Mangolds

[raymono57]

Was there ever a more labour intensive crop grown on a farm?

Plough, prepare for drilling, then drill.
Single out by hand with hoe -took two or three men a couple of weeks.
Scuffle once, maybe twice - if too wet for scuffle return to pull lambs tongue by hand at later date.
Finally return to field in late October, twist off tops, load into trailer by hand or fork, haul back to cave.
Cover with straw. Collect trimmings from road hedges and cover cave.
Start feeding in January - all carried by barrow into cattle - distribute using fork.
Photo shows my grandfather on the right - South Dartmoor around 1954.
Times certainly change.

 

[dudders]

Bet their beef was good though?

 

[Derrick Hughes]

All wind and pi ss

 

[neilo]

Are Mangolds any different to low DM varieties of fodder beet (like Brigadier) of today?

Thankfully we now have decent agronomy and mechanical lifters (or better, electric fencing), rather than having to do all of it manually. It’s not hard to see why they fell from favour though.

 

[dudders]

The guy on the left, reckon he's wearing the same trousers as me today - thick woollen tweed + braces. Perfect for this weather and the hedge-laying I'm doing at the moment. Need some more, as I'm living in the only pair I've got, but it's not easy to find any these days - all the tweed is thin stuff for 'fashion' and up to £290 a pair!

 

[DeeGee]

Just remember them about late fifties /1960 time when I was very young.
Think they were grown for sheep, and remember then in a clamp in the stackyard. Never heard much about mangels ever since those times so guessed they were outdated and super ended by swedes and fodder beet.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Feldherr fodder beet is no different to mangel slightly smaller on average and they have the advantage of not needing to be singled out.
I like them .

Mangel were grown around here until the nineties

 

[Netherfield]

We had one of these down the yard, I could just about get it spinning, brother would throw a few mangolds in the top, invaribly there would be a stone or two lodged in the roots somewhere and it would suddenly stop and try to pull your arms off.

 

[som farmer]

We had one of these down the yard, I could just about get it spinning, brother would throw a few mangolds in the top, invaribly there would be a stone or two lodged in the roots somewhere and it would suddenly stop and try to pull your arms off.

we had one of them, bolted to the floor in a loft, that was then used for deep litter hens, dad was always saying it had found a productive use at last, as he picked up the eggs laid inside it !

 

[ajcc]

I have a field of Feldherr, currently being strip grazed by 80 beef cattle. Also hand pull a ton each day to feed to few housed animals and feed out whole through a kvernland silochop (without the pto running) to some sheep.
If it ain’t broke why fix it??

 

[Bury the Trash]

Anyway, Where did the word Wurzel come from? Thats what I would like to know, from the lad up the road with it as a nickname ( cant remember hes real name but I think he picked it up because hes a bit scruffy ..) ...to the band started Adge Cultler ..

 

[Wombat]

I thought (maybe wrongly) mangolds couldn’t stand being mechanically harvested or ground frosts

Which made them a pretty useless crop

 

[Holsteinfriesian90]

Any of you use to grow flat poll cabbages? There was a chap that would bring some into the local fatstock show. They looked huge.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Any of you use to grow flat poll cabbages? There was a chap that would bring some into the local fatstock show. They looked huge.

Yeah they used to grow them around here to feed to the cows. Cut and carried.

 

[DrWazzock]

We always grew mangolds in the corners of the beet field. Hand lifted before the beet or the frost got them. Tops off with a machete. Pied them down against a straw stack. All winter putting then through the root cutter taking three scuttles worth up to the ewes into the troughs on top of the cake. You can soon get busy. We had a cat who would ride on the transport box up the field looking for voles everyday. The only cat we ever called shep.

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

Yeah they used to grow them around here to feed to the cows. Cut and carried.

And Suffolk Sheep!!

 

[Bury the Trash]

All wind and pi ss

Mangel word origin meaning.... 'lack of' or 'deffiecient' in German .

 

[DrWazzock]

The sort of thing you used to grow when you had 8 people working 200 acres

 

[Kiss]

I have a field of Feldherr, currently being strip grazed by 80 beef cattle. Also hand pull a ton each day to feed to few housed animals and feed out whole through a kvernland silochop (without the pto running) to some sheep.
If it ain’t broke why fix it??

Surely it’s cheaper just to buy it delivered in that pick it by hand

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Any of you use to grow flat poll cabbages? There was a chap that would bring some into the local fatstock show. They looked huge.

We used to grow a lot of cow cabbage