Owd Fred's Blog

How we found out that Ash Trees have Shallow Roots

In all my seventy three years, it was only during my first nine years that I had anything to do with our farms three shire horse. The most regular job was to lead them to the blacksmith's shop with my brothers on the way to school. They would stay there from nine in the morning until lunch time at twelve o'clock when we were pitched up on top of them and they would take us home for our mid day meal.

In 1942 father bought a Standard Fordson tractor along with a two furrow plough and a tractor cultivator and a set of disc harrows, this took a lot of hard work off the horses, as by now they were getting older. He still had the old ploughs and single row cultivators, the corn (wheat and oats) drill, though by now he had converted the pole of the drill by shortening it and put a clevis hitch on the end so it would be pulled by the Fordson tractor. The binder also had a pole that was rigged up to take three Shire horses abreast, again this was shortened and had a tractor hitch fitted, that was another long and mauling job that was taken off the ageing shires.

By the time I was fourteen we had two tractors, this second one was a David Brown Cropmaster with hydraulic linkage and a hydraulic linkage plough to match. A problem started to crop up where by the headland of each ploughed field was not being ploughed close enough to the hedge row like father always did when he plough with horses.

He always claimed that there was more soil in the last furrow round the outside of the field than any other furrow in the field, and it was always said in jest years ago, that when any farmer was expecting an addition to the family "you will have to plough another furrow closer to the hedge".

Well this was not the case on this occasion, father asked me and my elder brother to take the Cropmast tractor and a single furrow horse plough and plough an extra furrow closer to the hedge all round the ploughed fields. Myself being the younger and smaller one drove the tractor, and brother who was bigger and stronger controlled the plough, there was a length of chain connecting the two and hitched to one side of the tractor.

Father had set us up and we were progressing well, he had left us to get on with the job at hand, we had a bit of shuffling at the corners and in places we managed to go round a second time, until, we came to an Ash tree.  Ash trees are well known, (but not to us) for having strong shallow roots that spread and grow close to the surface, and do so when the field had been in grass for three years in the rotation, then suddenly there is a problem.

With the horses, they would feel the root and promptly stop, with no damage to the plough or them, but with the tractor, that had no feelings, and a lot more power, it grunted on and snatched the plough, which was well hooked under the root, and it flipped the plough handles skywards along with my brother. Brother was okay, if a little bruised, but the plough was destroyed and lay under that tree for years, an ever lasting reminder that Ash Trees always have shallow roots.

This is my father in 1940 mowing grass with his shire horses Flower and Dolly, he lost two fingers as a lad clearing the blade of a mower the same as this. The horses are in Chain harnes. For shaft harness they had a heavy saddle pad and a breaching round their rumps

I Remember Fathers Fingers

A tale he told us while working for his uncle Dan, he must have been around thirteen years old

Father lost two fingers, while mowing hay one day,
He was helping uncle Dan on the meadows, not at all at play,
Only thirteen started working, horses in the shaft,
The mower blocked with grass, clearing it by hand (how daft)

He lifted blade and went round back, while it was still in gear,
One horse did stamp his foot at flies, and gave the blade two shithers,
This was just enough no doubt, cut two fingers in one go,
He never said how he stopped, the blood, there must have been a flow,

The little finger it was off, above the lower joint,
The next was off above second, clean cut to a point,
Hospital took one off at knuckle, and stitch the flap of skin,
Tuther  left half a stub, of finger what a sin.

No safety men to bother them, it was get him back to work,
They healed so slow, it was a blow, but not a time to shirk,
A motor bike he bought one day, to get about much quicker,
It had a belt to drive, hand clutch, and blow up tyre,

Mother he did find one day, while he was out on bike,
He gave a lift and she did find, how cold the bike could be,
Knit pair of gloves did she, to fit his fingers short,
Then regularly did see her out ,and then began to court.

Round the table Sunday breakfast, father told us tales,
Of how he helped his uncle Dan, less fingers and no bales,
We had to always asked him, to tell us that again,
Of how he lost his fingers, and all about the pain.

Countryman (Owd Fred)

The Old Kitchen Floor

I remember when we were kids, kitchen floor it sloped,
Sat down at meal times, mother to top end coped.

The old kitchen floors were always laid to enable them to be washed down with a bucket of water, the water then run through a hole in the wall and into an outside grid.

In the 1940's I remember a kitchen on a smallholding, (not our kitchen) it adjoined the cowshed, just open the door on one side of the kitchen, and there were the cows all tied by the neck by a chain to their stalls, all ten of them.

The only snag was that the cowshed was top side of the kitchen and the drain from the shed ran through the kitchen under the table and out the other side in an open gully. Every time a cow passed (pee'd) water it would run swiftly almost under ya feet when sitting at the table, to anyone outside cow keeping would be horrified, but the smell of cow urine is just a normal part of a cowman's everyday smells and has a tendency, I am told, to help to clear your sinuses'.
The dung was wheeled out of the door that led to the fields, the way the cows came in and out, but the liquids took the shortest route and followed the slope of the cowshed and kitchen floors.

 It would not be aloud to happen these days, on health and safety grounds, but it did back then, and clean milk was sold. The kitchen was clean and the gully kept rinsed and clean.
Those cows were often seen back then, being grazed up the wide road side verges tended by the elderly owner who stayed with them. That house and small cowshed have long since been the victims of barn conversion, modernization, what ever you want to call it, but I will always remember it as the house where the cowshed and house were all as one.

Our kitchen at home when we were kids, had blue brick floor and a slope of four inches from top end to the lower corner, the drain hole had been stopped up to prevent rats and mice coming in, and it was mopped rather than sloshed down every day, I remember when mother had her first electric cooker, it had to have a patch of floor levelled up especially for it, other wise the pots and pans on the cooker would have had too much of a tilt East to west.

I remember The Kitchen Floor it sloped.

I remember when we were kids, kitchen floor it sloped,
Sat down at meal times, mother to top end coped,
Kitchen table vinyl cloth, also it did tilt,
Father down one side, safe from anything that spilt.

Always there is one, who's clumsy as a kid,
Put him at the lower end, own mess he is amid,
Tip the water over, or a cup of tea,
It runs down the table, straight into his own knee.

Four of us took it in turns, not to be so clumsy,
Other three would laugh, sat as dry as we could be,
A dam good lesson that it was, with instant results,
 Chair at the lower end, reserved for bumble foots.

Countryman

We live every day of our lives on one slippery slope or another.
Taken from a quote by  the ‘Anonymous Preacher'

The Se-----ford Staffordshire Hoard

( 1772 Silver George 3^rd half penny piece)

Its not every day that you have a "find" even though it be modest, a friend of mine was walking the footpaths along our fields a few days ago, and came across a rabbit hole with fresh soil dug out of it. On top of this soil was a coin, he picked it up, took it home and cleaned it, and found the date on it to be 1772.

He told me about it and gave it to me to investigate its value and coinage, It turns out that it is a Silver half Penny George 3^rd.

                                          Dug up by a rabbit

                                    Looked up the following information

This day fifty years ago 31 May 1961.

Just browsing through an old diary looking at what I was doing this day fifty years ago 31 May 1961.

We had just finished silage carting having done a 118 loads of grass off 15 acres, the trailers, two of them, being three ton hydraulic tippers that were just becoming popular then, most of them a near copy of the Ferguson trailers. The village wheelwright had made five foot extensions on top of the side boards with a half hood over the back half and a long swinging rear gate.

At that time we were using a David Brown tractor to drive a David Brown Hurricane harvester which was direct flail cut 42 inch wide ( the width between the tractor wheels) and being directly in line with the tractor you had to drive the opposite way each bout in order to pick up the wheeling left in the standing grass. Looking back a few days 29 loads seemed to be the best day we had some day’s only five loads, over just over a week.

The pit was rolled for a couple of days to bring up the juice and 8 tons of ground limestone was wheel barrowed up on top to form the seal, plastic on silage was not heard of back then.

A few days ago we had gone through the kale with a steerage hoe and it was now ready for singling. It was marrow stem kale and grew up to five or six foot high, the majority of the feed being in the marrow of the stem. In winter it would be cut by hand, loaded and fed out to the cows on a dry turf field.

I see the day before 30^th May 1961 we had to go down to the local station top pick up 4 ton of sugar beet pulp directly out of a railway goods wagon, ordered through our local merchant. This came then, in one and a quarter hundred weight (62.5 kilo) hessian sacks stitched at the top, when it was fresh from the factory the sacks and there contents were flexible but if it was stored for any amount of time they would go solid particularly the one at the bottom of a pile. When these had to be humped on ya back up loft steps there was no dirty a job, bits of black grit went down your neck and stuck if you had a sweat on.

All the whole barley , sugar beet pulp, flaked maize, and all other bulky items that made up a dairy ration were taken in through the loft door, the opening below was where bales of hay and root crops such as mangols and Swedes were dropped down into the shed . 

In the drawing below the pop hole in the wall on the right is the one below the loft door in the picture above. A wall ladder in the corner and a root cleaner and slicer and the other doors lead to the cow shed

I see also a few days prior to that date we had a cow with foul in the foot, our local vet would come and examine the foot, not pick it up or anything dangerous like that, but from his years of experience he knew what it was and how to treat it.

This amounted to a glass syringe and needle in one smock pocket and a glass bottle of white liquid in the other pocket, and from our view point no matter what you rang him up for out would come his syringe and white bottle, and a jab would put everything right, and it often did.

I see I had recorded the man who worked for me was costed in at three Shillings and eight pence an hour (3/8d would be 18p in new money)

In an earlier Blog    http://bit.ly/h6g9fs   I spoke about the 200 day winter that we always had to account for as far as winter feed was concerned, and more often than not the winter dragged on to the end of April.

So fifty years ago I was a lot fitter than I am now, although we now have more powerful tractors and most other handwork such as singling beet kale and mangols, and hedge cutting now mechanized, we do not seem to be any better off, although pride and job satisfaction make it a very rewarding job.