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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
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My copy of the Compact OED (which is the full text but reproduced micrographically - these days I need a magnifying glass to read it) gives two meanings for the verb 'to sheave'. The first, which I would have said was *relatively common usage to a UK national of a certain age(!), is:
To bring together, collect, gather or put up (corn etc) into a sheaf or sheaves.
The second is new to me:
To back a boat, to work the oars backwards. I have done this, but never guessed there was a word for it!
Regarding the first meaning; when the crop had been cut the reapers gathered and tied it, stem downwards, into large bundles, sheaves, or stooks, and left the bundles standing in rows of golden yellow pyramids across the field. A cart followed behind and the sheaves were picked up using a hay-fork and tossed onto the cart. The cart then took the crop to a suitable area for storage where, if it was for animal fodder, it was piled into haystacks. These were solid stacks of hay perhaps fifteen feet high and fifteen by thirty feet in plan and shaped like a house with a shallow sloping roof formed from the top layers of hay to shed the rain. I haven't seen this done since I was a boy; in fact I remember the first time I saw a field with rolls of hay across it, instead of the usual stooks, and being amazed at the mechanisation of the process.
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Joined: Jun 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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Regarding the first meaning; when the crop had been cut the reapers gathered and tied it, stem downwards, into large bundles, sheaves, or stooks, and left the bundles standing in rows of golden yellow pyramids across the field.
They're called stooks, and a field was done this way this summer outside a Northamptonshire village called Isham (which has a very nice pub called The Monk and Minstrel, of which I am an habitue). It was done because the straw was going to be used for - goddammit - thatching. I had a drink with the gang who did the deed, and they done told me so. They are sheavers, and one of them is also a thatcher. So, sheaving comes full circle ...
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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RE:I remember the first time I saw a field with rolls of hay across it
Are they called 'swiss rolls' there too?
and if so does anyone know why-
The do look like a snack cake called 'swiss rolls' (among other things) but i was told the machine to roll hay and not bale it, was originally of swiss manufacture.
I have never see real sheaves, (i have seen decorative ones at restoration villiages, but what little i know about farming comes from 1) watchin 'Modern Farmer' in my very early childhood (it came on very early, before early morning cartoons) and 2)looking out car windows, and reading.
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
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if it was for animal fodder, it was piled into haystacks
Perhaps I can just add a small amount to dixby's evocative description since there are a few other associated terms of art... and there is a distinct difference in the handling of hay and grain crops.
Hay was never gathered into stooks (other regional forms of this word include stoops and similar variants) - it was cut loose, originally by hand with sickle or its larger cousin the scythe, latterly in Victorian times by finger-bar mowers drawn by horsepower. The resulting swathes were laid to dry in windrows, turned occasionaly, then raked into heaps and pitched onto carts for transport to the storage area close to the livestock buildings - this area was sometimes known as a fold amongst other things. As horse-drawn mechanisation came in to force the pace, the turning and the side-raking became mechanised too.
Grain crops were as dixby describes: initially the crop was cut by similar manual means to the hay crop, but then by finger-bar mowers and later by binders - these latter were enormously heavy pieces of machinery and were known as 'horse-killers' since they often required three horses in a unicorn hitch (one leading, then two in a side-by-side harness). These resulted in ready-tied sheaves dropped in a neat line, rather than the previous manually tied versions bound with a twist of straw. In both cases the sheaves still had to be gathered into stooks, which sometimes needed to be turned and re-ordered in order to dry enough to make safe in a compacted stack. If the crop was not pre-dried enough, the rick could catch fire from the exothermic reaction of a close-packed stack, or the grain could go mouldy. Whereas hay was best stacked as soon as it was sun-dried, corn crops always needed further wind conditioning, and hence it was stooked in the fields for a while. After transport they were built into an enormous circular stack known typically as a rick, which gives the alternative name of a rickyard. To keep rats from devouring the grain, the ricks were often built on a platform raised from the ground on staddle stones ~ imagine large stone mushrooms and you're close! The overhang was to prevent the rats climbing aboard.
Once in the stacks and ricks the job was only half done. Both forms of material needed a thatched roof to keep the weather out, and they were characteristically decorated at the apex with a corn dolly. Hay had to be cut from the stack with a massive blade - think of something like a large spade with a tee-handle, with one straight edge and one curved sharp edge meeting the straight edge at a point. Sawing down through dense-packed hay with one of those was really some job. By contrast, ricks storing oats, barley or wheat would typically be taken down in one 'all-hands' operation, and the sheaves fed through a thresher, which varied widely in scale, power source and output. When the smaller kits were used there might be a seperate winnowing operation, which tumbled the grain through a fan-box to separate the grain from the chaff. The straw would then be built back into a haystack-type stack, unless it was one of the more specialist kinds as used for Capfka's thatching.
I have worked with Shire horses on all of these tasks, and I can assure you it is murderous hard work :)
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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maverick, I...I... wow. I am SO privileged to know you! That was wonderful! For a picture of one kind of corn dolly, go here: http://www.wicstun.com/corndolly/ and run your cursor over the box that reads Corn Dollies; I think it would also be worthwhile to click on The Guild of Straw Craftsmen, too.
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Joined: Mar 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
Maverick ~ thanks for adding that amazing detail to my mental rewind! That is good stuff. I have copied it off and saved it to study later.
Staddle stones are still around, usually serving as garden decorations. A few weeks ago in a market in Horsham I came across a guy who was casting new ones in concrete and selling them. I don't think I could bring myself to buy such a fake - maybe no one else would know, but I would! Now, I look at more closely at the ones I see and wonder...is this one real? Perhaps most are not!
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Posts: 475
addict
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addict
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 475 |
When I was a child ( or a smaller child  ) I read a wonderful book called 'The Vandal' by Ann Schlee. There is a long discription of haymaking in it, all bound up in ritual and lore. I can't seem to find out how factual it was. Has anyone read the book ( I do recommend it) and can they shed some light as to the accuracy of the description?
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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dxb--thank you for your post: it made me realize I had read saddle, for staddle. [shame e] I'm going to put a site with pictures of them; it is a commercial site--sorry, but I somehow doubt that too many of us are going to just rush the place to buy one, and dxb did mention it. Here you go, my friend--a place where you can buy the genuine article; even get a matching pair for the low, low price of £495.00. http://www.english-garden-antiques.co.uk/staddlestones.html
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Apr 2002
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Wow! I'm speechless! hehehe.....
But after all this talk about sheaves, sheaf and sheaving, what about sleaving? Any news about that?
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Joined: Mar 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Sleaving:
Nothing more than tsuwm's pieces from the OED and Webster's up above. The OED quotes some early usages, but that's all.
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