MARSHING AND SALT HAY
One experience the present generation knows nothing of is going to "mash" and cutting salt hay. Up to about 1900, the salt hay crop was most important.
Most farmers fed a certain proportion of salt hay ato stretch out their English hay. It was kind of tricky to feed salt hay to milch cows. It had to be done right and at the right time, or it would taste in the milk.
The first cutting was the black grass. This grows along the shore and is called from the black seed. This is a better grade of hay than the outer grass.
Nearly every farmer owned a patch of marsh. The boundaries were mostly ditches and creeks. Many farmers came from as far as Danvers and Topsfield.
Cutting salt hay was primarily a hand job. On some of the marshes near the shore horses could be used and the grass cut and raked by machine. Horses used on the marsh had to wear marsh shoes. These shoes were about a foot in diameter, round, and clamped onto the hooves like snowshoes. It needed a steady and dependable horse. Sometimes a horse would step into a ditch or a hole and it was quite a job to get him out.
The bulk of the salt hay was cut with a scythe. Many men were expert at this, and sometimes two or three men would follow in parallel swarths one behind the other, and the rhythmic swing of the scythes made a pleasant swish and they would cut a lot of grass in a day. After the hay was cut, it was raked into cocks to be poled to where the stack was being made. Poling hay was often the boys’ job. The poles were about 15 feet long, 3 inches in diameter. They were slid under the cocks of hay, parallel, and a boy took hold of the poles one in each hand while the other took the rear and lifted it up and carried it to where the stack was being made. This was a job that took a watchful eye for many pitfalls like small ditches and holes lie in wait for the careless poler.
The stack is built on staddles, which are large stakes driven in a 10 or 12 foot circle, filling the whole circle about a foot apart, and the hay stack is built on these so the tide will not carry it away. The stacks are about 12 feet high. Salt haying can only be carried on a low running tide.
There is another phase of salt haying and that is going after it with a gundalow. These gundalows were large flatboats perhaps thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide and about
3 feet deep. They were rowed by four men using oars 18 feet long and sitting in the bow. The boat was steered by a long sweep from the stern. They were used to bring hay from Plum Island and from the outer edges of the marsh. They went out on the top of the tide and worked while the tide uncovered the marsh, many times staying all night. If school permitted, the boys considered it a great privilege to go on one of these trips. Luncheon was carried and generally two jugs. One jug would contain "switchum". Switchum consisted of molasses and water with a generous portion of ginger, this was especially for the boys. The other jug would contain hard cider. Sometimes more than one jug of cider would be taken and the crew would return quite happy. Greens Point was often the landing place for the hay and it might be stacked or hauled off. There were several gundalows in Ipswich, the last two rotting away, one near Greens Point and a catamaran type in the canal near Canal Bridge.
In the fall as some of us remember the marshes from Town Hill looked like an immense Indian Village, with cocks of hay as far as you could see and later inumerical stacks of hay waiting for the freezeup.