Interviewer: Uh-huh. Did- what would you call a- a pile of sheaves? Speaker: Stook.

Well, they stooked it up. In stooks. Put about, ah, eight shea-- sheaves in- in a row.

Speaker: Then came the binder with the sheaf-carrier and they carried the sheaves into, ah, six and dropped them off for a stook. [0:15:34.5] Interviewer: Ah, for a- Speaker: For a- a stook. That's what they called, ah- the- the shea-- the sheaves when they're standing up, you-see, to dry and finish. Stook of wheat, stook of rye, stook of, ah-

Interviewer: Uh-huh. What do you call the little row there? Speaker: That was a stook. Interviewer: Uh-huh. That was a stook. Uh-huh. And, ah, um, is that- that's your- that'

Interviewer: You wouldn't put them up into ah- to dry? Speaker: Oh yes, they would be stooks for week or ten days.

Well, it went into stooks and then we had to get a threshing mill and thresh it.

Speaker: Which made a stook. Interviewer: Mm-hm. What was the idea of stooking the grain? Speaker: Well, to keep it- if you left it on the ground long enough and it got wet, it would start to grow. Interviewer: Mm-hm, Mm-hm and of course- Speaker: It would dry out. Interviewer: I suppose it would deteriorate t-- Speaker: I- an- and it would dry out and if it was- if some of it wasn't quite um, ripe- the odd time there was a bit of it in the green-side, it would ripen up, you-see- Interviewer: In the stook. Speaker: With the stook, yeah.

Well a binder cut the grain and uh, put it out in stooks, tied it with uh, binder twine-

Well, uh, they were fed hay, pretty much just the hay that had been brought in and then sometimes my father would sow a field of corn and there was a bit of a building behind the stable where he would just uh- first of all he would just cut the corn and put it in sort of a stook, leave it there, just for a little and then he would take his wagon and bring this- the length of the corn was in the stook, he would bring it in and stand it all up in this building, low, it was quite a low building, he would stand it up, and then in the winter um, just to give them a treat he would uh- after they would have their hay uh, my sister and I would sometimes go out and bring them in some corn and they just loved it.

Speaker 1: I remember we played a lot in the summertime, hide-and-go-seek behind the- the haystacks. The- the- oh, (inc) stooks- Speaker 2: Stakes. Speaker 1: Stooks of hay, eh? Is that (inc)- Speaker 2: Yeah, (inc)- Interviewer: What's a stook of hay? Speaker 1: Coils of hay! Co-- behind the coils, yeah. Speaker 2: (inc) cut the hay. Speaker 1: Of hay, yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: And then you rake it- Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And you make a- Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: A sto-- ah, well a stook would be- that's when you (inc)- Speaker 1: Stooks would be grain, yeah.

Well you -you have a binder and it goes around the field and ah it auto-- it binds the sheathes and takes them out as you go around and then you'd have to come around and- and pick the sheathes off the ground and stook them in- in ah against each other. So you may put so you put four, five, six stooks or- or sheathes in a stook and they go in rows around the field, I don't know if you've ever seen that problem not in your lifetime but-

Well I did everything I could. And then my brothers came and helped some and a neighbour came and helped some. So then he was at um, a silo felling. Like at that time the stooks were in the field and you forked them into the corn cutter. It wasn't like the way they do it now.

...you'd have a row of sheaves here and a row of sheaves here and a row of sheaves here all into the centre and when you started to- to stook, you can start here and you stooked to the centre and then you can come back here and the you go back there and- and then you had them all in a row.

And when- when you're- then ah- and if you're watch what your doing when you're stooking, you can (inc) down the- the row of stooks so that you- you went down this way and the guy put them all on that side of the wagon and the guy on the wagon building, built a load like it was (inc) day before.

Speaker: About the sheaves. So they're putting sheaves of grain on to the stook. Stook the grain, that's wheat. So the- the- building ah- Interviewer: So the stook is when they tie it round, is that right? Speaker: Mm-hm.

...you wouldn't be running all over the place. You'd have a windrow of sheaves and a windrow of sheaves and then you go out and you stook it all by hand and then go out and load it up and- but see th-- n-- no- nobody- nobody does that anymore.

About the sheaves. So they're putting sheaves of grain on to the stook. Stook the grain, that's wheat.

Um, the guy throwing on would ride the tractor to move on the next, the bunch of stooks or if somebody like myself, a kid was around, he- he moved the tractor around the field while I put the load on.

And there was a whole pile of blackbirds or starlings out there and they were just nesting in the top of all these stooks of grain helping themselves. Well I said, "I'm going to fix that." Oh I got the old long barrelled shotgun out there.

And the ah bailer t-- or the binder twine. And then you got to run around there and stook all the grain.