Old farming men.

[Greythundercloudys]

There is an old manwho stays in the village, he is 86 years old, he is the last old gentleman who can still tell you story's of farming and life from the forties, one story is a twenty acre field that was on a farm belonging to three brothers, one was a bit simple and one had his legs blown off in the war,but he was the boss. He said that this field used to grow timothy hay the height of the tractor wheel.in the fifties. Now that field is 100percent rushes. Those old farmers levied in a house with no power until the last one died in 1983, l can remember the last two. The farm was called greyrigg. Is there any old men with good old stories out there still alive? I hope so.

 

[TripleSix]

FIL is only 65.
He has many stories.

Still speaks with pride the day he was presented with a brand new Ford 4000 and plough to use at work.

 

[yellow belly]

Farmer neibour tells of when it snowed in 1947 drilled a field in early February and could not drill the next field till end of April because the snow was so deep
A farm worker and him carried 2 bags of oats to the next village where they were lambing took all day as the snow was above the hedges

 

[Nearly]

Go and listen to these older folks. Take your phone out and set it to record their memories. I started recording dad far too late.

 

[chaffcutter]

Is @Owd Fred still around, there are lots of stories from him on here, I’ll see if I can find the thread

My lifetime runs from earliest memories of horses, scything wheat cutting around fields for the binder to run round and so on up to date but Fred had the knack of making it interesting!

 

[Bury the Trash]

https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/a-blast-from-the-past.109078/

 

[DeeGee]

Is @Owd Fred still around, there are lots of stories from him on here, I’ll see if I can find the thread

My lifetime runs from earliest memories of horses, scything wheat cutting around fields for the binder to run round and so on up to date but Fred had the knack of making it interesting!

Everyone’s memories of farming can be interesting. Sometimes it is best told just as it was rather than always trying to make it read like a book.

Just put some of your memories on here for people to enjoy and learn from and don’t worry about it maybe not being in the style of other people’s stories: everyone has their own way of telling their stories.

 

[DeeGee]

Is @Owd Fred still around, there are lots of stories from him on here, I’ll see if I can find the thread

My lifetime runs from earliest memories of horses, scything wheat cutting around fields for the binder to run round and so on up to date but Fred had the knack of making it interesting!

There are not many left now that worked with horses or scythes!
I just remember a threshing box working, but my childhood was the era of Massey Harris bagger combines, fingerbar mowers, milking in shippons with bucket units and so on etc.

I suppose to younger members even these memories may be of some interest: but those like you who can remember much earlier times are a valuable but also a disappearing asset. Time to get your memories recorded for posterity!

 

[beltbreaker]

Our old tractor man worked for us for 50 years then 10 part time at harvest and in the garden, He was evacuated in 1943 when the farm and most of the surrounding area was requisitioned for D Day landing practice. They had to be finished harvest, grain thrashed, tatties lifted dressed and sold, animals sold houses emptied all by mid November and back in to fields April 44, fields ploughed and sown, tatties planted. He was sent to the Black Isle where he was supposed to go to school...

Another old boy is in his mid 90's he started here on the horses in the 30's he can name all 8 pairs plus the shepherds horse and the spare. Started as an orroman but was put on as No.3 ploughman. I think he left to go next door to drive a tractor where he worked for 50 years as main ploughman. He was out round the plots last year when we held the local ploughing match.

I often think I should record their stories as they are the last of a dying breed, These guys worked for a living 2 1/4 cwt wheat bags, 1cwt tattie bags loose triple super phosphate or worse hot lime, Dieldrin etc etc. No cab breathing TVO fumes or walking along one foot in the furrow behind the horse.... Happydays???

Cheers BB

 

[RushesToo]

@beltbreaker

often think I should record their stories as they are the last of a dying breed, These guys worked for a living 2 1/4 cwt wheat bags, 1cwt tattie bags loose triple super phosphate or worse hot lime, Dieldrin etc etc. No cab breathing TVO fumes or walking along one foot in the furrow behind the horse....

Please do, I can't think of a reason why not or who could not appreciate them.

BTW what is an "orroman"

 

[Old Boar]

Nearly every farm had a cow or two, usually hand milked for the house. Those who milked for a living had up to 30 cows, all milked where they stood with a pipeline running the length of the shed. This was the general set up. You would think there would be lots of photos on the net of these barns, but if you look for them, all you get is holiday cottages. The memory of the smell of the milk, warm cow, dung and cake in these barns will stay with me forever, and with the generation who milked like this. A smell lost to history.

 

[AJR75]

One of the biggest things about this time and for me personally, is the lack of photos- those memories will stay forever, but you cannot beat a visual reminder- new Ford 5000, shorthorn herd in its prime, everything meticulously maintained etc
(for Me this was early eighties growing up on a large private self contained estate now run by the national trust so really all relatively recent). We take for granted now our camera phones but perhaps we should be recording and more importantly saving today’s images for people to look back on in 10, 20, 30 +++ years time when they’re having similar conversations?

 

[Red Fred]

We used to have an old nanny who took care of us when we were little- she was the wife of an old chap who worked here back in the great war and he used to tell us about the farm in those days. He said the meadows were so wet then that a horse got stuck in a bog and they couldn't get it out so they just buried it where it stood. Nowadays I drive over the spot on the tractor.
He said that the family who lived here were slightly eccentric and when the first hydro-electric turbine was put in the river to give the High street electric light, the farmer went and attacked the machinery with an axe as he thought it was the devil's work.
Grandad ran away to Canada about 1908 and said the farm there was so big he used to plough one furrow up in the forenoon and one back in the afternoon. His mules were Nick, Bright, Buck and Barney. Grandad used to tell us about the parade that was held in the Market Place when the boys came back from the South African War, and he could sing us all the old songs of the time such as The Absent Minded Beggar.

 

[DrWazzock]

Our old neighbour who sadly passed way a few years ago remembers "steering" a cultivator that was pulled by wire rope between two traction engines. He sat on a seat on the drag and many times he was catapulted off the seat as the drag hit a stone, the wire rope stretched then the drag leapt forward. He said a lot of those jobs looked fine from a distance but were murder at the time.

He lived till he was in his late nineties though nobody really knew his true age. He seemed to survive on rum, tobacco and meals cooked by his neighbour's wife. He could see the stars as he laid in bed as the roof was partly off his house, which was on a 5 acre rented plot surrounded by nettlebeds and a few pigs and chickens. He had a small flock of sheep which seemed to spend more and more time in with our flock as the years went by. The taxman kept threatening to sell him up and he said he could come and sell him up any day if he could find anything worth selling. He would buy a van and tax it the day before the MOT expired then run it a year. He was the supplier of bantams for his neighbour's. I remember going to him for a bantam hen and chicks and he just went out the back threw some bread down and the bantam hen and her brood came running out and we collected them up. Everything was free range. At one time he scythed the churchyard to provide grass for his milk cow.

He also made a living by shearing sheep (he used to row a boat over to Reeds Island to shear a flock there) and by netting rabbits at night and he recalled that during one such nighttime excursion during the war his dog brought him the hand of an airman whose plane hadn't quite made it home.

He'd seen a lot and always had a story to tell. My great great great aunt (who he knew as "old four eyes") taught him at the village school and recalled he was the brightest lad in the class but wouldn't continue with his education.

We don't seem to have "characters" anymore.

 

[crazy_bull]

Nearly every farm had a cow or two, usually hand milked for the house. Those who milked for a living had up to 30 cows, all milked where they stood with a pipeline running the length of the shed. This was the general set up. You would think there would be lots of photos on the net of these barns, but if you look for them, all you get is holiday cottages. The memory of the smell of the milk, warm cow, dung and cake in these barns will stay with me forever, and with the generation who milked like this. A smell lost to history.

I have one such shed, lines still in place, will photograph when I get a moment, won't be the same as seeing it in 'action' though

C B

 

[Kidds]

I have one such shed, lines still in place, will photograph when I get a moment, won't be the same as seeing it in 'action' though

C B

Most of mine are like that. No cows though.
Some still have the chains.

 

[Red Fred]

I still have a range of sheds like that with the cows' names still written on the walls where they stood. The last milking was back around 1969 but there are still some pots of udder cream up in the rafters where they were left. I have brought the Lister D engine home to get it going again, and it was the original 1947 that powered the first milking pump after they were hand milked and before they put the electric up the main road.

 

[JWL]

I've worked with a few old boys in my life and will allways regret not being able to record their memories. An old shepherd where I lived in Warwickshire had worked on farms near to Biggin Hill during WW2 and would tell of the vapour trails of the aircraft all over the sky during the Battle of Britain. The parachutes of airmen escaping the shot up aircraft, the ones that opened and finding what was left of those that were less fortunate. He had a story of him and a group of farmworkers spying what looked like an airman crouched down in a field of kale, the chap didn't move as they called out to challenge him and when they marched forward with their pitchforks etc they found a German who's chute hadn't opened and had landed feet first. His femurs had popped out of his shoulders and were level with his ears.
On an estate I worked on as a student on of the tractor drivers retired, he had started on the estate as a boy and finished in the same employ, the only time he worked "away" from the estatewas when the Ministry requisitioned him to drive a tractor and water bowser when they built the aerodrome in the war. Technically he hadn't left the estate as the airfield was mainly on estate ground.
There was another old shepherd who would recount stories of being in the Home Guard around Edgehill on the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire border. Whilst he had a wicked sense of humour and could keep everyone in stiches all day when he spoke about patrolling the battleground around CAD Kineton he was different. There were allways stories that you could hear the sounds of the 1642 battle on the night of the 23 October, headless horseman were "seen". I was generally too far gone when waiting in the Castle for the phenomenom. I do believe he saw something and it stuck in his memory.
As you get older you realise what you missed by not listening to your elders, not only for their advice but for their memories as well.

 

[DeeGee]

I've worked with a few old boys in my life and will allways regret not being able to record their memories. An old shepherd where I lived in Warwickshire had worked on farms near to Biggin Hill during WW2 and would tell of the vapour trails of the aircraft all over the sky during the Battle of Britain. The parachutes of airmen escaping the shot up aircraft, the ones that opened and finding what was left of those that were less fortunate. He had a story of him and a group of farmworkers spying what looked like an airman crouched down in a field of kale, the chap didn't move as they called out to challenge him and when they marched forward with their pitchforks etc they found a German who's chute hadn't opened and had landed feet first. His femurs had popped out of his shoulders and were level with his ears.
On an estate I worked on as a student on of the tractor drivers retired, he had started on the estate as a boy and finished in the same employ, the only time he worked "away" from the estatewas when the Ministry requisitioned him to drive a tractor and water bowser when they built the aerodrome in the war. Technically he hadn't left the estate as the airfield was mainly on estate ground.
There was another old shepherd who would recount stories of being in the Home Guard around Edgehill on the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire border. Whilst he had a wicked sense of humour and could keep everyone in stiches all day when he spoke about patrolling the battleground around CAD Kineton he was different. There were allways stories that you could hear the sounds of the 1642 battle on the night of the 23 October, headless horseman were "seen". I was generally too far gone when waiting in the Castle for the phenomenom. I do believe he saw something and it stuck in his memory.
As you get older you realise what you missed by not listening to your elders, not only for their advice but for their memories as well.

 

[DeeGee]

But you still remember it and can relate these stories, which is the most important thing.