See your ‘farming forebear’ featured in Farmers Weekly

We’d like to see photos of your farming forebears – and they could end up gracing the pages of Farmers Weekly.

The sense of continuity in farming families is one of the best aspects of the rural way of life, so people often know about their predecessors even if they’ve long-since passed away.

So we’d love to see snapshots of your relatives – it could be someone who’s still around or someone who’s no longer with us. It might be a close relative (a parent or aunty, for example) or someone slightly more distant and going back further in time (a grandparent or great-grandparent, for example).

See also: Farmers Weekly’s 80th birthday

All we need is a photo and a line or two (feel free to write more if you’d like to) about whoever’s in the picture.

We’d be fascinated to hear who they are/were, what they are/were like, along with what they mean to you or how you remember them.

You could take a photo of the person if you’re in contact with them or, if it’s someone form further back in time, you could flick through the family album and send us an old image of those.

Don’t worry if you’re not an expert with a camera – snaps are fine! Email it to fwfarmlife@rbi.co.uk and your farming forebear could appear in Farmers Weekly – a lovely surprise if they’re still with us, or a fitting tribute if they’re not.

To set the ball rolling, we asked Northumberland farmers Elizabeth and Jake Elder to tell us about their forebears.

Jake says: “This is my grandfather FW (Fred) Moralee with his prizewinning Beef Shorthorn heifer, Scottish Buttercup in about 1952. Fred farmed initially in the North Tyne valley before moving to the Borders in 1946.

Fred Moralee

“A great stockman and school holiday time employer, he was a huge influence in Jake’s desire to work with livestock. In retirement, he turned to fruit and vegetable growing on a semi-industrial scale.”

Elizabeth says: “This is my grandfather, Bob Forster, who ran a mixed farm in mid-Northumberland. He always wore a shirt and tie – including for work and gardening.

Bob Forster

“A reserved, practical man, when disasters happened he would quietly set about cleaning them up rather than ranting and raving or making a fuss. I remember this particularly from the time I exploded a casserole on his hob because I hadn’t realised that the dish could only be used in the oven!”