FARMING - "spade cultivation of potatoes, oats and flax formed the backbone of the economy of the tiny farms". [Irish Population, Economy and Society; Golstrom and Clarkson]

This is a very realistic description of farming applied to the parish of Ballyrashane in the years before the 20th century. In many parts of Ireland there had been a change in the 1830's to pastoral farming and this was blamed for the beginning of the decline of the rural population. There does not seem to be any basis for believing that this is what happened in this parish since the farms have always been mixed and have never supported more than a dozen or so cows until well into the 20th century.

Ballyrashane farmers were members of the Coleraine Farming Society established in 1821. According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs they would have taken part in ploughing matches and competitions to judge the best cheese and fields of clover, grass, turnips and wheat. Cattle, horses, bulls, rams and boars would also be judged to win prizes. This society would have made provision for the servicing of animals between farming members. The services of a groom could also be hired, presumably for the preparation for competition.

There were a large number of farms but most of these were very tiny and barely produced enough for the family to survive. Since a small amount of land could not produce much the tenants had depended to a large extent on potatoes which produced a high yield from a small piece of ground. With the failure of the crop during the famine years in 1845 - 48 and the lack of money with which to buy alternative food, the people were forced to abandon their small farms.

After the famine many poorer families emigrated and those that remained expanded and took over vacant farms. Between the famine and the turn of the century advances were made in drainage and this helped farmers to reclaim land which would previously have been useless. Some of the emigrants had left vacant farms and this enabled people who previously had poor ground to be able to move in and take over. Other small tenant farmers left their land simply because they faced starvation. The 1847 relief legislation denied relief to any person who held more than a quarter acre of land so that many small-holders were forced to give up their land to escape starvation. [Making of Modern Ireland; Beckett]

One of the most dramatic examples of the amalgamation of farms can be seen in the example of the Curry family. Their first addition was the purchase of two fields bought from a widow. Later, another farm was purchased by a son because the family who owned it had no sons to inherit, only girls. Yet another farm was purchased by a second son around 1898. Each of these brothers have added surrounding small farms to their land and in addition another brother inherited his uncle's two farms and during the middle of the 20th century bought yet another two farms near his brothers. The result being that they farm an extensive area covering several townlands in the parish.

There are still some remaining indications of where farms have been amalgamated. Sometimes more than one set of stone gate pillars can be seen in the same field, as in Ballyversal/Cloyfin North. Similarly there are a few remaining field divisions made by building dry stone dykes.

The most obvious place to see these is in Cloyfin. In this same townland there are at least two indications of where farmsteads once were but no buildings remain. If one looks carefully at farm lanes you can see them leading out often through pillars into a field.

Although these sometimes look just like field entrances they can often be checked against the Ordnance Survey maps. In Cloyfin (see photograph) an old farm lane is now covered in grass and has trees growing along it, but it is plain to see that it has been a substantial road and it would indicate that this was either another road upt ot the buildings at Curry's farm, or that it was the original road and the new one is a replacement.

In other words there may have been two roads into two different farms whereas now there is only one farm served by an apparently new road.

In the last century in the southern side of Ballyversal from the crossroads to the county boundary, the hilly area was divided into 8 or 9 small farms. Today these are all incorporated into two large farms belonging to other families who have continually extended their holdings since the last century.

In the decades after the famine there was generally a decrease in the number of farmers marrying and of those who did, marrying at an older age. In many cases this meant that there were no direct descendants to pass their farms on to and often outsiders moved in. There are a few instances of this in the parish. For example, the farm of Hugh Anderson was left to his housekeeper. [Mullin p92] Another farm in Ballindreen was left to the land-steward whose family have remained to this day.

There is very little continuation of farming families by direct descent between 1832 Tithe Applotment Book and the Griffiths Valuation. This may be partly attributable to the famine when families are said to have emigrated leaving the lands vacant for the landlord to disperse. As a result new families came into the parish. [p207 Mullin] e.g Hamill's of Ballindreen.

The farmers of the parish were for the most part small owners. Their plight was drawn attention to by Reverend Alexander in 1852at a public meeting to support Sharman Crawford's tenant right bill. He referred to the 'immense amount of pauperism in Ballyrashane, Ballywillan and Dunluce and that small farmers were living in hovels of wretchedness and dragging out a miserable existence." Other people who were landless rented a piece of land from another farmer for a single crop under the conacre scheme. In addition a practise which was carried on in this area was that of leasing parts of fields for potatoes. Often this was just one or two rigs. This practise is said to have continued up until 1936 when people began to buy potatoes as cheaply as they could grow them.

Much of the poverty which farmers found themselves in could have been caused by the lack of expertise among them. This was one of the reasons why the Agricultural National School was set up. The management drained four acres of bog covered with furze and rushes at Islandeffrick, to give practical training to young boys who would be farmers in the future.

The greatest changes in ownership of farms came with the movement from landlordship to peasant proprietorship. Land Acts of the late 19th and early 20th century made it possible for most of the farmers to buy their own land off the landlord (Montgomery of Benvarden). The government provided the money for the farmers to buy and they paid it back to them yearly in the form of rent until it was paid off, rather like today's mortgage. Ballyrashane farmers, like most of the other areas of Ireland had a dislike of the landlords of the time and many of them attended meetings regularly to push through tenant right reforms. Their grievances included the fact that they were not allowed to improve their land and if they did so they were charged higher rents. Some farmers complained that they were not even allowed to kill a hare on their own land.

Weed killers were introduced around the time of the second World War ending. This brought about great changes in farming. Previous to this crops had to be weeded by hand. In the case of potatoes there had to be three weedings in a season. The fields were awash with thistles and dockens and these had to be removed either by cutting, which could be done if the crop was not tough or by pulling out with a tong-like instrument as in the case of a field of oats. Farmers can remember spending days pulling out thistles in this way.

Flax growing was a big industry in the first three decades of this century and one Ballyrashane farm devoted as much as 7 acres to it. On harvest day 70 pullers were employed. They managed to gather it all in one the one day. The flax then went to Boghill just outside the parish and was turned into linen. From there it went to Belfast.

During the war people had to increase their amount of tillage to aid the supply of grain in Britain but for many farmers this was for a short term. Tillage farming has never reached the level it was at in the last 30 years of the 19th century.

The larger farms would have employed about 6 full-time men in the years before the second world war. However, at harvest time this could rise to as many as 24. It was part of their working conditions that they would be fed by the farmer's wife. This was difficult because she only had an open fire to cook on and no running water. In the event of the war this tradition began to fade since bread was rationed and everybody had only rations for themselves.

Hired help was often engaged at the hiring fairs held in Coleraine. Any boy that needed a job went there. An example of the pay in 1930 was the £4 for six months which Mr McLaughlin earned at 13 years old. At this time horses drove the machinery on the farm. There were horse-drawn binders and rapiers. The two biggest farmers acquired a tractor in the forties. One got it first and the other borrowed it on occasions. It proved to be such an improvement that within months the other bought one too.

Unlike today where much of the ground is sowed in barley, the crops in the past were potatoes, corn, turnips and flax. Turnips are never grown now nor of course, is flax. The absence of weed killers meant that the fields had to be weeded and thinned. Memories are still strong in the menfolk of the parish of crawling along the drills with bags on their knees thinning the turnips.

Machines for planting potatoes did not appear until the second world war. It is said that one of the first inventions for dropping potatoes was a pair of trousers held by the planter who stood at the back of a cartful of potatoes. He held a leg in each drill and dropped potatoes down each leg in turn. Jim Lyons of Ballyversal is given credit here for being the first inventor of potato droppers.

When potatoes were taken into the potato store in Coleraine they sold for 19 shillings a ton. This would have been around the 40's after the second world war.

Fields were ploughed with horses and iron ploughs until the emergence of tractors just before the second world war. The first tractor in the district appeared in Outhill, just outside the parish. Some of the local people can remember walking the two or three miles to see it because it was such a novelty.

Potatoes and corn were gathered by hand and put on a horse-drawn cart. This cart was only about two feet off the ground and had a pulley mechanism worked with a rope. At the back was a door onto which you put the bail of corn. You then pulled the ropes and it pulled the back door with the corn up and onto the cart.

I have been told that it was one of the great pleasures of the children tor ide in the back of this bumpy old cart into the farm yard.

Once in the farmyard all the corn had to be stored in a loft. The children helped to tramp the corn down and one man remembers vividly that they were allowed to fill the loft and tramp it in such a way that they left a hole in the middle which they could use as a slide.

People threshed their own corn well into this century but this was replaced when a travelling man started to come round the countryside. H ehad his own moveable machine and gradually the farmers all employed his services and stopped threshing themselves.

It was not until the second world war that the farms of this parish began to expand in the way we see them today. In the 30's it was only the biggest farms that had more than a dozen cows or sheep. The most common number of cows for the farms of this parish was between 5 and 10. As well as half a dozen cows and sheep the farm would have owned 2 horses and a pig or two.

Cows were hand-milked well into the 40's. This limited the number of cows a farmer could own even if he had the money to acquire more. It would seem that people who could milk well were difficult to find and some of the farms employed people from Donegal. One of the first milking machines in the area was introduced in Ballindreen to milk fifteen cows. It was such a success that the farm expanded its herd and has become exclusively dairy farming with over 200 cows. Previous to the war nobody restricted their farm to any one type of product.

The fact that few if any of the farms had a supply of running water made life difficult for farmers. All water had to be pumped from the spring or carried from the well in buckets. It was not until the 1950's that piped water became general in farmyards.

The combine harvester began to make its appearance in the late 50's and it caused a revolution in farming. It did away with the binder (which itself had replaced the reaper) and reduced the amount of manpower needed to work with bales of corn. Previous to any of these machines men cut the corn with a scythe. The old farmers are credited with saying that a good day's work was to scythe an acre of corn in a day. When the reaper was introduced around 1912 there was an outcry from the farm labourers since it cut down the number of men needed to work on the farm. The wages then were about 10 shilling (50p) and in kind, 3 drills of potatoes and some buttermilk per week. By 1931 the men were living in the council cottages with their own piece of land and their wages had increased to 25 shillings. At this time beef prices were 33 shillings (£1.65) per cwt (approx. 50kg) compared with £101 per 50kg today.

Although farm size had grown substantially by the turn of the century most of the technological developments only occurred within the last 60 years and have really advanced since 1960.

The following figures are quoted in Goldstrom & Clarkson's book, "Irish Population, Economy & Society," for the size of farms in Ireland.

When we compare the figures for Ballyrashane today we can see how large the farms are today compared with those of 1859 when the Griffiths Valuation was done.

figures for Ballyrashane 1990

Islandeffrick	248.5acres	4 farmers	62.125 averrage
Kirkistown	124.75	5 farmers	24.95
Ballyvelton	283.5	7	40.5
Ballyversal	362.75	2	181.37
Ballynag	283.25	5	56.65
Ballindreen	537.00	10	53.7
Articrunnagh	384.5	3	128.16
Knocknekeeragh	196.00	4	49.00
Glebe	33.75	2	16.87
Liswatty	561.50	12	46.79
Gorticloghan	209.25	2	104.62
TOTAL	3280.75acres	56 farmers
* figures from Dept. of Agriculture

figures for 1859

Islandeffrick	253acres	10 farmers	25.3 averrage
Kirkistown	125	3 farmers	41.66
Ballyvelton	282	6	47.00
Ballyversal	365	14	26.07
Ballynag	297	9	33.00
Ballindreen	542	6	90.00
Articrunnagh	383	21	18.20
Knocknekeeragh	196	8	24.5
Glebe	33	1	33
Liswatty	541	9	60.00
Gorticloghan	209	10	20.9
TOTAL	3226	97

It would seem that even in 1859 the farmers in this area held quite a large amount of land when compared to the national average. However the size of the landholdings today have doubled many times.

This table shows how much bigger the farms are today in each townland. Although the number of farmers in the townland today still seems quite large it is important to note that many of the farmers today have land in more than one townland. One farmer has land in Gorticloughan, Ballyversal and Knocknekeeragh.

Hay stacks used to be a common feature in Ballyrashane and can be seen in many old photographs of the area. These are gone now with the changeover to barley and the increase in the availability of larger stores for crops. There are signs of the latest storage method appearing in the form of large round black plastic bundles lying in the fields. This is now the way to rot down the silage for animal feed.