大象传媒

I was born in New Malden, Surrey, on the 19th February 1925. I had two elder brothers and an older sister and younger brother. My father died when I was three years old. I went to a junior mixed school in Surrey at the age of five years and at the age of eleven I went to Secondary School. As I drew near to leaving school, and began to think about what I would like to do when I left, I decided that I wanted to be a vet, failing that, I had thought of becoming a canine nurse.

I recall that I left school during July 1939, at the age of fourteen; and from that time until the October, I helped my friend who was a vet. I enjoyed every minute of it. Then war was declared during September, that year. My friend believed that there was no chance of me becoming a canine nurse or a vet now that there was a conflict. Perhaps I should join the Land Army, she suggested. So I applied, there were posters everywhere saying 鈥� 鈥淵our Country Needs You鈥�. I received a Land Army number and then I waited. I had notice from Guildford to attend lectures once a week at the Guild Hall.

Because I did not know how long I had to wait before joining the Land army, I applied for a job as a cashier and book-keeper for the Home and Colonial. The
Home and Colonial was an old fashioned grocers shop, with a cash desk in one corner behind a glass screen. I was trained by a senior and was shown book-keeping and accounts.

I had to balance the books each night. So the secret was, add up the money of ten customers and put it to one side and it wasn鈥檛 such a long ream of figures to cope with after the shop closed. (There was no calculators in those days).

I was called up during May 1940, and had to report to Cannington Farm Institute, in Bridgwater, Somerset. Two volunteers from each county joined the course at Cannington which lasted four weeks. There was a choice of general farm work, horticulture work or market gardening. I chose general farm work, which included dairy. Then I was sent a uniform before my training; this consisted of brown shoes, Khaki socks, turned over below the knee, khaki cord britches, fawn shirt, green v-necked pullover, and a hat. The working uniform was a khaki linen short coat, dungarees, shirt and Wellington boots and a Macintosh.

The four weeks of my training were broken down as follows:

During the first week, I was learning dairy farming; which included milking, cheese making, butter making and the general care and feeding of calves and cattle.

The second week was spent on poultry, collecting the eggs, cleaning out their coups, and the killing and dressing of poultry.

The third week consisted of field work, carried out with the horses and machinery.

Finally, during the fourth week we went back to dairying. It took a while to get used to hand-milking the cows, which made the muscles of your wrist ache. The more cows you milked the better you became. The whey from cheese making was fed to the pigs.

At the end of the course we were called in front of a Committee of four people who as individuals asked us general questions, and then we were selected for different farms.

My first assignment was a farm in Codrington, near Chipping Sodbury in South Gloucestershire. (It was just called Gloucestershire then).

The cost of travelling was covered by a travel pass. The instructions were given to me with the travel pass. I had to travel by train from Bridgwater to Temple Meads, Bristol. Then I had to change trains from Temple Meads to Yate Station, where I was met and taken to the farm.

I was given a very nice room in the farmhouse and lived as part of the family with the farmer, his wife, their youngest son and a daughter, all working on the farm. On the day I arrived about five 0鈥機lock in the afternoon, I had a very nice farmhouse tea, I remember putting on my shirt and dungarees and going out haymaking until 10 0鈥� Clock at night. That was my introduction to farming at the farm; which was a picture postcard farm, belonging to *.

Farm work in general would consist of milking the cows. The milk was tipped into a D-pan, then it ran through a cooler and then into a churn. The churns of milk were put onto a trolley and pulled by a horse to the top of the field each day, where the Co-Operative Lorries would pick up the churns and take them to a dairy.

Sufficient corn was grown on the farm for feeding the cattle. The crops were grown in rotation on the arable fields. A field would be potatoes one year, then wheat the next year or a root crop. Barley would also be planted in a field. These fields would rotate their crops each year, which would in turn be harvested in the autumn.

Beans on this particular farm were grown, with barley and peas. These were cut during the autumn, and taken to the mill to form the feed for fattening the cattle for the Christmas market.

The harvesting was very interesting in those days, because the corn was cut with a reaper pulled by two horses. A movable knife on the reaper, would cut the straw with the grain heads at one end, these were pushed into a neat pile and then automatically tied with a string, it would then drop out onto the ground as a sheaf. These sheaves were picked up and made into a stook. Each stook took eight sheaves, which were then placed butt ends down, with air space between the sheaves. These stayed in the field for several weeks to dry the grass. They were then picked up with a pick and put onto a wagon. Then they were taken and placed nearer the farm buildings, and made into a Rick facing the heads of the corn inwards.

A threshing machine would come in the winter. It would work its way through each farmer in the village with corn to be threshed, the farming families would help each other.
The threshing machine would move in alongside a straw rick. The sheaves were placed on top of the thresher, these automatically fed into the machine, and sieved separated the chaff from the corn. The corn dropped into a hopper then into a 2cwt sack which was attached to the hopper. The chaff fell out underneath the thresher and the straw came out the back and was tied into a sheaf and then put into a straw rick and used for bedding the cattle when needed. The bags of corn were moved to a barn or building for storage to be fed to poultry and so on. Most of the grain would be ground down to a mill to form a meal which was fed to cattle and pigs.

Most farmers kept a pig for the family鈥檚 consumption of meat, you were allowed to kill one pig per year, a licence had to be obtained for killing a pig because of the food rationing. Meat ration coupons were handed in when a licence was obtained.

I stayed at this farm from June 1940 to September 1941. Life was very rewarding on the farm.

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