大象传媒

I was evacuated to Mr Cook鈥檚 farm in north Suffolk in 1940, I lived with his farm baliff Mr Gower. I was brought up in Gravesend in Kent but loved living on the farm.

When it was time for the hay cut, before the sun got up the men used to go out with their scythes and cut around the edges the headland, cutting through the grass and disturbing the wildlife including clouds of butterflies. They were always late with the hay, they waited until it was late and longer which made it easier to harvest, as it was longer.

They would go round and round cutting the hay. The clipper or the binder throwing out the sheaves and as they went, they went round and the piece of grass in the centre got smaller, the rabbits that were hiding would eventually think it was time to bolt. Everyone would chase them with sticks and dogs - the farmer wouldn鈥檛 allow guns in the field when we were harvesting, as there were so many people around. We used to run the rabbits down and club them with the sticks, end up with a whole pile of rabbits that had run out of the corn or the hay.

That was the sporty part, but there was the work part as well, putting all the sheaves into cocks and the hay into stooks and then of course a few days later the carting. Soon we were very handy with the horses and this meant that the men could just give their orders and we would do as we were told. We would load the drays up high with these sheaves of corn and then we had to ferry them back to the stack yard.

At the end of the day the horses would be unhitched from the carts and we would ride bare back, before the horses went into the stable we would have to lead them to the pond. On one occasion one of the boys, my friend Ron, was on Captain who was a long-legged stubborn horse and had a bit of a sway in it鈥檚 back leg and he decided to have a bit of a romp in the pond and Ron went with him! Great merriment. They go the feather on the legs cleaned in the pond, and then they had to go into the stable we would unharness and rub them down, give them their food and take them to their stable for the night.

Chubby, the farmer鈥檚 son would be up at 6 in the morning to get things going on in the fields by 7. In the spring he used to come in at 8.30 for his breakfast. He had been out spring ploughing and he would disturb the plover鈥檚 nests, he would empty out 30 or 40 plover鈥檚 eggs from his jacket and very good they were to eat! The plovers would come back and lay again later in the spring and their young would have a much better chance of survival.

My favourite bird still is the lapwing or pewit or green plover, there were wonderful flocks of them swirling around, with their frightened call. I would lie in the grass with a coat over my head and watch them, hoping that they would lead me to their nests. Same thing in the marshes too - with the snipe and the odd red shank, I spent hours watching the birds. I once watched 5 weasels working around a rabbit, they would hypnotise the rabbit and the weasels would drop behind and as the rabbit was watching the others it would jump on its neck. The weasels didn鈥檛 get it we had it for the pot!

We used to go down to the marshes and bombard the moorhens, they would go under the water with their beaks above the water, when they came close to the bank we would catch them, wring their necks and take them home. Mrs Gower would say you dress it and I鈥檒l cook it, so we pulled the feathers off only to find it was covered with black down, completely covered, so we had to skin it. When we were working on a Saturday, we would get the horses ready and then open the granary then and go off for a mornings work with the horses. When we came back the granary would be full of sparrows, they all tried to get out of the window and we would catch then, dozens of them, we wring their necks, skin them and take the breast meat off and Mrs Gower would make sparrow pie. It was very nice. Food wasn鈥檛 scare but it was a good way to get more meat!

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Diana Wilkinson of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester and has been added to the site with Mr John Meiklejohn鈥檚 permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

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