Jock was a half-bred Scottie. He went with me everywhere when possible.
One night we missed him, so early next day I went to search for him and found him in a gin-trap. He had had the sense to stay still and not damage his leg too much.

How pleased he was to see me!

Vermin caused lots of damage to the crops and gin-traps and snares were set to catch them. Rabbits would eat the young barley shoots and root crop seedlings. Moles were also a problem. I have seen Father catch them by using a spade to dig them out at the moment they were making molehills. Stoats and weasels caused trouble with ground-nesting birds such as partridges and pheasants. To catch them, a trap was set in a wood tunnel, usually placed in a hedge-row between two fields.

Hay was cut and made into dome-shaped cocks. When being stacked, sometimes the cocks near the stack were pulled by a horse complete to the stack, by putting a chain round the bottom of the cock. The stack was left to mature ready for winter feed. Farmers had to be careful with hay as it could overheat. When it was ready for winter feed the hay was cut into blocks with a large-bladed stack knife and carted home. It was cut into chaff by a hand-operated chaff cutter and fed to the horses.

Both being small-holders, father and Uncle Cliff Woodhouse would help each other during harvest time. Barley was cut by a binder usually pulled by three horses. Before this was started, a strip the width of the binder was cut by scythe all round the edge of the cornfield. This was done to save the first round being trampled down. Shoofs (sheaves) were collected and made into shocks, six to eight leaning against each other for drying purposes. When the field was nearly cut and only a small strip was left, rabbits trapped in the remaining corn would run for safety, and people with sticks would do their best to catch them.

(In the picture below you can see them in action in Blomstiles field in the 1930s.)

With the fields small and scattered, the binder would have to have its two auxiliary wheels fitted for the road. This was done by lowering the large driving wheel, so jacking up the binder. The shaft was then moved to be in line with the two wheels. When the shocks had dried out, it was the time to build a stack. First the stack bottom (hedge-cuttings, straw etc.) had to be laid to protect the first layer of shoofs. These were collected by tumbler (tumbrel), and this was the time when, sitting on the horse, I would holler “holdyer” to make sure that Father who was stacking the shoofs on the tumbler, was aware it was about to move to the next shock.

When the stack was being built, warm dinners would be eaten in the field. Mother would bring well-wrapped meals in milk cans and basins to keep the dinner warm. How nice these meals were! Meat, potatoes, Norfolk dumplings and gravy. Drink was in a large bottle, mostly tea, and the horses had their well earned meals from a nose bag.