Farm Safety
Mind Yersel on tha Fairm
Ulster’s farming heritage is the perfect ground from which to appreciate every aspect of Ulster-Scots life.
From the earliest arrivals, people from Scotland have left their mark across our varied landscapes – establishing field boundaries within ancient townlands, hand-digging simple drainage systems in what they called the ‘peat mosses’ (which are also known in Ireland as ‘turf bogs’), building classic farmsteads of stone and thatch, raising herds of livestock (or ‘beese’), planting crops, and creating food for their families to both thrive on and trade with.
Even though farming has become a highly advanced modern industry, the old ways and words are still in use across our countryside every day.
Ulster’s traditional family farms are still the pride of our landscape. Although the old field openings have been made wider for modern tractors, a pair of pillars bearing a classic ‘five bar gate’, which was once an unofficial symbol of Ulster, still say so much.
The ‘Galloway hedges’ made of thorn quicks set into ‘stane dykes’, which define many of our ‘loanens’, wind their way along ‘burns’ and between ‘braes’ and ‘knowes’. The farmstead ‘byres’, ‘oothooses’ and the ‘lafts’ at the top of the steps are all part of the poetry of our place, expressed through Ulster-Scots words and terms handed down through the generations of our families.
Maybe you’ve spent your springtimes in the tractor either ‘scalin dung’ or ‘pleughin rigs’. Or your summers in the fields ‘stookin’ bales by hand. If you work with herds of cows or cattle, you’ll be familiar with moving them from field to field, as we say ‘keppin beese’.
Even that familiar word ‘keppin’ is Scots in origin – the Concise Scottish Dictionary defines it as ‘the heading off or intercepting of animals’. Ireland is of course world-famous for potatoes, and ‘bingin prootas’ or ‘tatties’ has been back-breaking work for generations. Ulster-Scots emigrants introduced the potato to America in 1719, at Derry in New Hampshire. In the 1930s it was North Antrim man John Clarke who created over 30 varieties of potato, and he named every one of them with the prefix ‘Ulster’.
Some of our best-loved agricultural entrepreneurs include of course Harry Ferguson, of Massey Ferguson fame, and Cyrus McCormick (Virginia-born inventor of the mechanical reaper, and founder of IHC). Ballymena born farm labourer Samuel McCaughey became the ‘sheep king’ of Australia and a pioneer of water conservation.
Centuries of agricultural life have made the connection between Ulster and Scotland special – from field to fork, you can taste and experience our intertwined cultural roots.
For those who still work within agriculture today, as well as future generations, it is important to always remain safe.
The Ulster-Scots Agency has created a new farm safety resource for weans to help keep them – and others – safe while oot and about on the fairm.
For further information on farm safety please visit the following links: