Memoirs of Scotland

I went to work for a different farmer, The Isles, was the name of the farm.   The Farmer and his wife were big and jolly and loved the farming way of life.  He and his wife were a good team.  I was skinny and there was a conspiracy to change me into one of them!  Porridge for breakfast with cream, bacon, eggs, (four eggs for me) stacks of toast, “home grown bacon and eggs,” jelly or jam for the toast.  They both ate alike worked alike, they almost dressed alike.  I went out to the field to put up stooks that had been cut and bound with the binding machine the day before and left overnight.  I worked for a couple of hours and here they come with a big basket of sandwiches and a kettle of tea and a cloth napkin, white no less and helped me finish up.

We went back to the farm to the Granary; the farmers in the Shire (like a county) would bring their bags of grain to be processed from the thresher.  The grain was in 100-pound sacks.  My job was to take the sacks to the machines in the Granary for the grain to be cleaned rolled, etc.  I think they were giving me a test of strength.  The sacks were on trucks and it was easy to flip them onto my back, the hard part was getting up the thirteen steps to the granary.  I flipped the sack high on my shoulder and adjusted it in order to carry this big load and away I went, never looking back.  I almost lost it on the twelfth step but regained my balance and finished my test!  They were saying I would never make it, that skinny lad. 

After I came down from the loft they took me to the cow barn and introduced me to the cows, beautiful Jerseys and all hand milked.  They were big and fat like the farmers.  There was a continual rapport between the farmer and his wife just bordering on insult. 

Sunday was the next day and they asked me if I would like to go church, I said I would, they told me the time to be ready, I was there and away we went.  He was still grumbling about something, and he was sort of not driving a straight line, she complained and he gave the steering wheel a good upward jerk and handed it to her and asked her if she would like to drive!  The car veered off the road and ended up in the ditch and he landed on top of her, she was screaming for him to get off and I learned a whole new vocabulary in five minutes.  After self esteem was restored we were dropped off back to the farm by a tractor.  My Dad had worked on that farm when he was a young lad.