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Hay
rakes: Hay provides feed for livestock in winter
and is made by cutting and sun-drying mature grass the previous summer.
The photograph shows haymaking near Wantage in Oxfordshire in 1906. The
women in the foreground are using long-handled wooden hay rakes to collect
the new hay into heaps ready for collection. In the background, the men
are unloading the laden wagons and building huge hay ricks where the hay
will remain until needed. Although machines for use in hay-making were
progressively available from the middle of the nineteenth century, traditional
hand methods continued, as here, on many farms until much later. This
scene would have been common around the country in the early summer months,
as it had been for centuries. Wooden hay rakes were vital to this whole
process.
Choose
an option:
Hay
rakes in the collection
Hay
rakes in use
Hay
rakes being made
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