It’s been a fantastic growing year at a Marazion family farm
Billy Collins at Chy Vellan Farm
October 2022: Harvest time in Mount’s Bay in the mid-20th century followed a traditional pattern. A horse-drawn binder would cut the corn, which was tied into sheaves and stacked in larger bundles – “shocks” – to dry in the fields. Later, the sheaves were loaded into a cart, pulled by horses to a yard, where the corn was stored until it was threshed to release the grain.
“Harvest used to take a lot of labour, right up until in the 50s and early 60s,” says Billy Collins of Chy Vellan Farm, near Marazion. “Fifteen to 20 men would be involved in threshing the corn. I do miss the comradeship we had in my father’s day, when we used to have all the men around the fields, and everyone would stop for croust and eat together. All the farmers helped each other.”
A representation of harvest in the early 20th century
“The farm has gradually grown from 42 acres to around 600 – the machinery is a terrific cost, so we’ve had to adapt by using it over a larger acreage. It’s a numbers game. Small family farms are disappearing: there used to be 20 in Marazion parish, and now we’re down to three or four.”
Billy’s father kept cattle, and the harvested corn was stored as winter feed for them, while the straw which came off the grain was used for bedding. The farm’s key crop now is barley, which is sold for cattle feed. Winter barley is drilled in October for harvest in July, and spring barley planted in April and harvested in August and September. Between these two harvests, cauliflower is planted, ready for harvesting from November: peak demand for it is at Christmas. Billy also grows spring cabbage – now cut in winter rather than spring – and potatoes.
The timing of the spring barley harvest changes little year by year – but 2022 has been different. “It’s been a fantastic year,” says Billy. “We’ve had exceptional yield. Sometimes harvest goes on into October, but this year we finished at the beginning of September. We had ideal planting conditions in spring, with just enough rain for the barley to grow. August can sometimes be wet, but this year it was very dry, with almost no dew, which meant we got a good price for our grain – we’re penalised if it has more than 15 per cent moisture.”
Fewer people are involved with the harvest these days. This year, Billy worked with his brother Andrew, his son Matthew, and his grandson Sam, assisted by three farm workers, all originally from Lithuania. Sam, the fifth generation of the Collins family to work on the farm, bears the name of his great-grandfather. Meanwhile, Sam’s brother Tom spent the summer working in the USA in a harvest gang, who worked their way up from Texas to North Dakota, harvesting wheat in May, moving to peas and beans by early September, and then to sunflowers and maize.
Last year Billy and Judith moved out of the farmhouse, in readiness for Matthew and his family to move in. For every farmer, there are always new challenges. “Rising costs have caused huge problems for us financially – our fuel and fertiliser costs have gone through the roof,” says Billy. But he knows Chy Vellan Farm is in safe hands.
