extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY ANTRIM Early in the nineteenth century Ballymoney had a factory at Ballynacree Skrin which spun the coarse yarn used in making corn bags; also a large distillery and brewery which ensured the continuing success of the grain markets. Few houses in the main street had side or back entrances in those days, resulting in animals (including cows and horses) having to pass through the halls or kitchens of houses to reach their byres or stables. Manure was removed by the same route. However, the town was surrounded by good land, used extensively for dairying and fattening purposes as well as general mixed farming. This is evidenced in the diary kept by the young Alexander Erskine of Dunaverney around a century later. His record of the year’s events are reminiscent of the opening words of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, that in the husbandry of the land, as in life, there is to every thing a season, and a purpose to everything under heaven:       A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.       The year was 1911. Even before the old year ended, ploughing had begun on the Erskine farm for the coming season. Alex believed that for each week before Christmas that the land was turned over the result was an extra hundredweight of grain come next harvest time. The year began with repairing old drains and making new ones; also facing and topping hedges – all labour intensive work achieved with the aid of slasher, spade and shovel. When the frosts came, work in the fields stopped and Tom, the hired man, concentrated on the yard work while Alex and his brothers worked on the outbuildings – repairing roofs, replacing ill-fitting doors and anything else that required attention. A broken floor board was fixed in a cart and a faulty cart shaft replaced with a new one. Horse collars were repaired and new back-ropes, chains and britchin bought. Anything that could not be repaired was replaced. A plough and saddle harrow were purchased from Alexander Hill in Ballymoney at £3 15s and fifteen shillings respectively. They spent three shillings on a bill-hook and half-a-crown on blades for a turnip slicer.       February began with taking weeds off potato ground and carting them away to make ready for ploughing. Snedding and carting turnips occupied much of the rest of the month, together with threshing corn and planting a new thorn hedge in a march ditch [property boundary]. The corn was usually threshed one day and cleaned the next, unless the second day happened to be a Sunday in which case the cleaning was done on Monday. The threshed straw was built in huge stacks a short distance from the barn, until such times as it was needed for bedding or feeding. Corn was either sold in Ballymoney market or carted to the mill at Stranocum to be ground into smash for winter feed for the cattle. Some (mostly bruised) corn was fed to the horses. The best of the chaff was filled into bags and sold to make mattresses.       Work on drains was continuous on any well-run farm. Altogether ten drains were repaired that year in the long field – about ninety perches [one perch was 5½ yards] in all. A sheugh that was holding up the drainage of a field was also cleaned out. It was heavy work but Tom, the farm hand, was young and strong and never demurred at any job that he was asked to do. The Erskines valued him highly.       Alex, the eldest of three brothers, left the others cleaning corn, carting turnips and ploughing potato beds on the tenth of the month while he took himself off to a ploughing match at Leaney just outside Ballymoney. It was a dry, bright day and the ground was in good fettle for the event. The nineteen competitors were divided into two classes – one for chill and the other for swing ploughs. Local man James McCahon was a popular winner in the swing plough class, taking home the Milltown Mills cup for the third year running. The ploughing match was one of several functions undertaken annually by the Ballymoney Farming Society since its inception way back in 1835.       The Tatty cow calved a white bull calf on the twelfth and the black sow farrowed on the fourteenth, producing thirteen pigs – seven belties (pink mottled with grey) and the rest bright pink. The next day Alexander went to the letting of lands by auction at Stranocum. According to his diary everything went very dear, with land being let for grazing at £2 an acre and land for oats making £6 an acre.       Income in the early months of the year came from the sale of crops and livestock. A bull fetched £22 1s 3d, a fat bullock weighing 8cwt.1qr.18lb and with a girth of six feet sold for £13 4s 6d and two pigs brought in £4 5s. Potatoes sold at around half a crown a hundredweight, corn at eightpence a stone and straw at 1s 10d a hundredweight. The milk cheque for the month of January was very small at 18s 1d but increased when the cows went out to grass, reaching a peak of £7 19s 10d in July. Towards the end of the half-year term (12 May) the price of potatoes rose to four shillings for the popular Up-to-Date variety. Other varieties being grown included Skerries, Duchess of Cornwall and Golden Wonder.       March was an exceptionally dry month, allowing the work of threshing, ploughing and lifting potatoes from pits to forge ahead. The small potatoes were saved for seed, the larger ones were boiled for the pigs (and the household) and the rest sold. A yearling bull was bought at the spring sale at Balmoral for £33 12s. It was a big price but it was a subsidy bull and the brothers knew that come November they would be paid a premium by the Government for keeping him for the convenience of the farmers round about. By the end of March the work of carting, ploughing, cross-ploughing, grubbing, harrowing and drilling was well ahead, and planting began. Load after load of manure was drawn to the field and spread manually with a graip along the drills. Artificial fertiliser (super phosphate) was sown by hand on top of the manure, and the potatoes – which were carried in a bag rubber [an apron made out of a hessian bag] – were planted directly into this, about twelve inches apart. As well as using small potatoes for seed, large ones were cut in two retaining at least two eyes in each section to make sure a plant would grow. Ten ridges of the variety ‘Up-to-Date’ were also planted that year.       As it turned out, the good weather continued well into the month of April making 1911 an excellent year for putting in crop. It was also good for lambing the ewes. Alex always bought his flax seed and grass seed in April though he had no intention of sowing it until the following month. Two bags of M.B.M. flax seed were purchased at £4 10s and a quarter of Perennial and a stone of Timothy grass seed at £3. A stone of clover seed (Alsike) was purchased at a cost of eleven shillings for mixing with the grass seed.       On 10 April £2 was paid to Lady Harberton for a rood of bog, rented for turf cutting. The Garry Bog was close to the Erskine farms and provided them with all the fuel they needed for the winter. Mid-April saw the start of sowing the corn, followed by the spring harrowing of the flax ground and the tilling of potato ground at the cottar house. The last of the potatoes were planted on the twenty-sixth and cabbage plants were set in the same drills so that they ran in neat rows, spaced far apart across the field in the opposite direction to the potatoes. Work was interrupted on the eighteenth by the death of a relative and only essential jobs like feeding and milking were done until after the funeral. By this time the weather had turned showery but there was enough fair weather to facilitate the planting of more cabbage and the preparation of ground for sowing flax and turnips.       The first of the flax was sown on May Day, followed by moulding the potatoes and the start of the turf cutting. When the peats were cut they were then spread out on the bank to dry. After a couple of weeks they were built into loose piles of a dozen or so to catch the wind and dry out further. Later they were built into still bigger piles and carted home between other jobs as the year progressed. The pig butcher arrived on 3 May and killed six pigs. One was kept for the use of the family and the rest were sold as pork in Ballymoney the next day, together with six tons of potatoes and 23 cwt of straw. Three fat cattle, a bullock, two sheep and three crowl [ill-thriving] pigs were also sold in the run-up to the May hiring day. The rest of the time was spent putting in the remainder of the flax, spreading manure, sowing turnips and cutting peats.       The twelfth of May was always a watershed in the farming year. On that day in the year 1911 Mary A. Rainey, Thomas White and Alexander Hill were paid the remainder of their wages for the previous six months. The next day Thomas (Tom) was re-engaged for the sum of £7 10s, Alexander was re-hired at six shillings a week and Mary was replaced by a new servant girl – Maggy Bellingham also at £7 10s. Everyone took the day off to attend the hiring fair in Ballymoney, though Alex managed to find time to prepare ground for turnips before he went. The town at that time had several industries but really owed its success to agriculture and its thriving markets.       Tom White had left school in the summer of 1908 and hired with a farmer at £3 for six months. Little enough you might think, but when he was offered half this amount to continue for the winter term he decided it was time to look for work elsewhere. He would go to the November fair in Ballymoney and try his luck. Hopefully his reputation as a good worker would have gone ahead of him. His slim build, kind face and thick auburn hair appealed to Alex Erskine, who was on the lookout for a willing lad to dig sheughs in the Spring Bog. Tom knew the work would be hard but he was not afraid of that, and the prospect of a good home and a wage of £5 for the half-year was very attractive indeed. It was the beginning of an association with the Erskine family that was to last the rest of his life. Now here he was, eighteen months later, back in Ballymoney, only this time he was here to enjoy himself. He couldn’t have been more content. He gave of his best, and he knew he had a job for life if he wanted it – and his wages had gone up to £7 10s! He must be the luckiest man on earth.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Forthcoming extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13

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