by A G Street
I don’t think my father can have been an average type of tenant farmer, or perhaps he worked it out on the theory that ‘one doesn’t keep a dog and do the barking oneself’. What I mean is that he didn’t get up at an unearthly hour every morning. But I did. I was his dog. But even so he didn’t forget to bark when occasion required it. When any of his neighbours chaffed him about lying in bed, he would retort that when he was up he was awake. He would get up early for anything definite: to go cub-hunting, shooting, to a fair, at harvest time, or other important occasions, and lastly, when none of us expected him to do so. I realize now that in this last lay the secret of his success. This, of course, is rank heresy according to accepted agricultural standards, both ancient and modern, but I submit that no text-book on farming should omit its possibilities.
I had been to an agricultural school, where we were taught that unremitting personal attention to detail, from early morn to dewy eve and after, was the first essential to successful farming. It was a bit of a shock, therefore, to come in about 9 a.m. to report, and to find the successful farmer in bed. I have inherited his liking for bed, but not, unfortunately, his faculty for making money out of farming.
In those early days my chief duty was that early morning round of inspection with its ensuing detailed report to my father. Afterwards the ‘organizer’, as one or two of his old and trusted hands called him behind his back, took charge of affairs, and things happened; chiefly because they were necessary, and sometimes, I think now, for moral effect.
The usual procedure was for me to meet the foreman at 6.30 a.m. We studied the weather, and planned the work for the horse teams. When I say we, in reality he did most of the studying and all the planning. After I had been home a few months I began to make tentative suggestions, which were never approved. Probably they were mostly wrong ones, but anyway, is a man of sixty who started work on a farm at ten years of age going to listen to a young whippersnapper of seventeen, fresh from an agricultural school? I ask you? Mind you, he was very nice about it. He always treated me with a subtle deference as the young guvnor, especially in front of the other men, but all the time I knew, and so did he.
The carters came to harness their horses at a quarter to seven, and, having given them their orders, we were ready to detail the six day labourers to various jobs at seven o’clock. The foreman had absolute authority over the carters and labourers, but the head dairyman and head shepherd were in a class apart; they had charge of their respective departments, and the men employed under them.
My next job was to visit the sheepfold, and find out if all was well. I feel that in writing this next sentence I am giving away another bit of invaluable information which the student of farming will never find in any text-book. ‘Shepherding qualifications being almost equal, choose a cheerful shepherd.’ There are so many vicissitudes which can happen to a Hampshire Down sheep, from the cradle to the grave, so to speak—I should have written table instead of grave—that a cheerful shepherd is the only type possible to overcome them. I have known many shepherds, and say with authority that the mournful ones are beaten from the start.
From the sheep I would go to where the horses were at work to see if everything was working according to plan, then back to the farm buildings to have a word with the head dairyman, and finally in to breakfast, usually a substantial meal.
Sometimes my father received my report at breakfast, and sometimes, as I have said, in his bedroom. This done, he rapidly decided his plan of campaign for the day. He was a bit crippled with rheumatism even in those days, and used to journey about the farm in a governess cart. The pony, Tommy, had a mouth like iron, an insatiable appetite, and the happy knack of trotting at a slower speed than he walked. Early in their acquaintance Tommy had discovered that as long as he trotted my father was content, and he had developed this slow trot to a fine pitch of perfection. On most mornings I would be instructed to tell the groom-gardener to bring the trap round at ten o’clock; there was always somebody to tell in those days.
The farming was on a settled definite system, the result of centuries of experience. The arable land was divided into four fields of one hundred acres each, and was cropped as follows:
First year. Winter-sown corn, either wheat or winter oats.
Second year. Half in clover for hay, and the other half into rye, winter barley, and vetches for spring sheep keep, followed by swedes and kale for winter feeding. The clover was alternated on to the other half every four years, as clover will only grow successfully in this district once in eight years.
Fourth year. Summer roots, usually rape and turnips.
This rotation was as unalterable as the law of the Medes and Persians. One always knew what crop a particular field would be growing two or three years ahead, and worked to that end. Any slight variation was considered a sin, and, like sin, it always left its mark. For instance, if one were tempted—I use the words advisedly —to seed a piece of vetches or clover, the extra robbing of the ground showed in the ensuing wheat crop. It mattered not a whit that the produce of this immoral seeding might bring in more money than a good crop of wheat. One didn’t farm for cash profits, but did one’s duty by the land.
This was one of the chief reasons for the inherent conservatism and mistrust of new things so prevalent at that date amongst the agricultural fraternity, both masters and men. If any new method were tried, one didn’t look for its advantages, one ignored them, but one missed no opportunity to point out its defects. My father was quite keen on new things, partly, I think, because the foreman was always dead against them. That worthy would usually finish up the argument with ‘Doan’t ’ee do it, zur. ’Tis wrong.’ Between them they adopted new things rather quicker than the average.
This same four-course rotation is still practised religiously here and there in Wiltshire and the south of England to-day, chiefly by men who have plenty of money. And they, good farmers all, are watching their capital shrink steadily, year after year, and they do so in a hurt and bewildered frame of mind. They are farming honestly and well, and losing five pounds per acre on every acre of corn they grow. They carry on year after year in the hope that the turn of the tide will come, but one by one they are forced either to drop out of farming altogether, or to adopt other methods.
Under the rotation mentioned it is easy to see that half the arable land was put into corn each year, and the other half devoted to growing feed for the flock, whose continuous and regular folding over the land made the corn growing possible. It always seemed to me that the farm was run entirely for the sheep, and most of the men were jealous of the shepherd’s consequent importance. One of my father’s labourers frankly hated sheep. ‘All we do do,’ he would say to me, ‘is run about and sweat after they blasted sheep. We be either lambing ’em, runnin’ ’em, marken ’em, shearing ’em, dipping ’em, or some other foolishness. And they can have all the grub we do grow, and God knows how much it do cost the Guvnor fer cake.’
I do not think we were very special with sheep; only about average. It was a pedigree Hampshire Down Flock, but we never went in for cups and shows. From my own experience I have come to the conclusion that there were two ways of running a Hampshire flock successfully in those days. One was to give them whatever quantity of cake they would eat, and to consider them and to worry over them far more than one did over one’s own children. The other was to do them very badly, avoiding prosecution by the R.S.P.C.A. by the smallest possible margin. The middle course, which my father adopted, did not pay much, if at all.
But sheep are annoying things, and so are a good many shepherds. During a barren late spring, when you were short of grub, most shepherds would delight in seeing how fast they could gallop over it, pitching out larger and larger folds each day, and never grumbling about the extra work. Given a plenteous season, when you wanted the keep cleared faster before it spoiled, the shepherds would feed it in a niggardly fashion. Any suggestion as to speeding up was greeted with the definite remark: ‘No, zur, t’wun�
��t do.’ From this there was no appeal. The shepherd’s word was law. The rest of us just grumbled and carried on.
I don’t know whether some shepherds will prosecute me for libel over this, but as a general rule, save for lambing, and other busy times, a shepherd reckoned to finish his actual laborious work by dinner time. After that he studied your sheep. I remember a shopkeeper in a neighbouring town, who retired from business at fifty, and took a farm in this district. Early in his rural career he went out one afternoon, and discovered his shepherd dozing under a bush on the down, with the flock grazing around him. ‘What in the world are you doing, shepherd?’ asked his employer. ‘Lookin’ atter your sheep,’ replied the shepherd.
‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well, but you mustn’t sit down. I can’t pay you to sleep. You must get up and cut thistles, chop down some of these bushes, or do something.’
‘Well, I bain’t gwaine to. I be studyin’ your interests, I tell ’ee, same as I allus have fer any maister.’
The farmer in question told my father about it afterwards. ‘When I think of how I used to run up and down behind my counter, it makes my blood boil,’ he said.
Both master and man were right in their judgment of the situation, and afterwards had a sound mutual respect for each other. But shepherds were always studying their sheep, and never seemed to tire of it. It always used to amaze me at our harvest suppers, where we could have a choice of beef, mutton, or ham, that our shepherd always chose mutton in large and repeated helpings. Whether he did so with the idea of supporting his own industry, or in order to get his own back on one of the animals who ruled his whole life, I do not know, but it was always mutton for him.
This autocracy of shepherds will sound almost unbelievable to townsfolk, I expect, but it was a very real thing in those days. Another instance of it comes to my mind. One of the largest and most successful ram-breeders in this district discovered one season that he had a large rick of good hay untouched. He farmed near a racing stable, the owner of which offered him a fancy price for the rick. He sold it, and a few days afterwards mentioned the fact to his shepherd in conversation. The shepherd ruminated for a few moments in silence. ‘Oh, you’ve selled un, ’ave ’ee?’
‘Yes, what about it? We don’t want it.’
‘Not thease year, p’raps, but I reckons to be consulted about a thing like that. Still, ’tis yourn, to do as you likes with. But I shall leave.’
His master paid the buyer ten pounds to cry off the deal.
Usually the dairymen were of a different type from the other farm men. Producing milk twice daily, seven days a week, and railing the product daily savours more of a factory than a farm, and has its consequent effect on the men engaged in it. Even in those days they had a shrewd suspicion that the milk found the money which ran the whole farm, and their scorn of sheep and shepherds was very bitter. And they ran their job without outside assistance. Give them cattle and food, and they would do the rest, literally producing the goods.
I do not think that my father knew how many cows he had, to one or two, and am certain that he had no intimate knowledge as to their different milking qualities. The milk was sold on contract to London, with a minimum and maximum daily quantity. When the daily output went down dangerously near the minimum, or the cake supply was getting low, the head dairyman would come over to the house, the day before market, and ask to see my father. ‘I dunno whether you knows it or no, but we be gettin’ short o’ milk. Thee better get two or dree heifers in market.’ Or possibly: ‘We be nearly out o’ cake, and you’d better get the next lot kibbled, as we be main busy just now.’
This news was like the sight of hounds to an old hunter, and my father would set off for market next day, thirsting for the fray of buying and selling, and taking me with him for educational purposes in this most difficult art.
The cows were kept in two lots. One was the main milking herd, and the other, a smaller lot, consisted of the dry cows waiting to calve and the cows nearly dry. This latter herd was in charge of a dear old dairyman, who, thank heaven, is still with me as I write. He and his wife ran this herd between them, and the entire management was in his hands. My father on his rounds in the trap would drive into the yard at these buildings, and shout, and if this was not successful, bellow: ‘Strong?’ From the depths of the building would come ‘Yes, zur.’ Another hail: ‘All right, Strong?’ Again would come the ‘Yes, zur.’ This intricate business being concluded, my father would drive away, having satisfactorily seen to that dairy for the day.
I am afraid all this will be rather apt to give the impression that my father was a bad farmer, and in the hands of his men. He may have been, but they never knew. They respected him and loved him, and he respected and relied on them. But this is the acid test. His methods paid, and paid well. When I think of the worries of farming now as compared with those simple days, I have a great admiration for that period and the men engaged in farming at that time. With all the rationing, recording, and worrying over each individual cow that I have done since: with all the scientific methods of farming in all its branches that I have tried; and with all the work and intense personal attention to detail that I have put into every department of my farming, I am forced to admit that my father was a much better farmer than I. He made it pay, and I have lost more money than I care to think about.
CHAPTER III
The point I would again stress about this type of pre-war farming is that one didn’t consider whether the crop one was sowing would pay a profit over the cost of production or not. That never entered anyone’s head. In good seasons farmers did pretty well, and in bad ones, presumably not quite so well. Granted, there were occasional instances of farmers going bankrupt, but these rare cases could always be traced definitely to drink, gambling, or some other vice or extravagance causing neglect of the farm by the master. If one attended to one’s business decently, one got along all right. Some did better than others, but all got along all right.
The fact was that the four-course system allied to a Hampshire Down flock paid pretty well in those days, and was the accepted practice of the district. Farms were laid out for it, and let on the understanding that the customary rotation would be followed. And once you were fairly into that system, it swept you with it, round and round, year after year, like a cog in a machine, whether you liked it or not.
Let us take the start of the farming year at Michaelmas. The cleared stubble of the previous spring corn that was not sown to clover had to be ploughed and sown to rye, winter barley, and vetches, to provide sheep keep for the following May, June and July. It was no good wondering whether this would pay. You had four hundred ewes, which would, God willing, produce some four hundred lambs in January, and require food in May, June and July. In October, these ewes would be folding off rape and turnips, and behind them would come your ploughs and harrows, sowing this land to wheat. But would wheat pay? What were the prospects of the world’s next harvest? Don’t be silly! This land was due to come into wheat, and wheat must be in by the end of November if possible, so you didn’t worry over abstruse problems, but got down to the job.
This done, the wheat stubble was ploughed up by Christmas, cross-ploughed in January, and sown to barley and oats in February and March. By this time your flock would have lambed, and be folding off swedes and kale. You have only got enough keep sown to keep them until the end of July, the rye, etc., which you put in in October. They will want rape and turnips from then onwards, so your horses must follow them in April, as they feed the swedes and kale, and sow rape and turnips.
But what about next winter? You will require swedes and kale for the flock. So your ploughs and harrows must follow them in May, June and July, as they feed the rye, winter barley, and vetches, and sow swedes and kale for next winter.
And so it went on, year after year, one continual hopeless striving to feed the flock. Sheep! Sheep! It was always the sheep. Your life was ruled by them, the whole farm revolved round them, and, in my case, my father�
�s temper varied with the state of the flock’s well-being. They were a kind of Moloch, to which we were all sacrificed.
The old labourer referred to in the preceding chapter was quite right in saying that all we did was to wait upon their needs. He used to vent his hatred on them, when they were dipped. He would stand at the side of the swimming bath filled with Cooper’s Dip, armed with a long pole with a cross piece at the end, and push them under the evil-smelling liquid with great glee.
We got a little respite from this eternal striving to satisfy the sheep in August and September, when the whole farm concentrated on the harvest. Sometimes even the shepherd would help in the evenings in a condescending sort of way, as one conferring a favour. I generally used to take my dinner with me during harvest. Field work started at 6 a.m. and continued till 8 p.m., and it was much nicer to eat bread and cheese and cold bread pudding in the field, than to waste the dinner hour in the journey home and back.
Many people think that the agricultural labourer of those days was slow in his movements. This is incorrect. He looked slow, I grant you, but the experience of countless ages had discovered the simplest and easiest way of doing his manifold laborious tasks, and years of practice had transformed his gnarled and clumsy hands into extraordinarily deft and dexterous instruments. Also, he struck a gait at any job which he could keep up from daylight to dark, day after day. Any attempt to hurry him was disastrous. He considered it to be a slight on him, and that you didn’t realize that he always gave of his best.
When we were carrying corn the number of pitchers in the field loading the wagons, and the number of men at the rick emptying them, had to be regulated to a nicety to keep the wagons going backwards and forwards steadily without a hitch. That is where Tommy and the trap came in. Tommy would be required earlier during the harvest; as a matter of fact he stayed harnessed to the trap all day until knock-off time. The wagons were led from the field to the rick and back by small boys. One of my father’s dictums was that two boys together did half as much as one boy by himself, and that three boys did nothing at all. Let two of the boys stop for a minute or two as they passed, one with a full wagon and the other with an empty one, and the whole business of carrying was disorganized. Then, from some point of vantage, Tommy and the trap descended on them like the wrath of God. On these urgent occasions Thomas moved quite smartly.
