NORTHERN FRUIT-GROWING 



little later than the ordinary growth of seeds or 

 meadow hay. Although it was early August hay- 

 making was going on, and everywhere we saw in the 

 fields, as indeed we had seen from Durham north- 

 wards, the hay still outside but gathered into pikes, 

 i.e. huge cocks holding about a ton of hay. In this 

 northern climate hay-making is a much more difficult 

 matter than it is farther south, and a farmer is 

 generally content to get his grass into pike long before 

 it would be fit to carry and build into rick. Once in 

 pike the material heats a little and completes its curing 

 and drying ; it is also safe from the weather, and the 

 farmer is able to leave it in the field and get on with 

 his corn harvest, often only leading home his hay after 

 the first snows have fallen harmlessly on the pikes. 

 In some cases, especially where a field is much sheltered 

 by a wood, it is the custom to use drying racks for the 

 corn; a season like 1908 taught many farmers the 

 value of this practice. Beans are not grown to any 

 large extent, but a leguminous crop that we saw for 

 the first time was " mashlum," a mixed crop of oats 

 and beans, or, as we saw it on one farm, of any and 

 every quick-growing leguminous plant beans, peas, 

 vetches, and clover. As with the dredge corn referred 

 to earlier, the mixture certainly seemed to yield a much 

 greater bulk of fodder than any of its constituents 

 separately, and it is particularly prized by the dairymen 

 in the towns, the provision of green fodder for whom 

 is a leading feature on many of the farms of the 

 Lothians, Fife, Perth, and Forfar. Farms were to be 

 found which sold off everything they produced, turnips 

 and straw as well as hay and green meat, but this is 

 only possible in the immediate neighbourhood of a 

 town. Some of the farmers kept dairy herds them- 

 selves, but in the east of Scotland the custom of town 



