never need a stick nor put these horses know his voice and will work to voice command thus making the use of their ends almost unnecessary [Music] [Music] with a fine spell of good dry weather during march the ground is now ready to receive its final preparation for the planting of the cross this implement is called the Spring Herald and is again a two-horse operation as this ground was flowed in November the grass and other vegetation has been buried for four months and below they still look green it is highly unlikely that they will grow again The Herald can be adjusted according to the depth of seed bed required but integrins needed a good depth of close to would have to be Herald four or five pain each time the Harrow would be set a little deeper to on the fifth from the piece would be digging about ten inches into the ground absol will be plain to have a pool for the horses grown for oats wheat or barley usually needs to be Harold twice which is a seedbed of about one and a half to two inches deep the two horses seem to sense that spring is on the way or by this time they seem to be enjoying their work a lot more than they did in November of applying these days they appear eager to get on with whatever job is in hand perhaps they realize that life is returning to the thieves and meadows which of course will mean a sweeter flavor to the shoots of grass there have been various ways of clumping the green crop over the centuries some Irish farmers with a large acreage of ground made us find it worthwhile to invest in one of these horse-drawn corn rows first invented as far back of 1733 this ingenious machine provided a mechanical way of swing seats evenly and over 250 years later the basic principle has changed little for nowadays modern tractors pulling a 16-foot wide drill consume large acreages of ground in just a few hours farm worker Neela scrum tips a bag of seed into the seed box of the corn drove this seed is called Maurice Wiggin a new variety which produces long straw suitable for fetching this corn drill is a star automated wet work although on many Irish farms light and cheaper seat droves were coming in from America in the 1930s the cruel czar rooks to give them their correct name were never far away at planting time always eager for a free feed it was said that during the 18th century one seed and poor was eaten by birds so it was not uncommon for children to be sent out to walk up and down the fields banging two sticks together to frighten the birds humans scare crews about 100 years ago another planting invention arrived here from America the graspable tea so-called because of its similarity and arm movement to the musical instrument could show a very even pattern to a width of about three meters on each side of the sewer the fiddle which was more affordable than the corn drill was used on most small farms on until the 1960s the seats will be covered using a Qian Harrow or a Bush Herald which was simply a bundle of brushes and then the fee would have to be ruled the reason the ruler is used is to ensure that any stones will be pushed down into the soil for a harvesting time stones sticking up through the corn would soon take the edge of the Reaper name the ruler would also break up any lumps of soil and would leave the field looking level this field will now be left until the middle of August from the 1930s no chemicals were ever applied to the ground weeds would either be pulled by hand or allowed to grow along with the poor [Music] [Music] with the corn crop safely planted and with the weather remaining good it was time to concentrate on the next step of the farming cycle the planting of the potatoes the potato was still the main food crop growing in the 1930s and indeed today is the fourth most popular source of food in the world coming after rice wheat and maize nihlus is making a potato Ridge and allow the practice of drill cultivating has been around for almost a century the age-old art of growing the potato crop and ridges walls and still is popular many believe that a larger crop could be produced using this method during the 19th century a family of it could have survived on one acre of potatoes the ridge would be given a good dressing of farmyard manure the potato seed planted on top and then covered up with soil as the young plants were growing more soil would have been added every two weeks or so making potato ridges was slow work a man would have to work long and hard to achieve an acre in a week by the middle of the 19th century there were almost nine million people in Ireland and every available acre of land was being used to produce food when the potato blight struck in 1845 1 million people died of hunger and between 1845 and 1855 a further two million emigrated because of the food shortage traces of old potato ridges can still be seen on most Irish hillsides to this day a reminder of how our ancestors had to live during the eighteen hundreds in the 1930s the more progressive farmers have moved on to the method of drill khottabych unlike the pros which we saw earlier the drill flow was to Satan which allowed it to open up a long strip drill and to which the potato seed could be counted this grind had been well mannered during the winter although it was quite common for an extra dressing to be spread along the rows and the potato seed planted on top of the manure drill cultivation was hailed as a great scientific breakthrough and farming circles for after the drill club many other implements evolved for example machines for scuffling and eventually harvesting the crop by mechanical means on the larger farms up to an acre a day could be planted using both men and horses the setting of the states was usually women's work as was the spreading of the manure onto the drills the potato seed would have been set at about ten inches apart Dennis is setting the seat from a bag in Perham although they may also have been set from boxes or buckets the seed potatoes being used are called Kara's pinks and should produce a crop of good eating potatoes other popular varieties would have been Aaron banner or golden longer it was usually live in a field of potatoes four or six drills would have been left for turnips although it was not uncommon then to have seen a whole field of turnips the turnips however were not satin till June when the risk of the turnip play diminish perhaps made a good table vegetable and would also have been used for animal feeding they are a hardy vegetable and could stand the most severe of Frost's it was not unusual for them to be left in the ground all winter it was always a relief to see the crops simply clumping a little for the farmer there was no time for relaxing farm life then as today meant a 14-hour day and a seven-day week regardless of the work to be done in the fees Joan Shannon has to perform the twice daily task of bringing in and milking the cow by hand this Shorthorn Coe was a hardy breed producing both good quality milk and beef short horns were by the 1930s one of the most popular breeds in Ireland they were quite small and were sometimes called the poor man's code on very poor farms people and animals often Liat and slept in the same living space for a poor farming family the untimely death of a coordinate left the family destitute so it made the understandable way the co would have been kept in the warmth of the house in the winter time of course a large animal like a cow would also have generated extra heat in the house acting as a big radiator a nearly central heating system even on the larger and better off farms it was quite common to keep small animals in the house honey O'Connor explains why now underneath the dresser we have what we call the coop the goose are the duck heard the hen was hatched out over there they were brought into the kitchen because there was always the fear of the rats taking the young birds so when you were dancing around the house you were always told to mind the dress so you didn't turn your back on the dresser if the goose was under it because she catch you by the back of the leg and I can tell you she'd leave a fair mark there so in the morning when you got up you pulled across the the curtain and you you grabbed the goose or the hen and you threw them out the door because if you didn't would leave a fine mark on the floor so the first thing you did was out the door with the goose and they would pick around for a while I need and that would come back in themselves so the importance of keeping them inside it was until they were to say a week or a fortnight or Joan would spend about 20 minutes smoking the moat would then have been taken into the house for general consumption although a certain month would have been kept aside to be turned into butter this machine is a separator and as its name suggests is able to separate the cream from the mold the basic principle is that cream contains more fat than milk and by passing through these cones the skimmed milk is collected in one container and the cream and another nowadays skimmed or semi skimmed milk is very popular as it contains less fat but as therefore thought to be very healthy this diablos separator was invented an imported an indeed must have been a great help to the farmers way the cream would have been left for three or four days until it started to turn and would then have been ready to be made into butter butter this made the most farms in those days some woman made just enough for their own use but others made butter to be sold at the markets or to their neighbors Joel Collins tips the sour cream into the wooden churn which would have been well scalded with boiling water every woman had her own technique for making butter a little with a good reputation have never any trouble selling their produce after about 20 minutes of churning the butter has come together and in another minute Joel will let off the excess liquid which is called buffer mode what a Mook was necessary in the farmhouse for baking bread and would also make a refreshing drink usually taken with the potatoes and the days for medicines and creams were not as plentiful as no putting butter milk onto someone's skin at a great healing effect John will wash the butter several times to make sure that all of the buttermilk is washed out the butter is then removed from the churn and salted at a rate of one ounce of salt to one pound of butter the salt helped to preserve the butter there were new fridges in Ireland in the 1930s the fungus that posed the potato blight in 1845 has never gone away and these four modern-day farmers there is a big fear that slate could spill them as deep as the pit across a spray for killing the fungus was developed in 1882 a Frenchman named Bordeaux discovered quite by accident that the mixture of copper sulphate and washing soda which he was using on his grapevines was able to kill the fungus that closed the potato blade by the 1890s there was a major drive in Ireland to introduce this new miracle spray which would ensure that the potatoes would never again be destroyed by blade Doudna is pulling the potato sprayer another implement suitable for use only when the potatoes are grown and raised grows like the corn drill and the turnips or this sprayer was also manufactured by the star company from Wexford and would have been quite a pool for one horse the big wheels of the sprayer braved the gear mechanism insane which in turn drives the pump causing a feign spray to be emitted not only onto the leaves of the potatoes but to the stalks and underneath as well Patrick as well as braving they have to keep a close eye on the models where they were very up to block with the smallest particle of dust if the weather is dry there would be a less chance of blight if the weather is warm and dump like it is no this would be a very dangerous time so Patrick will spray the potatoes every 10 days towards the end of June the old turnip plants are growing well the warm damp weather is encouraging their growth unfortunately this good grueling weather is ideally suited for the group of weeds and grass which by the end of the month are looking like they are going to cook the young turnip a team of workers have been sent to repeat to eat the turnip saw some extra assistance has given to the leaders by this one horse-drawn cutter the sculptor is pulled along the bottom of the drill Oh disturbing the graphs and weeks but not touching the center of the driller thus Cutler has loosened the soil and leeks making the job of pulling and weeding easier weeding Twyla's necessary as any other job on the farm was never a popular up the patient the weeds and grass are pulled the soil is then shaken off the roots and they are then left lying to dry a hopefully day in the Sun if the weather is dry through July and August one weeding may be enough for us the turnips cruel they will be able to ward off any new weeds and competing for spits in the gross [Music] un'ytu is leading her garden using a hole she would remove any weeds around her plot of cabbage and onions these vegetables would have been sown at about the same time as the potato ridges were made the garden potatoes have also been sprayed for blight and will be every 10 days until digging time the horse sprayer could not have come in here these potatoes were sprayed using a watering can or knapsack most farming activities throughout the year are dependent one way or another on the weather a moderate rainfall and a reasonable amount of heat is needed to make the crops gruel after a night of soft rim there was nothing better than a gentle breeze to dry the ground followed by a generous amount of sunshine this combination inevitably give the deserved result of a good crop at no time of the year is the farmer more anxious about weather conditions than a tea making nowadays hay would be saved and lit May or early June in the 1930s however that would not have been cut until early or mid July it was discovered that as grass ages it becomes less nutritious hay is produced by cutting down a meadow of grass turning it over a couple of times during a five day period taking it into the barn and leaving it there to be fed to the animals over the winter that was the simple basic principle of hay making that was seldom as easier process as that weather forecasting in the 1930s was not very accurate some would say that little has changed in the forecasting front in the past 70 years so at haymaking tame there was a lot of studying the moon the sky at night and various other scenes which were supposed to foretell what the weather was going to be rain on cut grass washes out the nutrients as does too much Sun over working with machinery was also not recommended if he wanted good hey so when the weather looked settled the mowing of the hay would begin with one thing down and then the processor being saved paprika is just starting the second sort of a heavier crop this grass has dumped on sticks and the cupping bar of the mowing machine something has to give and it is the metal shaft of the mowing machine there will be no more mooing today breaking a metal shaft like this shows the power that these two horses have ordering and receiving a new part for a machine back in the 30s could have taken a very long time so brueggen parts were often repaired rather than replaced some craftspeople such as the village blacksmith were essential to the farmers not only for shoeing the horses but also for repairing broken farm implements people like Timmy jockey would have held a special position in the locality in those days and would never have been short of work as blacksmith's forge would also have been a meeting place for the locals and all the latest news and gossip from a homeland abroad would have been discussed there the following afternoon Patrick was back in business the shaft of his lowing machine repaired and working as good as new this more is a Deering International made in Canada in the early nineteen twenties Irish boundaries like pearce selects book for by this paint turning out hundreds of moors of different sizes which could be pulled by one horse or two by 1900 that is believed that there were more than 20,000 more machines in Ireland here it is another major breakthrough this machine with the addition of another seat and a few minor adjustments would again be needed in a few it's time for popping the cork a successful Reaper have been developed by a Scotsman in 1828 but the segment of model like the one we see here was invented by the American scientist Paul McCormick from the ruffridge pending Virginia in 1831 McCormick did well with his rebirth for he was a multimillionaire when he died in 1884 at the age of 75 years at very busy times of the year and especially at haymaking it was common for the neighbors to help a farmer often formed a partnership with his neighbors exchanging labor on a day to day basis as well as horses and machinery families that were down on their luck elderly sick or with very young children were often helped at busy times of the farming year the local priest or minister was always sure of plenty of assistance when his hay needed to be saved it was not uncommon to see four or five people are working in a meadow Allu as many as a dozen may be necessary if the crop was heavy or the weather bad and many kisses woman were expected to work in the meadow at haymaking and indeed if men were scarce could also have been expected to work the horses the hay pate was a good effective way to turn and shake the hay this practice would have to be repeated many times if the weather was wet it was said that hay could survive up to it days of constant rim but if the weather did not improve after that time the hay would most likely be lost or a speeding value sooo badly affected that it would only be suitable for bedding however nowadays a silage making is almost weather proof less and less hay is being made the progress made in farming during the 20th century was already well underway in the 1930s for though nearly all of the work was still being done by horses many ingenious inventions were coming onto the market which made the farmers less dependent on Mon Park this one horse hey Turner again manufactured in West Georgia could that the weather was Spain save the hay without any hay pegs being used the spikes of the Turner would have lifted up any dumped grass and turned it over to be saved by the Sun there were various types of hay burners and kickers around about time so moved by one horse from some day to whichever way they were operated in the meadow these machines all had one thing in common they were slowly but surely doing away with the need for large-scale of manpower on the farm between 1900 and 1930 the number of farm laborers on the land had half and by the 1960s that number had half again today farming is mostly a one-man operation any farmer with a machine like this one would have been very popular with his neighbors the horse-drawn hay rake had teeth but you could be raised or lured using a lever in front of the driver's seat when the makings of a Bic have been brought together the men have set about their task as they have done many times before and as know four days since the hay was cut four days of good dry weather and Sun Shade the men are building a hay peak which in spite of her in could be left in the field for a number of weeks and due course these hay Peaks will be removed to the stack and used to build them to one large stack hay had to be completely dry before the large hey pink was built for if there was too much moisture in it it was likely to rot overheat and then very extreme kisses go on fire Patrick and his son Michael are making a grass room this would be used to tie down the stack a grass rope made from hay was quite strong and the nearly tames would have been used as harness for horses and donkeys a week later Patrick and Michael have started drawing the hate Peaks from the meadow to the yard where they will be made into a larger stock and steward over the winter for many centuries the hay was simply forked from the hay peaks and built onto a hay cart hay carts varied from one part of the country to another some had to be low slung if they were working hay ground first invented at the start of the nineteenth century this hay cart was a two-man operated pulley was capable of taking the entire Pig onto the hay cart under louis low enough operation this method was used in farms until the advent of the buck rig during the 1950's the father-and-son team will clear this field of pigs and before nightfall it was always a relief to see the hasteth lien as the quality of the hay determined the health and value of the farmer's life stock and ultimately how much income the sale would bring in as we said earlier a woman could have been called on to work in the fields of necessary however her main rule would have been looking after a fair sand under around the farmhouse one of her many rules would have been looking after hens and other small livestock around the farmyard of all the farm animals around the farmyard that the woman of the house looked after she would have paid particular attention to the hems the reason for this was that the money from the sale of eggs went to the woman of the house it was said by most men at that time that the hands always died in debt because of all the extra food and attention that they were given by the woman one of the most obvious and fundamental changes that has taken place in farming is the fact that farming has become more intensive and specialized that is to say that the days of having pigs cows hens chickens and sheep as well as growing crops on the same holding are gone farmers know tend to specialize in dairying beef production or cereal growing etc and times gone by the need to have a mixed farming system stemmed from the fact that everybody needed to be self-sufficient one important role for the woman was making food honey would have baked bread two or three times a week I'm going to make some griddle bread now this is the bread that would be fairly typical of rural Ireland your two ways of making bread in the bass development are the griddle which is a fact this might have there now this is just plain flour spool the bread so dirt a small spoon by caramel soda I always had to make sure the griddle plate because it keeps it soft now this would be a sort of a coarse flour they would have been using and they would often have added Yola meal or amazed me tink I was a little bit of a bite and I mix it with sour milk this is cow's milk gone sour [Music] now this army of mixes with the bread soda and one is acid the other is alkaline and that's what you use for raising your brain now it is very important to put the bread on the grid work very quickly because the bread soda and the Sarma correcting immediately now cutting the bread into Petrus are our squares and our soda furnace as it is known from the cart I love Ireland now I'm putting it on the griddle I shake it bit of flour first on the griddle some people would rub a little bit of butter on it but I like just to put that it's missing it will take about from 20 minutes to half an hour for the break to cook now when it's number one sight I turned it over and it gets crusty and I turn it over and then do it on the other side and it is importantly that you have the fire nice and warm so you run your hand on the griddle to see if it is warm enough or you leave your your grid up or down now I have another hoop here that I can adjust so that's important that you move it up and down as the five depending on how hot the fire is but brittle bread you eat it as it came off the griddle and that's why it was so popular of course very popular with the children with a Moga milk and Cynthia butter on as the month of August draws to a close the corn is no rate and ready to be cut public will have cut a 2-meter opening the whole way around the field this something is so that when the horses pulling the Reaper binder coming to the field they will not trumple the precious ears of corn the scythe has been used for many years as the main implement for cutting the corn and hay it was said that corn was much easier to cut them hay one drawback that the site had was that it needed constant sharpening paprika and Michael have no got three extra workers in the field to help them goats will eat almost anything and no fame the corn to their liking they're not worried about the thistles which have been growing along with the corn the bundles of corn are tied into sheaves three sheaves will be stood up together and tied around the top this is called a stuck if the need for farmworkers was dropping year by year as a result of the many ingenious inventions amongst the market the most important invention to hissed in their domains arrived in 1879 first introduced in America the Reaper binder was to dominate the harvesting of corn and Ireland for the following in the years by the 1930s the Reaper binder was a state-of-the-art machine capable of not only cutting the corn but with an elaborate and both device for tiny machines as well the cup corn is forced down onto the canvas conveyor belt by the retaining lead it is then forced up another canvas belt and to the tying mechanism the bundle of corn is tied and then kicked out for it can easily be collected and stood a binder working in good dry conditions with a custom tied one acre of corn every are so does little wonder why workers were becoming scarcer and scarcer on the farms as the farming season draws near to an end the laborious task of digging the potato crop is now underway potatoes were usually dug around the end of a pork although in the 1930s it would have been quite common for them to be left in the ground until November for many years the only method of digging was with a speed eluate was discovered that the drill clove could if carefully handled lift the crop from the ground and exposed the potatoes to the gatherers while not a perfect way of digging the crop for many of the potatoes were still buried the flow was one of the first implements to speed up the usually slow business of potato harshly in 1852 an Irishman James Hunt from candy ultra invented a machine that was to become as useful to the potato growers as the binder had been to the corn Brewers the two horses pulled along the bigger a large blip Cup underneath the crop of potatoes forcing them upwards they earn forks at the back of the machine revolved as it was pulled along and these kicked the potatoes out of the droves all that was left to do was for the gatherers to pick them up from the end of the 1930s tractors were beginning to appear on farms the first people to have owned a tractor would have been men like Andy O'Connell who in those days called himself a farm contractor from the end of November until the falling March and they would have worked a six-day week thrashing the large amounts of corn captain farms started throughout the countryside the once a year arrival of the thrashing mode was treated as something of an event but this was certainly one of the most important highlights of the farming year man and woman stood outside the farmhouse to greet this welcome arrival young people were kept off school for the day and with a welcome like this only must have boat like a modern day pop star the tractor pulling the threshing machine as a force weighing just over one pump this model was made in the late 1930s a little Henry Ford from the USA have been producing tractors latest since nineteen 16oz up haymaking the thrashing also required a lot of orders and this was another time of the year when the farmer depended on his neighbors for extra assistance up to a dozen people were needed around the thrashing metal and usually when the machine came into an area that would stay in that locality until every farmers porn had been trashed it was lately that this team of workers would move with the thrashing mode from one farm for the next in order to help complete the thrashing in the locality first invented well over 200 years ago early cracking moles would have been powered by water or in some cases by horses and by the middle of the 1800s they would have been both pulled and driven by steam engine this middle is a gar they manufactured was Scotland around the 1920s boasting 500 pounds this was played a large investment at that time for the farm contractor lake the Reaper binder the thrashing Miller in supreme throughout Ireland until the 1960s the arrival of the combine harvester with its one-man operation of cupping and thrashing the corn has made the thrashing mill like so many other farm implements of yesteryear a thing of the past just another memory of Ireland's farming history before the thrashing can begin the mill has to be leveled this is very important for if it's not level the mill would not operate properly there is a spirit level of the front and back of the middle and II will take the same care when adjusting the tension of the pulley belt which hard by the Fortson will drive the whole thrashing operation the pulley gear of the tractor is engaged and the numerous police on the thrashing mill begin to turn the once familiar hum of a mill could have been heard up to three miles away around the thrashing mill in the past men didn't have to be told what to do they just seemed to know where to go and which job was there Denis assisted by young Michael is forking the sheaves of corn onto the platform for Patrick who has one of the most important jobs is spitting the sheaves into the ruler drums feeding the middle as this job was called was a dangerous operation and it was not unusual to seed thresher men with a finger or perhaps two missing there were few health and safety men around in the 1930s sometimes there were two men on top of the middle one cutting the Twain allele are feeding the middle Patrick is doing both jobs and celery and we'll take a break every so often or perhaps let someone else speak for a while halfway through the threshing all of the men would take a break some for a smoke which was popular in those days others for some liquid refreshments not necessarily again as an other busy times of the year the woman of would have cut to help of the thrashing although their time was usually taken up preparing food for the workers the thrashed straw has blown up onto the walkers and checked out at the back of the mill Michael and Denis have no swapped jobs and are forking up the stroll to need us who is building it in the shed from here it will be used for betting the horses cattle and other animals over the winter period in some areas a mechanical conveyor would have been coupled to the Thrasher which would help move away the crushed fro at the other end of the middle the thrashed grim is collected and large hemp sacks these bags were much bigger and heavier than anything that a man would want to carry nowadays the grid was a very valuable commodity and would be stored loose on a law it would probably have to be turned a number of times to prevent it from heating similar to the hay going into the stacks some of the corn would be sold and some would be used to spitting for the farm animals at the end of the thrashing a large meal would have been cooked by the woman of the house the man and woman would have sat at separate tables the more senior men and the man of the house would have sat together at one table it was not unusual for meals like this to be followed by an evening of music and dancing Jun explains the woman's rule on the day of the thrashing the thrashing was a big day for the women at the house because they had to cook the meals and mostly dinner and the supper is nice and usually the woman the house would try to either have a few relatives or a few neighbors into helper because you could have up to 40 men in the Haggart and I know a lot of the women used to say Potter half of them do ee wouldn't be strictly needed but it was a sort of a a contrived a thing that they all got together every neighbor came in and they it was mostly baking that would have been cooked big Fletcher's are being taken off the ceiling that be well salted they'd be steep the night before provided you got notice of it because often the thrashing came and there was much larger service and then plenty cabbage and Flowery potatoes and mustard and HP sauce the flour bacteria clots on the table and the courageous would be piled high honors and the other men would come in and they'd eat it and usually there was corn cake afterwards are often there was plenty apples because most houses had an apple had an orchard so there would be a protect to follow but it was a hard day and you'd have the children out up on every ditch looking for first bushes and for rotten black Tom to hurry up the potatoes and the and the pots of vegetable underneath although the thrashing has now been completed and the farming year is drawing to a close it will not be long until the neverending cycle of the farming year will begin again even though times were hard and money scarce people still found time to entertain themselves with music and song in a way seldom seen today [Music]

Channel: Videos of Irish Farming Life

Views: 566,547

Rating: 4.7856526 out of 5

Keywords: traditional farming documentary, Traditional, Farming, film, video, documentary, farm, life, rural ireland, preserving the past, muckross traditional farms, old farm video, old, horse, horse work, irish cooking, baking, milking cows, pigs, harvest, haymaking, Planting potatoes, threshing, mill, thresher, dancing, ireland, irish, rural, killarney, kerry, county kerry, john thompson videos, videos of irish farming life, traditional Irish skills, craft, crafts, blacksmith, historical documentary, history, arfm

Id: r2QhFbFY2G4

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020