A PRESS RELEASE just arrived from the Trim Haymaking Festival – which, incorporating the “Scurlogstown Olympiad”, takes place this Sunday – and with it, a vanished world came back to life. Excuse me while I have a Proustian moment here. But was ever so much lost in the name of progress as in the decline of hay in Ireland and its replacement by that unloved winter fodder: silage? Perhaps this is unfair. Silage-making may have its charms too, for all I know. No doubt you can learn to love the smell of molasses, or lactic acid bacteria, being added to new-cut grass. The mid-winter aroma of a fermenting pit probably also has its fans. All I know is that the smells of hay-making, inhaled in childhood, stay with you forever.
Smells aside, the work had a ritual aspect that, pleasantly protracted, seemed part of the natural order. It lasted as long the traditional wake – three to four days. And, if the weather stayed fine, it could be just as enjoyable. First the hay had to be cut; then allowed to dry where it fell; then turned at least once to dry some more, before being cocked or baled; and finally, in triumph, brought home.
The last bit was the best. Among the many now-useless skills I learned as a child is that neglected branch of architecture: the “building” of hay-loads. Which, once built, became your transport for the homeward journey. There can no more luxurious trip anywhere than sitting or lying (as with all high-end travel, the seat easily extended into a bed) on a load of bales being drawn home by tractor and trailer through the fields.
It had its dangers, occasionally. You could be wiped off by a low-lying branch, for example. And I was one of several small passengers on the top deck once when, going down the side of a hill, the trailer “coped”.
I don’t even know now where that verb came from: in the sense we used it – “to overturn” – no English dictionary seems to recognise it. Whereas, in the commonly understood sense, coping is exactly what the trailer failed to do. But the main thing is that we coped too, in both the term’s meanings. As the load began to tilt, we scrambled onto the high side. And as soon as it went over, so did we. It only added to the day’s fun.
Unfortunately, the protracted nature of hay-making was also part of its downside. It required three or four consecutive days without rain: freak conditions in most Irish summers. If you mistimed the cutting, it could be lying in the fields for weeks, being turned again and again and then soaked anew. Or worse, panicked by a forecast, you might bale before it was quite dry, in which case you could look forward to a rotting smell soon rising from the hayshed, like blight in the potato field.
Still, there was great satisfaction when the job ended successfully. I still like the Old Testament resonance of the idea that hay was something to be “saved”. Whereas, in keeping with the soulless nature of the operation, nobody ever speaks of saving silage. Nor indeed – leaving religion out of it a moment – does one now hear of couples “rolling in the silage”, no matter how amorous they get.
There were other things lost too. The communal nature of hay-making, for example. Farmers used to have to help each other out with it and the rhythms of the work allowed for plenty of talk-time. That all went with silage harvesting, where machinery – the bigger and faster, the better – eliminated human interaction.
Wildlife suffered too. Bumblebees and butterflies declined in parallel with hay-making. So did certain kinds of birds, most famously corncrakes. Preferring their vegetation to be more than 20cm high, these shy creatures did not adapt well to silage, which is cut earlier and more often than hay, blowing their cover.
Then there were the new things that, along with increased efficiency, silage brought. Slurry, for one. I won’t go into details in case you’re having breakfast. Suffice to say that cattle slurry as we know it is a modern development, arising as it did from the change to a silage diet. That the new-style effluent is in turn ideally suited to be recycled as fertiliser is part of its efficiency. But I have yet to hear even the most hardcore farmer wax lyrical about the smell of slurry, compared with which old-style manure was like vintage armagnac.
Oh well. It’s all part of the price of scientific advance, which marches ever onwards. In the meantime, veteran hay-makers can at least wallow in nostalgia occasionally at the likes of this weekend’s event (see trimhaymakingfestival.com). And nostalgia aside, as the subtitle implies, the festival also has a strong sporting element, with competitive disciplines to include “scythe-cutting”, “sheaf-tossing”, and the inaugural “cic ard” contest.
That last one, in case you’re wondering, involves no agricultural equipment. On the contrary, Meath footballer Graham Geraghty and others will merely compete to kick a ball over a 90-ft-high bar. But then again, the boundaries between GAA and agriculture are easily confused, especially at this time of year. The Trim event takes place a week before the eagerly-awaited Louth-Meath rematch. It would be no surprise if the odd haymaker featured there too.