A number of the east of Scotland newspapers included accounts of working at the travelling threshing mill. On 17 January 1964, the Arbroath Herald included one such account. It also includes an account of bothy life and the ways of life. It is worth quoting at length:
“Old time threshing on the farm
By “The Grieve”
At Carmyllie last week-end I viewed the scene of my boyhood days as a “halfling”. There had been little change here in the pastoral scene in the past fifty years. The greatest transformation on the farm has been brought about by mechanisation. Where once we could admire horses in the fields and in the stable there is a whole array of “ironmongery” doing the work more economically and more efficiently-although there are times when the horse comes into its own. When it comes to ca’in neeps on icy roads in the winter the tractor does not manage the job quite so well as old dobbin did. One old farmer friend of mane that I met at the Mart the other day and who is an ardent horse lover put it well when he said: “When ye gang intae the steadin’ in the mornin’ ye dinna get a friendly whinny fae a tractor.”
At Carmyllie and district half-a-century ago life was very different from what it is to-day. We did not visit the town so often as the young lads do nowadays. We had no radio or television and perforce had to make our own entertainment round the bothy fire of an evening, and grand nights we had with the melodian, fiddle and mouth organ. In many ways I think they were far happier times then than we are living in now, for our pleasures were simple and our wants were few, and there was a spirit of comradeship and mutual helpfulness that does not seem to be developed among the young folks of the country to quite the same extent nowadays.
In December we usually had a visit from the old threshing mill that travelled all round the Arbroath landward district and which has now vanished from the pastoral scene. If the weather was not suitable in December, the threshing mill arrived sometime in the New Year, and whenever it made its appearance there was hustle and bustle about the farm and a happy time for us all, even though we had to work hard. I remember the old mill as it came rumbling up our farm road with the dogs barking and the cottar house bairns all excited at its arrival. The coming of the threshing mill was an important occasion for us all. It arrived at night with lanterns swinging at each side and we could hear its chug-chug in the distance before we saw it. There were quite a lot of preparations that had to be made on the night before the “thresh”, and I have clear memories of the black faces of the men and the soot and grime that came off the towels when they washed themselves in the basins full of hot water from the big three-legged pot that hung on the sway over the bothy fire. To me, everything is a memory of warmth and friendliness connected with threshing in the old days.
Next morning everyone on the farm was early astir and the stackyard was full of workers, for the neighbours came to help us with our threshing in those days, and likewise we went over to their farm to help them when the time came. The engine of the threshing mill sent up great puffs of smoke and the noise silenced even the most strident voices. Work started in earnest and the dogs sniffed around the stacks with anticipation, ready to give chase to the rats that nested underneath. The women helped with the threshing, and I can see them in my mind’s eye with their wrapper skirts catching the breeze and shawls enveloping their heads. With knives at the ready, they cut the hands of the sheaves, and as the men forked for them they made a colourful picture of agricultural industry.
Some of the workers took charge of the straw that poured down the elevator in a continuous golden stream and forked it into the stack, and others took charge of the corn that rushed forth from the loose box of the mill and reached the open bags ready to receive it. Sometimes there was not a job for everyone, but the presence of a friend at the threshing was a token of his neighbourliness, and as the work went on he would tell a story or make a wise-crack. Through the din of the mill there would be the whistling of an old Scottish country dance or the snatch of a song. There was always someone who would fill a sack or two with the chaff destined for bedding in the cottar house for “chaff beds” were all the vogue in those days, and I remember the feeling of wellbeing we had when we sampled our new season’s bed of sweet smelling chaff each year.
The work stopped at mid-day for the important meal that was an enjoyable part of this communal concentration on threshing. The dinner had to be a substantial one on this occasion, and the farmer’s wife always did us well. There were double helpings of Scotch broth boiled in juicy boiling beef, with copious ingredients of neeps, carrots, peas and barley. Then came the beef which had been boiled in the broth with the barley sticking to it and its accompaniment of mashed neeps, mealie, flaky potatoes, as much as we could belly in, and rice pudding made with thick rich milk. This was all topped off with oven scones, girdle scones or pancakes washed down with tea, and the big kitchen table was the scene of a feast that has never been bettered in my experience.
Afternoon saw us back at work again hard at it with the sweat dropping off our brows, and we really had to work hard because at that time of the year the light began to fade at an early hour. As we came to the end of our day’s darg, straw lay around the stackyard in untidy drifts, and before we got “loused” there was always much sweeping to be done because it was an unwritten law that we had to clear up and leave the place as tidy as possible.”
