Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Page 145

FAROESE SPADE-CULTIVATION
149
Fig. ó.Types of spades from the North Atlantic region. From left to right: Norwegian ’krokspade’, the South UT
ster ’loy’, the Irish ’caschrom’, the ’delling-spade’ from the Shetlands. (First three (redrawn) from A. Fenton, the
last one drawn from a photograph).
The solution has been achieved by drying the
crop in kiln houses, sornhús.
The last of the cultivation problems listed,
that of wind erosion, is usually of limited
importance to reinavelta, because the fields
are mostly covered by vegetation, and
drought is seldom.
In summary, the use of reinavelta in terms
of solving all the major ecological problems
seems to be ingeniously well adapted to the
Faroese situation. Indispensable to the culti-
vation of barley, reinavelta was also very
beneficial to the production of grass - es-
sentially for the keeping of dairy-cattle as
well as occasionally providing emergency
winter fodder for the abundant sheep. J.
Landt (1800) and H.J.J. Sørensen (1859)
maintained that reinavelta had its main ef-
fect on grass growth and saw its use for
cereal cultivation mainly as of secondary im-
portance. It is true that grass improves by
manuring and better draining. Furthermore,
grass roots are never destroyed by reinavelta,
which ensures a quick regrowth of the grass.
This means that the fallow is overgrown by
grass immediately after the harvest, and that
the composition of the sward, because of the
good drainage, is characterised mainly by
palatable species (eliminating sedges etc.).
Indisputably, reinavelta has had profound
effects on both components of Faroese farm-
ing; livestock rearing and cropping. It is