NO INSTRUCTION BOOK

by Olaf Chedzoy

"Don't put it like that, son," said my father, "don't let it fold over back on itself."

I lifted the fork, moved the hay around so that it settled without any undue humps in it. "That's better," he acknowledged, but he still adjusted it so that it overlapped the interior of the rick's wall.

"You see," he went on, "you've got to make sure the hay knits in properly with the wall. You've got to start with the corners and build them firmly, with the walls carefully evenly made between. Then you've still got to make sure that the hay in the middle knits in at the wall edge. Otherwise, the wall might fall away."

My father had had years of making hayricks, ever since he was young. There was a skill there, which I was keen to appreciate, although there was to be no future for me in farming.

It's more difficult to make a hayrick than a strawrick, because sheaves of straw have string to hold the straw bundles together. There is nothing but the skill of the maker, the maker who decides the right size of rick will be for the hay that's lying in the field, who builds the rick to last the whole winter if necessary, who makes it a neat addition to a field or yard. There is nothing but the skill of the maker, for you won't find an instruction book.

I always thought my father - and my uncles for that matter - had got their sums wrong when the rick began to rise, seemingly to house-roof height when only half the hay had been collected. The next horse would arrive with the next load, and the man on the cart would 'pitch' the hay up to the man on the rick - that's why those two-pronged forks with extra long handles were called pitch-forks, of course - and the man on the rick would catch it with his fork as it reached its highest point and would distribute it to the appropriate part of the rick. They all knew what they were doing - they had to, for all hay forks have needle points - but there was one man who made a final decision whether it was satisfactory.

I didn't do all the parts of the work for I wasn't old enough: it needed a strong man to do the regular pitching, and it needed a working rhythm from the man on the rick to use his fork to take it as it reached its highest point to make the best of the effort. At that stage, I was relegated to less demanding work, such as tidying with a hand-rake, so that as much as possible was saved. But I wasn't too young, even at about ten years old, to have my share from the cider jar when we took a break.

When all the hay had been collected, there'd be the assessments.

"Pretty good shear of grass there."

"Smells sweet, don't it?"

"What d'ya reckon, 'bout five ton?"

"Bit less. Quarter of a ton less."

These assessments would all be part of the exercise: the judging of the weight of hay in a rick was something which I could never do, but they used to sell a rick of hay on the basis of such estimates by farmers. There were no hand calculators, and they didn't even use a ready-reckoner, such as I have now in my possession, which claims "How to tell the weight of hay in a rick, knowing the dimensions."

Within two or three weeks, the rick had settled to a more sensible height as the hay compressed, though there were always inspections, sometimes with a rod into the centre to ensure that the rick wasn't overheating. Spontaneous ignition can occur if the hay had been too green. Then there is the tidying of the rick, using the rake on the sides, and the roofing - a simple but thick layer of straw which directs the rain to the perimeter. The straw was held in place with a 'straw rope' which in tune was pegged down by split chestnut or hazel spars. One of my delights was in helping to make the straw rope, often in lengths of up to 30 feet, by turning the handle while my father fed the straw to lengthening twist. The rick had to stay intact until the cattle had eaten the summer and autumn grass.

Come November, when the last of the grass had been eaten, the cattle were housed and only let out in the day for exercise, the hay had to provide the bulk of their sustenance for the winter. The rick had to be opened, and the hay carried to the cow-shed.

The hay had to last through the winter, for silage was unknown, and clearly, the whole thatch could not be removed. So the rick suffered vertical portions removed with a large-bladed hay knife. These portions were about a yard square.

As I grew up, I didn't take much part in looking after the war-time cattle, but I did help on some of the routine tasks like cutting the hay. The cuts must be fairly vertical to protect against the rain and potential slippage in the rick itself, and for this, the knife must be maintained with a reasonable sharpness.

They don't build ricks like that any more. They don't cut the grass with a horse-drawn mower, and let it dry, often turning it by hand. They don't collect it on horse-carts, and pitch it up to the man on the top. Where hay used to be the staple winter-feed, now it's silage, made by collecting the green grass straightaway. Then there was a time when they used to bale the hay into rectangular blocks, which making stacking literally child's play.

They don't even do that much any more. They just swirl the hay into short cylinders, and wrap them with black plastic, and put them, albeit in fairly neat piles in a corner of the field. Of course, they're all dumped by a tractor with a 'Look, no hands' attitude.

It's progress, of course, or perhaps using the current expression, 'modernisation'. I feel that the countryside has lost something, an unwritten, undefined farming skill, and a satisfying symbol of man's genuine harvesting and planning of food supplies.

I haven't lost my hay-knife. I've still got it. The wooden handle needs replacing, but the blade will outlive me, as it has outlived most of the rectangular balers, and will probably outlive the wrap-around plastic packers.

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