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March/Am Mart March was the month for completing the spring work, weather permitting. The seed was winnowed by ‘gaoth gheur nam Mart’ (the sharp wind of March) before being sown. This was the process where the husks were separated from the seed in a strong wind. Fasgnadh we call it in Gaelic. You did it outside, and it took a whole day. You had a tarpaulin on the ground. You filled your guite (the skin on the bottom) and tilted it slightly to permit the seed to fall slowly out of it. The oats fell, and the chaff went perhaps two feet away. The good seed could be used for planting in the spring. There was no need to buy it in. The ground delivered it fine. Five, six or seven bags would be winnowed. People who had a barn with a ‘feadan’ (a hole in the wall of the barn) could do their winnowing inside on a bad day. Cha do chliath thu na threabh mise fhathast An expression used by a father to his son - you haven’t harrowed what I’ve ploughed yet - ie you’re only a chicken. Many of the proverbs spring from the lifestyle on the land The ploughing and tilling was done in March at the latest, and some families would already have sown their oats (once the winnowing was done). Human nature being what it is, certain people could be relied upon to be first with the chores. But there were words of wisdom for keeping people on the right track during March. Referring to the first Tuesday in March, people would remark “leig seachad e” (signifying ‘forget it - don’t plant your corn seed’). Another term for the first Tuesday of March was “a’ chiad Mhart de Mhart na curachd” (‘the first Tuesday of the sowing time’). About the second Tuesday of March, people said “ ‘s math n a fàg” (signifying ‘it’s up to yourself whether you plant your corn seed or not’). But by the time the the third Tuesday of March came, the message was “mach fluich neo tioram a tìde” - meaning ‘plant your seed in the ground whether it is dry or wet’). It is interesting to note that the reference on each occasion is to Tuesday, since according to Dwelly, ‘Mart’ the word for March is perhaps also from Dimairt, the word for Tuesday. Again, there is another phrase about March - “am feur a thig a-mach sa Mhart, theid e staigh sa Ghiblean” (literally, ‘the grass that comes out in March will shrink away in April’). This was a warning that seed should not appear until March was over. Is fheàrr aon oidhche Mhart na trì latha foghair. If you haven’t sown it, you won’t reap it For schoolchildren, the Easter holidays meant doing time on the potato patch. Planting the potatoes was a job that lasted for much of the school holidays. Potatoes were big news. The work was hard, being done by the spade, and manure being carried by a wheel barrow and then spread. In those days, it was guaranteed that children would be dog tired by the night. People planted two or three varieties of potatoes. A popular potato in the old days was ‘buntata Sheonaidh Mhóir’. Seonaidh’s potato was purple, with a blue ring on the inside. It had deep eyes. Then there was the skerry blue, a purpley one with shallower eyes - that was said to have come from the east coast of Scotland. Edzel blue was recognised by its blue ring on the outside and its deep, deep eyes - some confused the Edzell blue with Buntata Sheonaidh Mhóir. Champion potatoes were very popular. The Great Scot was popular during WWII. It grew huge - and was a good choice for feeding to the cows. When you opened up the Great Scot, there was a hollow about the size of an egg on the inside. At the time of the Second World War, very little feeding stuff came home to Staffin. People reserved a quarter of an acre of their ground for potatoes alone - and some reserved more. Most families had forty hundredweight bags at harvesting time. Potatoes were multi-purpose - they were fed to the hens and the dogs, and some families sold their potato crop (maybe up to 10-15 bags) to other families. Such a useful mainstay in the diet, the whole potato culture demanded knowledge. For instance, Am buntata dubh (‘the black potato’ - a small variety) grew well in clay soil, but it didn’t fare so well in brown soil. On the other hand, Kerr’s pink rots early in clay soil. Clay soil is common in Stenscholl/ Clachan and the Garadh fhada. This means it quickly becomes boggy in wet weather, and in dry times it goes as hard as a rock. Round about March, it would be wise to select your seed potatoes for the coming year. Smaller potatoes were the desired ones, and if you only had big potatoes, you would make sure there was an eye in each one. Following this procedure for a period of 6-7 years, one would then have to make a change of seed. Either you bought a new seed or you exchanged your seed potato with someone who had different ground from yours. If you didn’t follow this procedure, the quality of your potato would diminish. Whilst potato planting is still very common in Staffin, nowadays it is unusual for a family to plant what would yield no more than ten bags. This is solely for the reason that it is cheaper to buy potatoes than to grow them. You can buy a bag of potatoes for £5. If you don’t own a tractor, it costs £10 an hour to hire one. The seed is in the region of £12-£15. A bag of fertiliser costs £10. Hence, the simple fact is that, unless one is growing potatoes on a large scale, it is cheaper to get them in the store. It was important to rotate the soil. If you planted potatoes in a patch one year, you wold plant corn there the next year, and grass the year after. This kept the soil in good condition. The lee (the glas talamh we call it) was the unploughed land and it was planted with oats. You reaped that in September. The next year again, the ground was turned early to let the frost break it down, and maybe give it oat plants for the second year. Some people planted potatoes in that ground, but they would never plant potatoes in the same patch two years in succession. Once you lifted a potato or a turnip crop, the patch would be termed the ‘atharnach’. The atharnach was always replanted with oat or hay seed, rye grass or timothy. When it grew the next year again, it would be an early crop of hay. The atharnach was left for about three years: it was strong lee ground then IS THIS RIGHT, LACHIE? All the tilling of the ground was done by the spade and the grape from about the year >>>>>>>>. The sowing of oats and the harrowing was done by a small wooden harrow which was pulled after you. It was only the bigger crofts with a full croft share that could justify keeping a horse and plough. Within families where there was a horse, everyone worked to the tune of the ploughman. Some would be at the peat cutting then, and they relied upon the children to spread the peats. During the last ten days of March, the sheep were dipped. Alasdair Thormoid worked for MacKinnon of Staffin House in 1935/36 and he remembers that at that time the dipping for the township of Stenscholl took place at Suarbaidh, on the boundary with Maligar and Stenscholl. The common sheep dip was Border liquid which was made into a paste. It was as fat as butter - you would cut it with a knife. Lachlainn Dhòmhnaill’s father had a shop, and he took delivery of the dip on behalf of the Stenscholl people. The dip would then be split into two-gallon batches for transportation to the fank. (Fanks were frequently situated up to three miles out on the moor until the 1960s?.) Tormod Mór, Nìall Iseabail and others brought the dip on their backs to Suarbaidh. You boiled big pots of water by lighting a fire beneath them to melt the paste (you wouldn’t handle it at all). As well as the paste, you got liquid - in 5-gallon lots. The liquid dip sometimes leaked, whilst the paste didn’t present this problem. Alasdair Thormoid remembers that fanks for the people of Stenscholl were held at Suarbaidh at the end of year, whilst fanks at the other times of the year - for shearing and so forth - were held at ‘An Creagan Fleap’ - this side of Loch Cleap (behind Stenscholl) - a spot which is distinguished by wee rocky hills. There was a song made at a fank in Sartle. Because Nìall Bhrogaig was famous for his bardic skills, someone asked him to make a song for the Blackface sheep. Neil rose to the challenge as was easy for him. But for every verse he composed, Archie Bàn of Flodigarry composed another verse in praise of the cheviot sheep. It is called Caoraich Mhaola Shasunnach. Later, in the 1960s, a fank and dipper were constructed in Stenscholl, which was much nearer the township’s crofts. It was built by Alex MacLeod and sons of Maligar. On the very first day that the new fank was used - for the job of shearing - it is remembered that the oldest man present was Malcolm MacKay of Clachan (Calum Sheumais) and the youngest was James MacDonald of 9 Stenscholl. Thatching - Around 1950, thatched houses were still fairly common in the district, and every three to five years they had to be stripped to the rafters. March was earmarked as the month for this job, although the work often overlapped into April. The wood for the roof was of selected timbers cut from the woods in the area. However, some wood came from as far away as Raasay. A local person from Staffin with an eye for wood would make the trip to Raasay by boat. Raasay had abundant species for coupling (ceangal) which was suitable for the rafters in thatched houses. Maybe they would spend a week or more in the Raasay wood, gathering hazel and alder. A house might use 6 or 8 couplings, and these were secured with wooden plugs. Nails were not used - rather a hole was bored through the coupling and a dow el was placed in it. It was not practice to place the end of the coupling on the wall - another bit of wood called the ‘knee’ was fixed to the wall. The broken or damaged roof timbers were subsequently replaced at thatching. Small cross timbers were placed on top of the couplings first of all - these cross timbers might be made of strong hazel - which was perhaps a quarter of the stoutness of the tree trunk. Thereafter, new sods or thin turf (which had been cut and dried in advance) were placed onto the cross timbers. The thatch on top of that was cut from the rushes in the surrounding area. The thatch was held down by heather ropes - or alternatively by ropes of coarse grass - which had been woven during the winter months as mentioned earlier. The thatch was weighted down by stones gathered, preferably, from the seashore. Success, as always, depended upon forward planning. The rushes, having been cut in the back end, were duly sheafed - by the means of tying them in bunches around their middle. In the old days, two men would strip a house of its old thatch in five or six days. The job of rethatching completely would take about a week in good weather. But sometimes, of course, the work entailed merely ‘patch and repair’. At rethatching, the old sods in the roof would be full of smoke and so they were put aside to be used later on by carefully placing it in the potato plot. The carbon in the soot killed certain bacteria, such as the larvae and leather jackets in the ground. The old thatch would frequently be used for compost. People made an effort to keep the sheep from walking on the roofs. A trespassing sheep’s hoof - or for that matter a goat’s hoof - bent and broke the reed, instantly creating an inlet for unwanted rain. Mar a thuirt a’ chailleach, The word ‘Mart’ means ‘Tuesday’; seed time; time suitable for agriculture work; the busiest time for anything. Those derivations ring true, because all in all, there was no shortage of jobs during the month of March! A’ Chuthag Thig fochunn, thig feur The above rhyme about the call of the cuckoo signifies its importance in everything having its season in the living planet.
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