A Croft in the Hills (13 page)

We would examine the mosses at our feet, peer into the heart of the tiny flowerets they sported, watch, fascinated, the scurrying of insects through the grasses. Most of these forms of life we
couldn’t put a name to: we knew nothing, really, of their ways, but the thing to do was to stay absolutely still and let them speak for themselves.

On the way back Helen would scamper ahead, leaping from tussock to tussock and as we neared our home ground we’d sing and tell each other stories and earnestly discuss what we’d most
like for supper.

September is always an anxious month in these heights. Even though the hay is safely out of the way, as it usually is by then, there is always the fear that the corn will not be ready for
cutting before the evenings close in. By that time the potatoes are ripe and the two harvests overlap; then there is one hectic scramble to get everything done in the short days, before the snow
comes. That September the weather was extremely mixed. We would have all plans ready to make a start at the corn, when the wind would suddenly veer to the west and down would come the small rain.
There would be nothing for it then but to stump off to the barn to do some tidying-up, or repair tools and implements. There is a quiet satisfaction in doing these jobs on a winter afternoon when
there’s nothing much else that needs doing, anyway. But to have to do them with your mind elsewhere and half an eye on the weather, knowing that the passing of each day is going to make the
main business of the year trickier than ever, is frustrating in the extreme. As you sit in the barn, making stack-rope into coils, the beating of the rain on the iron roof sounds unnecessarily loud
and even mocking.

That particular September we had every variety of unwelcome weather—rain, hail, thunder, the whole bag of tricks. At last, in the third week of the month, Jim made a start at cutting roads
for the binder. Then we had to wait our turn for the ‘binder-man’. At that time the Government tractor-service, a war-time innovation, was still operating. All the small places, which
couldn’t afford to carry a complete set of implements, were utterly dependent on it. It has since been abandoned and is sorely missed. Private contractors have taken over the work, but they
charge much higher rates and are not so reliable. Many of them use inferior implements, which are liable to break down and hold the work up at crucial moments. We had, or could borrow, enough
implements to cope with most operations ourselves, but for cutting the corn and threshing it we relied on the Government service.

It was the first of October before the binder at last came clanking its way into the cornfield, and that was the day the lambs were to be sold. Alec had helped Jim to pen them in the fank at the
roadside. Finlay passed by on his way to the market and he cast an appreciative eye over the lambs and thrust knowing fingers into the wool on their well-padded flanks. ‘Grand lambs’,
he said ‘they’ll top the sale, I’m thinking!’ We smiled with pleasure. They were certainly good lambs, but as for topping the sale, well, there was surely a touch of poetic
licence about that pronouncement! Yet hill-men don’t usually exaggerate or risk judgement unless they are pretty sure of their ground, I reflected. However, I had no time to ponder the
matter. I waved the float good-bye and immediately set to work, stooking in the wake of the binder. Helen helped too, and we staggered up and down with armfuls of sheaves, till it was time to boil
die tatties for the binder-man’s dinner.

By mid-afternoon we had a good row of stooks standing. Jim would be pleased that we’d managed not to let the sheaves accumulate, I thought. The rain began to come down in sheets, but still
we kept on stooking, till I saw the old brown van nosing its way down the side-road towards us. Then, dripping wet, but happy, we made across the field to greet Jim. He thrust a grinning face
through the open window. ‘Finlay was right. The lambs did top the sale. Ninety-one shillings a-piece!’ He stepped out into the rain and we gazed at each other, still hardly believing in
our luck.

Then we all made for the shelter of the kitchen and celebrated with hot tea and scones at the fire. In those days, ninety-one shillings was a sale record. It is still a substantial price for a
lamb straight from its hill grazing, not stuffed with fodder in a lowland park. We received congratulations from far and wide. On our next trip to town, Jim bought me a Stewart tartan jacket as a
memento of the occasion. While the extravagant fit was on, I bought two rose bushes, one for each side of the front door.

Most of October the weather was even worse than it had been in September, but about the middle of the month we managed to snatch two or three days to make stacks. The three youngsters from
across the burn came to help and we split into two teams, one with the tractor and trailer, the other with Charlie and the cart, and in this way we managed to rush the corn into the stack. We put
in an order at once for the threshing-mill, for we were not sure about the keeping quality of the grain.

Meanwhile, the potatoes were ready for lifting, but the ground was far too soft to bear the weight of a tractor for the job. We dug several drills with graips. It was a back-breaking process,
and we could see nothing for it but to leave half the crop in the ground till the spring. It has been done sometimes, with surprisingly little damage to the crop. At the beginning of November we
borrowed a digger from some friends on the low-ground, whose crop was snugly pitted. We set to work hopefully with the tractor, but after half an hour or so the whole outfit got bogged. We tramped
up and down, caked with mud from head to foot, groping for potatoes in the sodden ground. What fun potato-lifting can be on a sunny autumn afternoon, when the tubers come bobbing to the surface, as
if by magic, in the wake of the spinner, and you scramble for them like children scrambling for a flung handful of pennies, and have time to sit on your up-turned pail for a moment’s rest
before the tractor comes round again! But that floundering in the quagmire was sheer misery.

Then everything took a turn. One morning, in the middle of November, when there was a hint of an Indian summer in the pale sunshine and the light, drying wind, we saw a little cavalcade
approaching from the east. There was a white horse drawing a cart piled high with gear, a man and three boys. It was Alec with all the male members of his household come to lift our tatties with
the horse and plough. It was the unexpectedness of this neighbourly gesture that really lifted our hearts. With a nod of greeting, Alec made straight for the field and hitched the plough to the
horse. There are certainly times when the horse comes into his own, and this was one of them. It was heavy going, but by dusk we had a good few bags filled and carted to the pit.

Next day Alec came back with his boys and in the afternoon the threshing-mill arrived with a squad of eighteen helpers. Sadie came over to help me and never have I been so glad to greet her. It
is always difficult to cater for a threshing squad. The day of their arrival is uncertain and hardly ever coincides with the visit of the grocer’s van. You lay in a stock of butcher meat and
do a huge baking for the day you expect them. They are sure to be held up at another place, and with the best will in the world your small family cannot eat its way through the joint and the mounds
of scone and cake, and half of it has to go to the dogs. Then, on the day the mill does arrive, you have only tinned stuff and stale baking to fall back on, and your shame is great! However, this
day, with Sadie’s help, we managed to produce a compromise of a meal and the men were so hungry that they praised it quite wholeheartedly.

There is always a thrill of excitement about a threshing. The huge, unwieldy, yellow-painted mill has all the glamour and mystery of a piece of circus equipment. The steady humming of the
mechanism suggests power without end, and the way the grain pours out in separate streams, one for each quality, seems like sheer magic to the uninitiated. The men tend the monster with steady,
rhythmic movements of the arms, their faces set in serious lines of concentration. You can tell at once that machine-minding does not come naturally to them and there is a hint of the
schoolboy’s awe in their expressions. But when the tea-kettle and the baskets of scones appear and the noise of the mill subsides for a few minutes, they relax and gladly crack a joke in the
returning calm.

Alec gave us still another day of generous help, while the weather held. Then the rain closed in again and we had to leave the last quarter of the field to chance. December came and frost and
snow. We lifted several cart-loads of turnips and dumped them in an improvised shed. The fields were still wonderfully green, that is the one advantage of the late hill-season. The hungry gap comes
all right at the end of the winter, when it seems as though spring is going to miss us altogether: but the back-end of the year can produce quite a tasty bite. However, once turnips are on the
menu, the cattle go crazy for them. Life becomes one long round of carting, chopping and feeding turnips. Every beast about the place was partial to them, even the pigs, and fortunately we had a
grand crop of them that year. They were so heavy that it was as much as I could do to carry two, swinging by their green tops, in each hand, from the field to the hen-house.

Our second lot of porkers were slower to fatten than the first had been, and they were developing rather unevenly. We put them under cover, along at the far steading, and stuffed them with
potato stew. When we judged one of them was at last ready for market, we loaded him, after a terrifying tussle, into the back of the van, as it was not worth going to the expense of hiring a float
for one pig. That was an epic journey, as Jim recounted it to me later. He had as front-seat companion a town friend, Mr. S., who was on his way to catch a train at Inverness. He was glad of the
lift, but a little doubtful of his rear travelling companion. He himself was in his best rig, and spruced up for the occasion, whereas the pig was, to say the least of it, decidedly odoriferous!
However, as long as they made up their minds to ignore each other, Jim thought he could manage to get them each to their destination. But a pig is an inquisitive creature. They had barely reached
the main road when this one of ours, at a sudden jolt, broke loose from his moorings and thrust a grimy, inquiring snout against the back of Mr. S.’s shining collar. The unfortunate human
passenger had, on Jim’s instructions, to spend the rest of the trip scratching a bristly back with his soft, white fingers and murmuring ‘porky, porky!’ into a grubby ear, much to
the delight of the pig and of the crowd of small boys, who peered incredulously into the van when it was held up at the first set of traffic lights.

That autumn we decided to avail ourselves of the services of a Government-owned ram, instead of buying one of our own. ‘The Board’, as the Department of Agriculture for Scotland is
still called in these parts, undertakes to supply the crofter with one or more rams, according to his need, during the tupping season from November to January. One crofter in the district sends in
a note of local requirements and arranges the distribution and subsequent collection of the rams. They are magnificent beasts and ensure a crop of high-quality lambs. The crofter pays four pounds
for his ram, of which one pound is refunded if the animal returns intact from his tour of duty.

Only comparatively few crofts here have sufficient grazing to carry a flock of breeding ewes, but practically everyone takes in sheep from other parts for wintering. Some undertake to supply
them with turnips, and make a higher charge for their boarders, others simply provide grazing on the outrun and the wintry in-bye fields. Others again find it profitable to buy in a score or so of
Cheviot lambs once the harvest is secured, feed them on turnips and a little crushed oats and sell them before ploughing-time. As well as bringing in a cash return, the wintered sheep contribute to
the well-being of the croft, by treading and manuring the ground. With their predatory habits they are a worry where fencing is anything but reliable, and are the cause of a good deal of
heart-burning between neighbours, but their coming is part of the scheme of things and has to be tholed.

With the arrival of the tups and the winterings, we know that winter is really closing down on us. We’ve seen the great gaggles of wild geese come honking out of the cold north sky and
watched them disappear into the evening haze, round the shoulder of the hill, and we’ve felt a little comforted to think that to these hardy creatures our bleakness is a refuge, that there
are winter regions infinitely more desolate than ours. We’ve seen the fieldfares strip the last of the berries from the bare branches of the rowans and we’re glad now of the cheerful
company of the chaffinch flocks about the barn door.

There is, in spite of everything, a sort of cosiness about winter, a drawing-together of man and beast, in shared mistrust of the elements. The byre is an inviting place at dusk on a cold
December day. It is filled with the sweet scent of dry grass and clover and of the breath of healthy cattle-beasts. The cows rattle their chains and turn their heads inquiringly, as we stagger in
with armfuls of straw and hay and pailfuls of turnips. The hens ‘sing’, as they scratch contentedly away at the dry litter in their brightly lit quarters. Charlie comes to the doorstep,
morning and evening, and stands rattling the door-knob till we give him his ‘white drink’, a pailful of water, with the chill off it, and a handful of oatmeal scattered in.

It’s in winter that we realise fully how interdependent we all are. Also we have the satisfaction of seeing the result of our summer work in the fields. Perhaps only on a very small farm
such as ours, where practically everything is produced for immediate home consumption, can these results be so startlingly apparent. We can almost identify each turnip we place in the slicer. As we
throw a log on the fire, we sometimes pause to gaze at the flames licking it and murmur: ‘That’s a bit of the dead birch we had such a job to get over the fence.’