COUNTRY LIFE
Primitive Farms
Those of us who are in the neighbourhood of modern farms, much more those familiar with the lumbering, but efficient monsters known as harvester-threshers, may have difficulty in believing how primitive are the methods of husbandry at extreme points. The most extreme, if– a double superlative is allowable, is probably the West of Ireland. It is the ultima Thule of agriculture. From an English farm where the ploughs have already followed the cutter-and-binder go to Connemara and believe what you see if you can. As you drive along a road near the coast you see a group of men and women on hill-top tossing their arms as if engaged in some outlandish form of worship ; but the goddess they worship is Ceres. They are engaged in shaking the corn ears in a sheet so that the wind, on that windy spot, may blow away the chaff ; and on the lee side collect a few starveling stock to consume the unwonted riches. The group are acting as human windmills. If the corn on any farm or holding thereabouts is cut by a scythe, it is quotable as an example of this modern mechanization. The sickle (or hagging hook or what you will) is the commoner weapon.
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