I remember the time when...

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
I remember a time, when the Grant's were paid at 70% of the standard cost, on a plan like that's evidence, with just the ditches cleaned out and a few yards of pipe fitted where the outlets were!
There was 50 acres of that land, dad bought it soon after I left school. I spent all summer up there apart from harvest days and drained the lot myself. JCB 806 track Machine and a Country 1004 carting stone
Yes 70% Standard costs on it all
 

David.

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
J11 M40
Reminds me nicely of cleaning off secondhand asbestos cement sheets in the holidays, to look like new, so that my father could claim standard costs on new buildings.
This had to be the heyday of farming, standard costs left a nice profit if you did the work yourself. Couldn't lose, just so long as you could crawl out of bed of a morning.
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Talking of pipes, old folks, and petrol tractors, an elderly neighbour would dip a length of string in the petrol tank, and create a spark from the battery to light the string....and thus light his pipe. Of course, the inevitable happened one day, spark went in the petrol tank, and that was the end of the tractor. You have to wonder why he didn't just carry a lighter, or matches. But hey-ho, halcyon days....:)
 

john432

Member
Location
Carmarthenshire
Was talking about this to a farmer the other day, what some did was do the work themselves, get a proper plan map drawn , and get a friendly contractor to give them a reciepted invoice to claim on! Worked out much better than the standard cost.
Which very nicely covered the cost of the works, with pissibly a small profit
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Hoeing swedes by hand,picking spuds,fodderbeat etc.
Cutting hay fingerbar mowers,old side rakes, cock pheasant ,wufflers.
Bungle slay stack hay and straw for perry loader on tvo fergi.
Old "belcher" small bale hay elevator attached to turntable hay trailer to pick up bales .
Remember few more soon .
finger bar mowers
could never understand how I still have 5 fingers and thumbs on each hand:)
Anybody letting a 10/11 year old drive a fergy 20 and one of those on the back should have been locked up:eek:
then again riding on the elevator to the top of the stack:eek::eek:
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Was talking about this to a farmer the other day, what some did was do the work themselves, get a proper plan map drawn , and get a friendly contractor to give them a reciepted invoice to claim on! Worked out much better than the standard cost.
Now that was proper fraud and people went to jail for it , quite rightly
It was not the farmers fault that people in Whitehall had no idea how thick concrete should be laid or how much they paid the labour;)
 
finger bar mowers
could never understand how I still have 5 fingers and thumbs on each hand:)
Anybody letting a 10/11 year old drive a fergy 20 and one of those on the back should have been locked up:eek:
then again riding on the elevator to the top of the stack:eek::eek:
We used to make small bales of hay and straw all over the district and drive it home on the roads. The rules were always a bit vague ("12 isn't it, for driving your own tractor on the road?" )
We all used to drive through town in convoy with the flat 8er and all the trailers, cars must have been narrower in the early '70s since we never hit anyone. Everyone in town used to know it was hay time and put up their hands as you went by and some of the policemen would come and stack bales for a bit of cash after their shifts finished. We used IH 434s and a "big" Nuffield and none of them ever had brakes on both sides. The Nuff's steering wheel used to go round twice before anything happened, and it was flipping fast.
Dad would happily stand on the drawbar as we went along, usually with a big bolt serving as a pin...:eek: These days, I think twice before taking the new tractor anywhere near the road, even on its own.
 

Still Farming

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
South Wales UK
We used to make small bales of hay and straw all over the district and drive it home on the roads. The rules were always a bit vague ("12 isn't it, for driving your own tractor on the road?" )
We all used to drive through town in convoy with the flat 8er and all the trailers, cars must have been narrower in the early '70s since we never hit anyone. Everyone in town used to know it was hay time and put up their hands as you went by and some of the policemen would come and stack bales for a bit of cash after their shifts finished. We used IH 434s and a "big" Nuffield and none of them ever had brakes on both sides. The Nuff's steering wheel used to go round twice before anything happened, and it was flipping fast.
Dad would happily stand on the drawbar as we went along, usually with a big bolt serving as a pin...:eek: These days, I think twice before taking the new tractor anywhere near the road, even on its own.
Old bolt ,hay tine etc in hitch .
Never heard of ratchet straps ,just good stackers.
Every thing was smaller and user friendly ,hop on ,hop off tractors.
Chucking those last few bales into the ridge in the barn with sweat running down your face and moisture running off the zinc roof sheets.
 

DeeGee

Member
Location
North East Wales
Talking of pipes, old folks, and petrol tractors, an elderly neighbour would dip a length of string in the petrol tank, and create a spark from the battery to light the string....and thus light his pipe. Of course, the inevitable happened one day, spark went in the petrol tank, and that was the end of the tractor. You have to wonder why he didn't just carry a lighter, or matches. But hey-ho, halcyon days....:)

String was cheaper though wasn’t it?
Until the tractor blows up.
Probably the same mentality as those who still use rusty nuts and bolts to secure implements onto lower link arms because it’s cheaper than buying those ridiculously expensive linch pins.
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
Peardrax and Cydrax ,crates of it in the milking cool house, couple of glasses each after throwing the bales in the barn, before going back to the field.. happy days.

Cydrax? I do remember the cider bar in Newton Abbot. Basically, a roofed over cobbled ally with barrels along one side and a bench on the other. Oh, and a dribble of sawdust in the central gutter for those who spat!

Cider, sir? Yes, but which? Sweet? Dry? Ropey? Half-and-half? As many varieties as there are wines in the supermarket today! I think a pint was a bit more than 10d (that's about 4p in today's money) and not many would drink two pints and walk out steadily. Cider addicts were easily spotted by their red faces and blue noses caused by the methyl alcohol it contains.

There are lots of stories about cider as most farms supplied it as part of the labourers' wages. 'Tanglefoot". Removes all feeling from the lower legs. But far better than beer for quenching a thirst.
 

Campbell

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Contract Combining up around Glyn Ceiriog. Old fella only had one little 2 ton trailer, so having to help bag and stack the corn to speed things up a bit. "Duw-duw boys" he'd say "it's faster than the thrashin box" I think we charged him buy the day.......;)
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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