War Time Farm.

[dm434]

so many memories are flooding back now . im coming up 42 now n some of those things Tim happened when i was little. the drinkin water was staight from a spring via an open ditch- no treatment in it either. on a wet day it could resembled the colour of the land!

milk was straight from the house cow , thick with cream

my neigbouring farmer , old george sparke wouldnt eat bread or cheese till it blue .i remember the lads eating thier bait in the feed house that the rats occupied just wiping thier dirty hands on thier dirty trousers before holding a sandwich

[powerrabbit]

My Father told me years ago that back in the War the local tennant farmers would have the local rabbit trapper in and he would walk around the farm looking at the burrows in the hedges and the rabbit runs or the amount of cerials around the headlands that had been nibbled and estimate how many rabbits were in residence, the trapper would then give the farmer a price to catch the rabbits and over the year, the price that the trapper gave the farmer paid the farmers rent. Rabbits were pretty thick back then and a valuable commodity, the majority of the rabbits my Father caught were put in a wicker basket, hamper type container, taken to the little railway branch line and sent to a butcher in Exeter, they were worth 6d each, that's 5p in todays money. The surplus eggs went the same way for 6 shillings a dozen, (60p) broiler chickens, oven ready, were 12 shillings each. They managed to make quite a decent living.

[Leakeyvale]

Umm Tm... Remember on "decimal day" the price of bread (among other commodities) rocketted by 240%. it was 10d in the morning and 10p in the afternoon, I spent all that day converting a set of accounts from £sd to decimal. (it balanced to the half penny)

12p = 1 shilling

20 shillings = £1

therefore the decimal values:-

1 shilling = 5p

6d = 2.5p

6 shillings = 30p

The rabbits sound silly cheap but 6d could buy quite a lot. In the fifties 6p would buy a 1/4lb of the more expensive sweets (aproxx 100 grammes) and my mother would pay less than £5.00 for a weeks worth of food for 3 adults and two growing children. What is more the table never went short. Rabbit was a regular source of meat, beef was expensive, lamb got cheaper when Britain started importing from New Zealan. Chicken for roasting was horrendously expensive when they were available (not very often), old layers were cheaper but tough. Fortunately my grandfather kept kept chickens so we had a supply of those. Eggs too.

We did not starve and were extremely healthy. As already said obesity was unheard of.

[powerrabbit]

Isn't it rather strange that in the farming comunity that the older generation that went through these times always spoke of them being good times, they never really mentioned the negatives such as rationing, yes they did suffer rationing as all did, petrol was rationed I know but most other things seemed to be quite plentiful, their needs were very little as food was the priority and everything else came second. My Father was a jobbing farm labourer and worked on several farms within either walking or cycling distance but spent most of this time on one farm, my Grandparents, where of course, although he knew her from a very small child as they went to school together, he ended up marrying my Mother. Father always said that he wanted to join the Navy and although he passed his medical 'A1', farming being a 'reserved occupation' they, the Ministry of War, would not let him go, his next up elder brother was already in the Regular Army and fighting in Tobruk, that's another very long and interesting story in itself. Fathers wages at that time was 10 shillings a week and out of those wages he had to pay his own lodge, clothing and boots, he later joined the Home Guard, another interesting story with lots of tales that could be told. On my Grandparents farm, which was about 80 acres, they kept a large flock of sheep, a couple of milking cows, a few pigs and a few beef cattle, my Grandmother used to rear about 50 turlkeys every year for the Christmas local trade and also kept laying hens, ducks and geese. The family consisted of my Mother, her Brother and parents, plus my Father was there from very early mornings to whatever time he went home again and in certain times of the year that might not be until 2am the next morning. Not only did my Grandmother feed all but also any casual workers that came at harvest and potato picking time, she also had a whole family of refugees living at the farm from London, mother and four children from a baby in arms to a 9 year old, 3 girls and the boy. Four of the farms in the parrish plus another in one of the neighbouring parrishes were all farmed by our family relations, cousins, uncles and great uncles, when they were harvesting they would all help each other and when they were slaughtering animals they would do the same, one would kill a bullock one month, one would kill a couple of pigs a month or two later, another would be killing a few sheep later on and so-on, all the 'family' would take part and the meat shared out between them so one would go home with some beef, one some pork, another with mutton etc, any surplus would be sold (legitimateley, not on the 'black market', I think the best cuts and joints would be sold and the lesser less valuable joints and most of the offal they would consume themselves. The story continues.......................

Going back to the programme, which was repeated last night, the chap that was 'playing the part' of the Civil Defence officer was very interesting, this of course in the early years of WW11 was the fore-runner of the Home Guard. Funny coincedence that I went to the local big boot sale early this morning and bought a period Civil Defence Corps pin badge for a mere £2.

[BC]

Talking of eggs and chickens I remember my dad saying my grandad ( my mums dad) told him he could make more money from his free range eggs and chickens than he could from raising calves to fat cattle. It was only a farm with around 120 acres but it supported my grandfather and grandmother and three of my uncles working on that farm. Each tended to do their own jobs.......Bill the eldest was the tractor man and the main tractor was their 1957 Nuffield Universal DM4 which I now have although they did also have a MF 35 3 cylinder with Duncan Cab and a grey Ferguson TEF20 which came with front loader but was removed on the day it was delivered. I remember since as a kid the Neil Ross lorry driver stopped at where I stayed in Newmachar and asked the way to Drumligair. I was packed away in the lorry to show the way. Number two uncle Sandy still alive at 87 was the stockman and prior to that the horseman...he was best kept to that since he was dangerous on a tractor. Uncle number three was Gordon and he was "henner" as the neighbour's called him and most of hos work was with the hens and cleaning eggs etc.

To back up my story chicken and or hens and eggs paid well I remember hearing a story of how a friend of my granddad found him walking in Golden or Bon Accord Square one Friday afternoon after the Mart at Kitty Brewster in Aberdeen. The friend was amazed to see "Auld Wullie" was walking and he did not have his car which was a 1948 Triumph Renown 1800cc (|Razor Egde) CRS 650 with suicide doors. My grandad retorted he was off to see his accountant and the accountant did not know about the car. The car wasn't in the business but granddad had bought it for £ 1,000 cash around 1950 when the car was nearly new.Before starting farming my grandad who came from Cruden Bay worked in the Post Office and also did a bit of golf caddying for extra money in his leisure time. £ 1,000 in cash is not much this day and age but I wonder what the equivalent of £ 1,000 in 1950 be today.... .... too good a question for me being "off duty" on a sunny Sunday afternoon ;D

The three brothers decided in the late 1970's a farm of that size was not big enough to keep the three families going and sadly in 1978 they decided to stop earning their living from farming and sold up....on a positive note that was when my dad bought the Nuffield for £ 150 for me instead of the Yamaha 50cc moped I wanted...a good choice I now think.

Edited September 9, 2012 by BC

[powerrabbit]

In my village Bill in 1950 you could buy a 3 bedroom house for just ove £500.

[Leakeyvale]

£600 would have bought a fine house in a select area of outer London - Dulwich. Oh how times have changed!

[david_scrivener]

Talking of cars, and the immediate post-war period, I remember my (late) dad telling me about one of his earliest deals as a car trader & repairer. Just after the war he went to an auction of ex-military vehicles. He noticed some former staff cars, and also noticed that the camouflage paint came off very easily when he tried a bit with his fingernail, revealing excellent shiny black paint underneath. I forget how many of them he said he bought, but all they needed was a going over with a pressure hose, and they were 'ready to go', and very quickly sold, back in their former shiny black glory.

He had a very easy decade or so making money in the car trade. Basically, if it worked, he could sell it.

During the war, because he didn't want to be shot at, or sent to the other side of the world, he volunteered to be a 'Bevan Boy', in his case in an iron ore mine. he was near enough to home to be a bit of a 'spiv' on the side, so food rationing was something that happened to other people for him.

My mother (still very much alive, & all brain cells fully functioning) had a very different war (they hadn't met then). She left school fairly early in the war, and became a wages clerk at a local factory near Leighton Buzzard, Beds. When she became 18 in 1943 she, like every clerical worker in the area, had to do certain 'aptitude tests' for unspecified reasons. She passed the maths & problem solving parts well enough to be conscripted to Bletchley Park for the rest of the war. Her job was to convert incoming coded messages into bundles of punch cards for the Collosus computer to decode. As a lowley operative the only war secret she ever knew was the date of D Day about a week in advance. Everyone was told this, and instructed to look out for any unusual German activity which might suggest they had sussed it.

Edited September 9, 2012 by david_scrivener

[powerrabbit]

Unfortunateley now with the passage of time, the great majority of the generation that experienced these times are now no longer with us but there are those of us that have been told by our parents and grandparents of their experienses and life at the time which we should pass on to the next generation. For those that still have their relations that went through it all please try and get them to record their memories in some way and if they can provide photographs and written documentation of the time, put it all together and look after it. I feel that we should look after these memories and pass them on again if only to remind our successors in life of the vast and important contribution that our forebears made to our lives and really shaped the Country into what it is now, if they didn't do what they did, we would be in a very different place now. Our lives are shaped by our history and no-one should ever be allowed to forget that.

[Leakeyvale]

I agree wholeheartedly Tim. That is why I constructed my family history website as I had stories of my great-grandparents from my grandmother, my mother and her sisters. That website gets more than a few hits on a regular basis and stories of other members of the family came flooding in from all over the world from cousins I never knew I had! One result of the website was a video "Small World, Big Family" made by an independent film maker and now stored in the Winchester Family Archives for posterity; its even on YouTube!

Old photos need to have captions - who, when, where. Your treasure not only needs to be kept safe but passed on for future generations.

David, your stories definitely need to be written down.

[powerrabbit]

I have now only one relative alive that lived through the last War, he is my Uncle, Mothers Brother, who is now well in his 80's and his wife, I have all the information he has stored in his head but I've asked him to write it down as he has 3 sons, 4 grandchildren and up to now 1 great grandchild.

My late Fathers next up eldest Brother, as I mentioned before, was already in the Regular Army at the outbreak of War, Devonshire Regiment, Tank Corps. As I also mentioned, he spent part of the War fighting in North Africa and was taken prisoner at Tobruk by the Italians in 1941 and transported to a POW camp back in Italy where from one of the camps, he and others escaped and he, with two other POW's spent 3 years 'on the run' and re-captured 2 weeks before the end of the War in May 1945. I have a typed 18 page written account of this period in his life which makes very interesting reading and has never been published or made public. I reckon that when the 70th anniversary of the end of the last War comes around in 2015 there will be a demand for this type of material by local media, there usually is on these aniversaries. All part of the Family history.

[Leakeyvale]

That is how I started. My father was in the RAF as an aircraft technician. He ended up in North Africa, Sicily, Naples (he saw Vesuvius erupt from a ship in the bay). I discovered he was at Arnhem, Remagen and various other places Ending up in Berlin. He would never talk about his wartime exploits but handed in a commando knife to the police when there was an "amnesty" and various comments he made when watching war films sent me researching his wartime record. It turns out (from a cloth badge I discovered) that he was in No 1 Commando unit which moved ahead of the front line into Italy (among other places). His RAF record simply states "on seconded duty" from 1942 up to the end of the war. A member of No 2 Commando who helped me in my research said "You should be very proud of him", which I am.

These Commando units were the forerunner of the SAS and their members were drawn from the Navy, Army, Marines and RAF.

[powerrabbit]

A cousin of mine, one of my Fathers Sisters sons, has my Uncles Military records and his medals, he said a little while ago when we were talking at an Aunts funeral about it that he would let me have them to keep seeing that I had the rest of the family records and photos on my Fathers side of the family but I've not seen them yet but he's the sort of chap that won't forget, it will all turn up out of the blue one day.

[powerrabbit]

Just thought I would post up a big thank you to all of you that have given this topic a big 'thumbs up', it's really appreciated and pleasing to know that you all like what you're reading and replying to it. I know that we've been going slightly off tangent but then, what topic do we actually keep to the letter of the title to?, not many. I still think that all are still quite relavent though and without the drive to at least double home food production at that time, all aspects, not only farming, could have resulted in a very different outcome post 1945. After all, it is said that 'an Army marches on its stomach'. Let's sincereley hope that those sort of time will never ever return.

[dm434]

Tim, this has been one of best topics ever. im pleased you raised, and spoke passionatly about it

[powerrabbit]

Something else that may be of interest was the time in spring 1943 when the German bombers were targeting Plymouth one night some carried on to bomb Exeter. On this particular night one of the bombers got seperated from the rest and was being attact by a Spitfire. Where I'm located, if you draw a straight line from Plymouth to Exeter, I'm right on that line, anyway, the Spitfire started shooting up the bomber just before it reached the outskirts of our village and had to eject its load of bombs, this all being witnessed from the ground by my Mother, Father and the evacuee mother who at this precice time was walking the track from the village back to the farm and watched as events unfolded. The bomber released its load and burst into flames, the first bomb landed 1/2 a mile to the South West of the farm in some waste land right on top of a very large flat rock and exploded, the blast and shrapnel cutting down 3 small trees and a large mature Scots pine, the pine was cut through just as if you had swiped through it with a sharp knife, no-one knew this until the tree died and fell over because it remained upright. The next bomb dropped right beside my Mother, Father and evacuee only a matter of yards away from them, fortunateley, it dropped in the stream that was 6 feet lower than the track and exploded. My Father said that the next thing he was aware of was picking himself up off the ground covered in stones and earth from the blast right on the edge of the bomb crater that was 20 feet or more deep, my Mother and the evacuee were covered as well but fortunateley they all escaped completeley unscathed, dusted themselves off and walked the 1/2 mile back to the farm. The next morning the evacuee was missing her handbag so my Father went back to try and find it, he eventually did, it was jammed under a large rock. He opened it, as you would, to look inside and the lining of the bag was shredded but all the contents were there and still intact, even the mirror was still in one piece. Now, how lucky was that! One of the bombs dropped in the neighbouring parish, but would you believe it, right beside one of the cob barns on my Mothers cousins farm, this bomb split and opened up two walls of the barn but later filled and repaired with cement and concrete blocks, it remains like this to this day. The bomber came down 7 miles further on just outside Exeter.

[Leakeyvale]

It is amazing how many people had narrow escapes. Perhaps it was because they were in the open - perish the thought of what might have been the result if they had been inside the barn!

My Mother lived in Ringwood throughout the war and although the town did not get bombed the surrounding area did. She related seeing the sky turn orange when Portsmouth or Southampton were under fire and Matchams Common, just outside Rigwood was targeted with incendiaries as it had been mistaken for Fawley oil refinery. Fawley was spared that night.

Setting the wartime farm in Hampshire was not a random choice I suspect as the South coast was certainly vulnerable and with the ports of Portsmouth, Southampton and Plymouth was an obvious target. I am looking forward to the next episode

[Niels]

If I may disturb the old folk with their nice memories for a moment please . Watched the first episode and it is well done. As Sue said you have to take some 'poetry' in account but the Marshall and Roadless/Major do look very good I must say. Shame they didn't cut down on the p*ssing about with the mole drainer and just did some more discing and drilling footage. Also the bit where they were ploughing at night seemed a bit over the top to make it extra dramatic. Could clearly see the smoke machines and lights doing their work! As that seemed quite nice! Will be looking out for the next episode.

Meanwhile I also started watching Old Ponds Wartime Summer/Winter again. A lovely program as well which doesn't imply on being 100% accurate but does show how it was like and more machinery to watch.

[Leakeyvale]

If I may disturb the old folk with their nice memories for a moment please . Watched the first episode and it is well done. As Sue said you have to take some 'poetry' in account but the Marshall and Roadless/Major do look very good I must say. Shame they didn't cut down on the p*ssing about with the mole drainer and just did some more discing and drilling footage. Also the bit where they were ploughing at night seemed a bit over the top to make it extra dramatic. Could clearly see the smoke machines and lights doing their work! As that seemed quite nice! Will be looking out for the next episode.

Meanwhile I also started watching Old Ponds Wartime Summer/Winter again. A lovely program as well which doesn't imply on being 100% accurate but does show how it was like and more machinery to watch.

The business with the mole subsoiler was really to highlight the fact of "make do and mend". All metal available was taken for the war effort and factories producing non-essential items were turned over to producing armaments and their supplies were guaranteed. Most fabric went to make uniforms/tents/webbing etc for the services. Parks and houses with iron fences and gates lost them as they were taken away to be melted down and re-used and some "historic" houses had to fight for their period gates - most lost! Even today if you walk through parts of London (and pobably other towns or cities) you will see stubs in concrete where the railings were cut away.

It was certainly a period of austerity and you just had to make do with whatever you could find. I like Tim, was brought up with the mantra of "what is broken has to be repaired and if it cOldannot be repaired you make do with whatever replacement you can find." Even today I hate throwing things away because they may come in handy. It has been ingrained since childhood!

Old Ponds Wartime Summer/Winter? I have not heard of that - is it on the TV or what?

[powerrabbit]

Sue, you're quite correct on the message of the mole drainer scene and it was the same for other 'wearing' parts like plough shares, when they were almost worn out the blacksmith would forge weld exta bits of scrap iron on to them to build them up again. Some may think that plough shares being an essential requisite to the production of food would be readily available as they were needed in order to plough the land but farms were allocated an amount of shares depending on the acreage to be ploughed. As for the ploughing by night scene, that never took place here as you would not waste precious oil in lamps when you needed it in the buildings and domestic house, again fuel oil was allocated or rationed in the same way, this is why we have British summertime (BST) and GMT when the clocks are put forward and back, it all started during the War in order to give farmers an extra hour of daylight in the summer months for harvest, not a lot of people know that, in fact they did start by putting the clocks back 2 hours but it didn't work and daylight is still daylight no matter what the hands on the clock said and in the high summer it's getting pretty light at around 4am and, when we do have a decent summer, doesn't get really dark untill nearly 11pm and farmers normally worked in the fields by the length of the day and not by the time on the clock, they were 'up with the lark and to bed with the crows'.

[Leakeyvale]

Everything was rationed, as you say, especially fuel - petrol, paraffin and coal as well. Those people who owned cars (not many) were generally unable to use them because of lack of petrol. Anyone with a real need of a car (doctors etc) did get a special allowance but if the petrol station ran out you we stuck until supplies arrived. If you had an invalid in the house you could apply for extra coal for heating but generally fires were only lit of an evening and everyone just wore more clothes.

[Niels]

The business with the mole subsoiler was really to highlight the fact of "make do and mend". All metal available was taken for the war effort and factories producing non-essential items were turned over to producing armaments and their supplies were guaranteed. Most fabric went to make uniforms/tents/webbing etc for the services. Parks and houses with iron fences and gates lost them as they were taken away to be melted down and re-used and some "historic" houses had to fight for their period gates - most lost! Even today if you walk through parts of London (and pobably other towns or cities) you will see stubs in concrete where the railings were cut away.

It was certainly a period of austerity and you just had to make do with whatever you could find. I like Tim, was brought up with the mantra of "what is broken has to be repaired and if it cOldannot be repaired you make do with whatever replacement you can find." Even today I hate throwing things away because they may come in handy. It has been ingrained since childhood!

Old Ponds Wartime Summer/Winter? I have not heard of that - is it on the TV or what?

I can understand why they mucked about with the mole plough but any one with common sense could have seen it would never work? If they had called in a contractor with two steam engines and a cable operated mole plough it would have made a nice picture as well. Ah well, opinions vary and it has to be dramatic and poetic for tellie of course.

I have a great interest in the second world war and know all about the problems that occurred in the every day life. Of course over here it was not only shortage but also the Germans walking all over the place! My father always jokingly says he is a war child (he was born in 1957) as he was brought up in the same manner as you. Don't waste anything and don't do anything excessive. My grandmother (mothers mother) lived in Rotterdam and they got the full load when the city was bombed on May the 14th 1940, after which The Netherlands surrendered. Their house was luckily spared but many were not. They managed but it got really bad in the winter of 1944. They ate the neighbours cat (which were taken away by the Germans) and also tulip bulbs. My grandmother knew the feeling of being hungry all day, every day, and swore she would never do that to anyone. So her children and family have always been thoroughly fed! When my grandfather was called for work in Germany he actually did turn up and was put to work at a butchery (I believe near Bremen). The butcher was a real Nazi sympathiser and he hated it there. He ran away after a few months and slept in the shed of a nearby farm and, in turn, helped out on the farm. The farmer was a kind lad and he enjoyed his time. German police caught up with him soon and wanted to send him back to the butchers. However, the farmer told the police he couldn't be missed out on the farm (it must have been harvest time or something) and he was allowed to stay. After the war finished he walked!! back home. Some 400 kilometres or more. It took him nearly three weeks as all army vehicles were moving into Germany and not towards the coast. He still talks very little about the period and I only know this because my mum told me. What really bit him was that as soon as he got back he was enlisted into the Dutch army to fight into the Dutch Indies. The Dutch version of Vietnam that turned out into a drama.

My fathers parents had a relatively 'easy' life during the occupation years. My grandfather was a shoemaker and had a lot of work repairing German army boots. Often he was paid in food rather than money, which was far more valuable. My grandmother had six brothers. As she was the oldest of her family they lived together in their own home. Her brothers lived in Rotterdam and she took care of them when food really became scarce. In the end my grandfather was also told to work in Germany but he didn't and hid, meanwhile helping out with making illegal newspapers. Luckily he did write down all his memories, including those from the war, just before he died.

People in the UK led a tough life during the war, like everyone else. However, in the occupied country's it was even worse. Holland was still very much a farming community back then so people outside the large cities didn't knew a lot of hunger but those in the city certainly did!

And back on topic for Sue. You can find the Wartime dvd's from Old Pond here: https://www.oldpond.com/acatalog/wartime_winter_summer.html. They really are very good, also having many interviews in them with ex-land army girls, farmers etc..

[Leakeyvale]

Most interesting Neils. Thanks for the insight into how the occupied countries fared. Britain was prepared for invasion but being an island meant that any invasion had to cross the channel or the North Sea which was our salvation. The Channel Islands were not so fortunate and were the only part of Britain that was occupied, They did not have a good time either by accounts I have read and heard.

Thanks for the link - I will have a look.

[Leakeyvale]

I doubt if there were any contractors and secondly these farms were not much above subsistence level. Most of the small farmers often could not afford to employ labour (if any was available) and had to rely on family and the generosity of neighbours (usually for a meal and beer) to do a lot of the work. Paying another business to subsoil would have been out of the frame altogether. I think the farm in question is about 125 acres which is certainly not huge, and there were a lot of these small farms. Most of these were tenanted and not owned outright so rent of some sort had to be paid.

It was said at the beginning of the first episode that British farming was at a very depressed level and it was a government requirement to put an increased amount of land into growing food crops. Keeping animals for meat was not the best use of land and many livestock farmers had to give up their animals and plough the pasture for arable use. Farmers had to do their best with no subsidies and no grants available let alone machinery to work it. Even after the war many farms still relied on horses as tractors were expensive and hire purchase had not been "invented".

[powerrabbit]

The second episode of this series was on earlier, this week covering rationing, making silage, the black market and organising the production priorities on the farm by disposing of livestock in order to concentrate on food crops for human consumption. It was considered that livestock for meat was of less importance to the feeding of the Nation as the economics of having to keep them for so long before they could be eaten would be better served by getting rid of them in favour of crops that could be directly eaten by the human population as soon as they were fit to harvest instead of putting the crops through animals first. The sugar beet lifter was interesting but they had to work out how best to use it and get it to do what it was supposed to do. The milking cows were kept as were the egg producing chickens.