Scottish agricultural implement makers

While we may think of the tattie spinner as an “old” machine, it was patented by J. Hanson in 1855.  Before that year, and also well-into the twentieth century, a much older implement was used to harvest the potato crop: the potato plough.

Henry Stephens described the use of the potato plough in his The Book of the Farm in 1844.  He writes:

“In employing the plough to take up potatoes, the common one, with 2 horses, answers well; but as the potatoes run the hazard of being split by the coulter when it comes in contact with them, it should be taken out, the sock being sufficient to enter the plough below the drill, and the mould-board to turn them out of it.  The plough in going up splits one drill, and in returning splits the next, but no faster than a band of gatherers, of field-workers, if numerous enough, but if not, assisted by hired labourers, can clear the ground of them into the baskets.  In free soil potatoes are easily seen and picked up; heavier soil is apt to adhere to them, in which case it is a good plan to make a stout field-worker shake those portions of the earth turned up by the plough, which still adhere in lumps, with a potato grain, and expose the tubers.”

Given the labour-intensive nature of the plough, developments were made to improve it for harvesting potatoes.  By 1844 John Lawson of Elgin had developed a mouldboard shaped device of six malleable iron bars which were attached to the right side of the head and stilt of the plough.  For Stephens, this had a number of advantages: “The mode of operation of the brander is, that while the earth partly passes through it, and is partly placed aside by it, the potatoes are wholly laid aside, so there are few of them but are left exposed on the surface of the ground.”

Lawson’s potato plough or brander was drawn by a pair of horses: “in working it, the ploughman inserts it into the potato drill so as to have the whole of the potatoes on his right-hand side.  He then proceeds along the drill, splitting it up in the common way.  The earth is this thrown to the right-hand side, and the potatoes lie scattered on the surface of the ground behind the plough.  Women follow, provided with baskets, into which they gather the potatoes, and throw the stems upon the drill which lies to the right hand side of one from which they are gathering the potatoes. … A man with 1 pair of horses will thus pass over the ground as quickly as with the common plough.  In light soils this plough performs its work in a very efficient manner.  It pulverises the soil in an extraordinary degree, and scarcely leaves a single potato in the soil.”

In 1889 the potato plough was used to harvest the tattie crop in certain sitiuations.  Henry Stephens notes:
“On farms where the potato-digger has not been introduced, or on fields very steep and otherwise unsuitable for the digger, the aid of a plough of one kind or other is usually invoked in lifting potatoes.  In some cases the double mould-board plough is used; in others, it is the ordinary single furrow swing-plough; in others, the American chill plough; while not a few employ specially fitted “potato-ploughs”.

He adds that: “The “potato plough” may be an entirely distinct implement, or an ordinary plough fitted with a potato-raiser-a series of iron or steel fingers running out from one or both sides of the body of the plough.
The specially fitted ploughs are certainly superior to the ordinary ploughs for lifting potatoes, yet it is generally agreed that if a separate implement is to be procured for this work, that implement should be the potato-digger proper.”

Potato ploughs continued to be used well into the twentieth century.  By that time they tended to be used for specialist tasks, such as harvesting first earlies which required to be gently handled. But they still remained one of the ways in which potatoes were harvested in Scotland.  The others were the spinner digger, the elevator digger, and the mechanical harvester which was starting to be developed to alleviate the problems of securing sufficient labour to harvest the potato crop.

The photographs of the potato ploughs were taken at the Fife Vintage Agricultural Machinery Club Farming Heritage Show and Annual Rally, June 2016 and at the Highland Folk Museum, Newtonmore, May 2015.

 

© 2016 Heather Holmes

Forks were an important hand tool to have around the farm.  There were various types of forks, each used to undertake specific tasks including hay-making, grain harvesting, threshing and feeding cattle.  These former activities included a lot of forking!

Henry Stephens describes in detail harvest forks and their uses in The Book of the Farm in 1889.  He states:

© 2016 Heather Holmes

The introduction of combine harvesters brought a revolution in the way that grain was handled on the farm.  It also brought with it a revolution in the implements, machines and sundries available to handle grain.  These included grain driers and grain storage plants and installations, as well as grain-pick ups to move grain.

Most of them were made by companies in England, though D. M. Wallace & Sons Ltd, Kelso, was making bin hopper bottoms by 1952.  Early makers included Geo. W. King Ltd, Hitching, Herts, Matthews & yates Ltd, Swinton, Manchester, Mitchell, Colman & Co. Ltd, London, and E. R. & F. Turner Ltd, Ipswich.

By 1966 Coleman grain dryers, elevators, conveyors and stores were being widely advertised in Scotland.  Mitchell, Colman & Co. Ltd, London, had a wide network of agents and stockists. These included: Alexanders of Edinburgh Ltd, Edinburgh Elgin Central Engineers Ltd, Elgin Jack Olding & Co. (Scotland) Limited, Perth Stirling Tractors Ltd, St Ninians, Stirling Barclay, Ross & Hutchison Ltd, Aberdeen Frew & Company Ltd, Perth Stanley Partridge, Ardlaw, Fraserburgh J. & G. Sutherland, Halkirk, Caithness A. & J. Bowen & Co. Ltd, Markinch and Cairneyhill Gillies & Henderson Ltd, Edinburgh Rickerby Ltd, Annan and Dumfries William Elder & Sons Ltd, Berwick On Tweed James Gordon (Engineers) Ltd, Castle Douglas Neil Ross (Tractors) Ltd, Forfar.

This revolution also brought changes to the way that farm buildings were used, and on some farms new buildings were erected; on others buildings were modified to accommodate the new plant. Storage was also required for the plant to be kept during the rest of the year.

It isn’t often that you see aspects of the grain handling revolution around the vintage rallies.  It is an aspect of the revolution in Scottish farming that is much neglected and whose history is not well-recorded.

The photographs show grain drying, Pilmuir Farm, Balerno, Midlothian, mid 1980s and exhibits at the Fife Vintage Agricultural Machinery Club Farming Heritage Show and Annual Rally, June 2015.

© 2016 Heather Holmes

While combine harvesters had gained a firm footing in Scotland by the early 1960s, binders continued to be made and used.

By 1963 the only British makers of combines were two Scottish companies: J. Bisset & Sons Ltd, Blairgowrie, and John Wallace & Sons Ltd. Both were long established makers, also being world-renowned for them.

© 2016 Heather Holmes

If you were looking to buy a combine in the early 1960s you could have chosen one from a number of makers.  They included Allis Chalmers Great Britain Ltd, Bamfords Ltd, David Brown Tractors (Sales) Ltd, J. I. Case, Coleman & Co. (Agricultural) Ltd, Fahr Products Ltd, International Harvester Co. of Great Britain Ltd, J. Mann & Son Ltd, Massey Ferguson (UK) Ltd, Ransomes Sims & Jefferies Ltd, and Viking Farm Machinery Ltd. 

The 1880s and 1890s saw important developments in machinery to harvest the grain crop.  Binders entered the Scottish harvest field.

Scottish agents started to exhibit them at the Highland Show from 1882 onwards.  By 1899 there were 11 Scottish machines being exhibited, though by all one maker, J. Bisset & Sons, Blairgowrie.  Bisset exhibited its first binder at that show in 1887 and continued to market it as the only binder ‘entirely manufactured in Scotland’.

Leading the harvest changed greatly during the course of the twentieth century.  With the reaper, sheaves were brought home on harvest carts as well as ordinary carts.  Harvest frames could be put on flat trailers to allow sheaves to be built on them.

With the use of the combine harvester, grain handling systems were radically altered.  Threshed grain was taken home from the field.  Depending on the model, early combines could deliver the grain into bags, and bagged grain taken to the steading or to the mill.  Grain tanks could allow the grain to be delivered into trailers.  Ultimately, trailers made for the easiest and most efficient way to handle grain coming off the combine. 

Leading the harvest, or bringing in the stooks to the stackyard to be
stacked, was one of the major tasks in the farming year.  It was a labour-intensive task, requiring all the farm-staff, sometimes working for long hours.  In wet or protracted seasons, leading could take place over a number of weeks.  In particularly poor seasons work continued until Christmas or New Year.

Leading took place at different rates, even within a district.  For example, in Aberdeenshire in September 1884, the Aberdeen journal noted that:

“The weather on Tuesday was cool and breezy, and a deal of grain was led in very good order.  On Wednesday, with the exception of a passing shower or two, which were heavy enough in some places to stop leading, it was also fine, and yesterday was an exceptionally busy day on the harvest field, the weather being everything that could be desired.  Even in sheltered nooks the stuff was sufficiently well dried to allow its being carted home, and near the city leading was proceeding vigorously, but where the ends of the sheaves are full of clover and grass the west side of the stocks are still too wet for leading.  The harvest is all but finished on the north-east seaboard of Aberdeenshire for some twelve miles inland. Leading would be nearly finished this week all over the county, with the exception of the glen districts, if the present weather continues.  On Deeside there is a remainder still to cut, and a good many fields are covered with stooks.  It will be a week hence, probably more, before the harvest is finished about Braemar.  The harvest is now fairly completed in the Turriff district.  Owing to the mild, foggy weather which prevailed during the early part of the month some difficulty was experienced in getting the grain to keep in the stackyard, but the sharp, drying breezes of the past week have helped greatly to cool the heated stacks and put the stocks still afield in splendid condition for leading.”

Leading involved a lot of forking.  It also involved a lot of careful planning to ensure that the teams with the carts or trailers were efficiently loaded and unloaded.  Ideally, there was one or more cart or trailer being loaded in the field at the same time when there was one or more being unloaded at the stackyard.  When teams were too fast or too slow and work was not steady tempers were tried.  There could be “aye another load coming” or workers were standing in the yard.

Carts were loaded with sheaves in a particular way. According to Henry Stephens, writing in The Book of the Farm, in 1889:

“A corn-cart is loaded with sheaves in this way:  The body is first filled with sheaves, their butt-ends to the shaft-horse, and to the back-end of the cart.  When these come to the level of the frame, other sheaves are placed across them in a row along both sides and both ends of the frame, with the butt-ends projecting as far beyond the outer rail as the band, the sheaf at each corner of the frame being held in its place by transfixion upon a spike of the elongated bolt which secures the corner of the outer-rail frame.  Another row of sheaves is placed upon these.  Sheaves are then placed along the middle of the cart with the butt-ends like those in the body upon the corn-ends of the side sheaves to fill up the hollow of the load.
Thus row after row of sheaves is placed, and the hollow in the middle filled well up at last, 12 full stooks making a good load upon an ordinary cart.
Before finishing, it should be seen that the load is neither too light nor too heavy upon the horse’s back.
A load thus built will have all the butt-ends of the sheaves on the outside, and the corn-ends in the inside.”

“Leading” is a word that brings back many memories of the grain harvest.  Ask anyone who worked with at the harvest in the days of the binders and they will tell you about the hard work, skill and frustrations of the work.  But they will also tell you about the pride in undertaking the work: you could tell the status of a farm by the state of the stackyard and the way the stacks had been built.

The photographs of loading the harvest cart were taken at Scotland’s Farming Yesteryear, September 2014.

In the early 1950s farmers and agriculturists in Scotland had a choice in the harvesting system they used to cut their grain crops.  Over much of the country the grain harvest continued to be cut with the binder which had come into Scotland in the 1880s and 1890s and improved.  The second and newer system, was the combine harvester, first used by some of the larger and more progressive farmers and agriculturists.

In 1952 binders continued to be made by four makers in Britain, one of which was Scottish, and world-renowned for their manufacture. J. Bisset & Sons Ltd, Greenback Works, Blairgowrie, Perthshire continued to make a selection of 5ft and 6ft cut machines.  They included tractor draught and an engine driven one with a left hand cut, as well as a hydraulically mounted, p-t-o driven one.