THIRTY YEARS OF FARMING MEMORIES ON COLL

Clipping on Eilean Mor

Our earliest memories of farming on Coll stretch back to 1963. That summer Susan was at Cornaig with her sister Mary and four children. One evening Susan was the poor Cinderella left at home while the rest went off to Arinagour to dance - no more room in the Landrover.

Anyway, there was a knock on the door and Johnny from Cornaig Mor, opposite Cornaig Lodge was there. 'Would Susan like to come up to Sorasdal and join the team for the gathering/clipping on Eilean Mor?' Prince Charming could not have brought a more exciting invitation, wow, a boat trip to see the seals as well.

In no time Susan was beside Johnny on the tractor. At Sorasdal she was greeted by the East End team, Archie and Hector (the twins) and Johnny Glaic, 'the boy' of the group. Johnny Cornaig was gently teased for bringing his secret weapon, (Susan), but she was warmly welcomed: earlier that summer she had bought the Cornaig Estate and my goodness all these men were ever so curious about their new laird, the first young lady Cornaig had ever had!

Anyway, Susan was in her second heaven as the Sorasdal team sailed twenty minutes to Eilean Mor. The place of landing was to a ring in a sheltered channel in what the Erskine family called 'Seal Street'. On either side of the channel there were masses of seals and pups on the rocks and they would gently slither into the water when you were about 7 yards away; sometimes they would howl. From the sand bar of one of these islands if the Cairns of Coll on one occasion you could count seventy seals on each side - that is quite a population of seals. Some of the low lying islands can be a mass of bluebells, nurtured on the guano of the seagulls.

Cooling Off
Eilean Mor was often used as a place of isolation or segregation of stock for the stallion or the rams. Mary Lang's later coup de grace to Susan was "send that Robert of yours off to Eilean Mor to cool off for a few days!"

The terrain, even with sheep grazing, was very rough with high grasses, heather, five foot cow parsley, irises galore and steep slopes, so gathering the rams was an ordeal in itself. Inevitably one got chased twice around the island and away onto the rocks so was abandoned unclipped, a real lucky one!

The clipping was done by hand and the team sailed back accompanied by the howls of the seals and the moonlight into Sorasdal with a cargo of fleece and the full team at 11.30pm and Susan made a triumphal return on Johnny's tractor to Cornaig with experiences far more exciting than the dance in Arinagour that night.

Haymaking at Sorasdal
Sorasdal haymaking in the 1960s was before technology had arrived. The implements used were a scythe and a wooden rake. Each year the rake lost another tooth. The twins, Archie and Hector, were so popular that volunteers were always around at haymaking time so the cutting and turning was done with lots of chuckles from Hector and Archie, shouts drowned by the creak of that tiresome corncrake and the 'crack' of the cousins and nephews and summer swallows.

Why invest in high technology when the hay made itself Mary Poppins style?

The hard bit was making the ricks so that they were sturdy and didn't blow over in the winter gales, and there was a real artistry in the covering and binding the rick with a ring of stone weights.

In Cornaigbeg technology was nudging its way into haymaking. Allan and Iain had a steam tractor and grass cutter and a mechanical grass turner, but the ricks were similar to those at Sorasdal.

The First Cornaig Silage
In the 1970s a silage pit was constructed at Cornaig Mor and technology inevitably nudged in a little further as silage replaced hay as winter feed.

The principal implement was a second hand mechanical cutter/blower/trailer known as a Wuffler. This was pulled by an upmarket tractor with covered hood and entry via a ladder with the pulling power of a train locomotive. As the grass was cut the blower forced it into the trailer and spread it. It ran with a huge noise and clatter and the commotion of a grass storm. When the trailer was full the load would be disgorged with the help of a hydraulic tipper, in front of the silage pit.

A second tractor (second hand, perhaps third hand, a Coll banger tractor) with fork attachment would then move the pile to the back of the shed and roll the grass in the pit. A helper with a fork would spread the grass and apply a sprinkling of special liquid - the cow version of tomato sauce - to make the silage sweet.

At the beginning of the day the banger tractor would need a tow from a car to get bump started. The second hand Wuffler worked fine for several hours, but it had obviously had several thousand hours of running time and some years of standing time in the salt air of Coll, so the sides were showing distinct strain moving across the bumpy fields of Cornaig.

After a few seasons this Wuffler must have been the Rolls Royce of Coll bangers. Late that afternoon, oh dear, the trailer had a blowout, and the tyre was completely useless. There was a frantic search for another wheel among the many banger wrecks of Cornaig and eventually a suitable one was found and fitted and the grass-cutting operation proceeded. However, the wheel was not quite as good as expectations, as it was at least 6" larger than the wheel on the other side of the trailer, just enough to exaggerate the commotion of movement over the bumpy fields. The vibration was horrendous. Even the walls of Cornaig Lodge shivered and the odd slate dropped off the roof. At about 5.00pm one whole side of the trailer collapsed, followed by the back. The Wuffler was now in ruins. The silage operation was abandoned for the day.

More Gremlins
When in trouble on Coll you can be sure that some wonderful neighbour will come to your help - so the next day operations were resumed with the borrowed Gallanach Wuffler, but the gremlins were still in the system. After a short time in resumed operation the tractor disengaged from the Wuffler. The connecting system had not properly engaged. My goodness Susan, what a mercy it had not disengaged coming up the Dual Carriageway at Cornaig Mar with you and three children and five dogs behind!

What is Left of Haymaking in the 1990s?
Now modern technology has truly arrived in the East End of Coll. The silage pit is redundant, a home only for 2000 starlings. The grass is cut, followed by a machine which bales it into large swiss roll style balls, followed by a machine which wraps it into black plastic, making the contents airtight.

A contractor comes in with the baling/wrapping implements and moves through the island at the rate of a whole farm a day. Farming has now become what the businessmen call a 'virtual business'. This means that you hold onto a simple 'core' of activities; the remainder are 'outsourced'.

In 1995 there are three men working on Cornaig in agriculture part time, one only full time. In 1963 there were seven men full time committed to farming. So what do all the men do now on Coll? The record for the number of concurrent jobs held on Coll must surely go to John Wheeler-James. A researcher in the early 1990s got him associated with 17 jobs, all kept on the boil with the help of CB Radio. I wonder whether that would get into the Guinness Book of Records? Arinagour is now jammed up with BMWs, Volvos (??), Shoguns. Where have all the Coll bangers gone?

Isn't there some nostalgia about the good old days when the whole community joined in the fun of haymaking Mary Poppins style and the entertainment lasted for weeks?

Robert Erskine