Frustration is...

[bigbear]

Having my lovely, orange Allis B out in the shed and having NO time to work on it! I bought it last summer, but every time I get near it, other things happen. I am thinking of calling this the Allis syndrome!

 

Having said that, I've now been asked to join a fellow enthusiast to work his meadow in 'the old-fashioned way'. He has a David Brown and a trailer, I am looking for a side cutter... Not quite a match made in heaven, as my wife will tell you!

 

Question: Any suggestions as to where I can get accurate info on 'The Old Fashioned Way", please? I grew up on a farm in the 1950's and 60's, but every effort was made to be 'modern' and old fashioned was never mentioned...

[powerrabbit]

I think that John would depend on your age as to what your concept of 'the old fashioned way' would be. Some would see it as when cars ran on cross-ply tyres or when grass was cut for hay with a mower that was belt driven. In this context, the old fashioned way to me means hitching up the horse to the old Bamford wheel driven finger mower, cutting barley, oats or wheat with a binder, following it and standing up the sheaves in 'stooks' .  Rubber wellingtons have not yet been invented and you wore hob-nail boots on your feet and leggings, you dug spuds by hand in wicker baskets, cleaned out bullock sheds after the winter with a four-prong fork. Need I say more?

[bigbear]

Hohoho... My grandfather was a farmworker and groom to whom horses were the norm. My dad was a tractor driver... My other grandad was a smallholder who had but one tractor as far as I know  - a grey Fergie!

 

I guess the definition of what I'm looking for is a guide to farming methods in the early days of what we would call 'tractors'... if that makes sense?

 

I've got a very enjoyable DVD called "The Crown of the Year", which contains four farming documentaries made at the end of WW2 and I guess that this is sort of the end of the period I'm looking at.

 

All of this is a whim, of course, as my friend has a meadow he wants to manage in a 'traditional' way with minimal modern intervention. Old boys playing with their toys, in other words! )

[powerrabbit]

Tell him if he wants to mow his meadow I've got a sythe he can borrow and a hook to pare his hedges!

 

My Father told me a tale, an old Uncle who farmed with 2 horses had to let one go to the Army in 1916 and he was issued with a tractor in its place. Working the tractor for the first time and after a little basic instruction he set off across the field and as he came to the far hedge shouted 'woah' and pulled on the steering wheel. You can guess the rest.

[CMB]

That's a wonderful story Tim, made me wheeze!

[powerrabbit]

Getting back to the topic I think that real frustration is that when working with someone they insist on doing a job in a certain way which will take a lot of time, when you can see a way of doing it  that would be much quicker and still achieve the same end result! I often found this when working with my Father on the farm, I put up with it for nearly 35 years until he retired and took more of a back seat.

[bigbear]

I'm with you on that one Tim, except that this time, it's for the fun of doing it in a certain way... Probably involving a lot of sitting against tractors eating cheese sandwiches, drinking tea from a bottle wrapped in a sock and possibly a large amount of local cider... )

 

Did anybody else used to get their tea in a bottle wrapped in a sock? Seemed to work as well as a flask, I seem to remember.

[powerrabbit]

Me and Father always used to carry a bottle of cold tea on the tractor at hay and corn harvest time, no milk, no sugar just straight tea. That was back in the days that we had real summers! In the late 1950's and through most of the 60's when all our family farming relations used to get together and help each other with harvesting we always had a big wicker basket of food 'delivered' out to the field covered in a tablecloth and accompanied by a large urn of tea. Frustration was, when the bloody dog nicked a sandwich or a big slice of cake!

[bigbear]

That's right, except my Dad would never have coped with 'just tea'! It had to have milk and sugar in it. I think he used to leave it out in the sun to try to keep it as warm as he could. Our meals were delivered individually - due to fussy eaters - in old ex-army gas mask bags. Sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, a slice of cake, apples for those who ate fruit, (Dad could be a meat and two meat man - If it wasn't potatoes or peas with some nice beef, he might not be interested), and  a huge bottle of orange squash, flasks of tea and maybe some digestive biscuits too...

 

Even now, I can't drink orange squash without a fleeting memory of those summer teas out in the fields. You are right too - the summers were proper summers then!

 

Perhaps there is proof somewhere that this isn't just us oldsters remmeniscing?

[powerrabbit]

All I can say John is that the next generation on from us have not really lived, life was a bit harder but we were a lot better off for it and if we should ever have the need to re-visit those days, which we may well have to, this generation would find life a lot harder and hungrier, now how frustrating would that be I wonder?

[bigbear]

Hah! How true! As you say, things are not as good as they were a few years ago and Mrs Bigbear always keeps an old fashioned stew pot going on the stove, adding things as required, so it constantly changes. We are quite happy with this - we both work all day and it's the easiest way to feed ourselves, after all. Our kids - now 30 and 28 - really don't like this, so we are currently eating 'proper' meals, bought from Morrisons... (ha ha!).

 

Another sign of the times is actually having both kids at home again, with no jobs to support themselves... Our daughter has just finished an 18 month contract and has nothing in the pipeline and our son is working as a temp for the local council. so can't be sure when he will have work.

 

Sadly, it would all have been an all too familiar situation to our forefathers!

[powerrabbit]

Perhaps they should both supplement their employment by getting a part time stacking the shelves at Morrisons  John! That would show them which food is better for them. I'll go for the pot on the stove every time.