The Great Marsh Haystacks of New England

Hay cocks on 'staddles' on the marsh, Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. USA.

From The Traditional Uses of the Great Marsh

" The Spartina patens grasses (salt meadow cordgrass), found lower down in the Marsh, would have been cut by hand with scythes and then stacked in wooden supports, called staddles (made from cedar or oak and 18-24 inches off the ground and 10 feet in diameter) to keep them dry and above the high tide (Weare 1993, Cunningham 2013, Woodman).

The building of the haystacks was said to be a highly skilled art that required “speed, dexterity, strength and close attention” (Woodman). The cut hay was raked into “cocks” or “mounds.” Two long poles made of willow wood would be slipped underneath the piles (forming what was called a litter) and then carried by two men to the staddles (Weare 1993). The stacks were typically stacked as much as 20 feet high and weighed one and a half to two tons (Wood- man, Cunningham 2013). It was said that in a good season, as many as 400-500 haystacks in the New- bury Marsh were visible – so many that sometimes the view of the horizon was obstructed (Woodman).

Whole families would work together to perform all the tasks associated with haying. Young children would help with the horses and with raking the hay, while teenagers and the adult men would carry and stack the hay in the staddles. Often families would set up camp in the Marsh for a week at a time during haying season – bringing food and using tents or wooden structures for shelter. (Weare 1993)"

And an excerpt from Marshing Time Approaches: 

"This was the procedure. The grass would cut much easier and better in early morning when the dew was on, so the women folks on the farms or in the homes were up at I a. m. to get breakfast and put up dinners in the baskets and boxes, so we could drive out of the yard at 2 or 2:30 at the latest. We must be on the marsh with scythes and ready to swing down the swath by 4 a. m., so to get 4 hours work before the dew was off.

Around 10:30 mowing was ended, we ate dinner, then raked out the creeks, left things trim and started back to the high ground, "Healey's Island" or "Mike's Island", where we left the horse with his bag of hay.

If the work had not been to hard the men would go and dig a mess of clams before we started back.

The next day we came down again and raked it into windrows and cocked it up into a bunch twice as long as it was wide and which would weigh 50 to 100 lbs.
What a thrill when the job was done, the marsh mowed smooth and the fine shapely, stacks standing there, monuments to skillful labor.

The salt air always made one feel good, gave us an awful appetite, and the whole thing was of the nature of adventure. ...

My father was a rare man to keep a scythe sharp and to use it and I got great pride at the smoothly mowed marsh we always left when work was done."

Martin Johnson Heade - Haystacks on the Newburyport Marshes