Ruth Stone on Harvest

The next door neighbour, he used to bring his combine harvester and all the children … in one of the houses the farmhouses, were two boys and then there was my brother and myself. We used to go down to the fields and help out and you used to pick up the grass and throw it into the harvester and then it would come out in the chute with bales, you know, like bales and Grandma used to make a lot of sandwiches and things and fruit cake. That seemed to be the idea was fruit cake, mainly they ate, and Aunty Dolly used to make tea and coffee in what we call flasks now, but they were sort of earthen jugs and they were brown and cream in colour. I used to go down with my Aunty to take the baskets down and then I used to join the boys in pulling the bales and we used to have it and we used to have our picnic there and that lasted about three or four days, we used to do this. And when it was good weather and then the bales were all taken from the field onto the cart. We used to have a different cart for that because it had the big sides coming up so the bales would stay in place. Uncle Jack used to be on the cart and father and Mr Harvey used to be putting them on and then we used to sit on top of the bales of hay and come up the lane to the farm. I mean with Health and Safety these days you wouldn’t be doing all that (laughs). That was the real enjoyable time.