five in the morning
At harvest-time , however , it is inhabited -- full to overflowing . A few decades ago as many as fifty labourers engaged for the harvest had to be housed in the farm out-houses on beds of straw . There was no help for it , and men and women had to congregate in these barns together . Up as early as five in the morning , they were generally dead tired by night ; and , miserable though this system of herding them together was , they took it like stoics , and their very number served as a moral safeguard . Nowadays the harvest is gathered in so quickly , and machinery does so much that used to be done by hand , that this crowding of labourers together , which was the bothy system at its worst , is nothing like what it was . As many as six or eight men , however , are put up in the garret referred to during `` hairst '' - time , and the female labourers have to make the best of it in the barn . There is no doubt that on many farms the two sexes have still at this busy time to herd together even at night .