Читать книгу Farmer's Glory - A. G. Street - Страница 6

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I left school in 1907, when I was between sixteen and seventeen, and started in to the serious side of farming. The arrangement was that I should receive my board and lodging at home, and seven shillings weekly in cash, upon which I was to dress myself. It is a very long time now since I saved any money, but during that first year, I remember, I put away five pounds, in addition to dressing myself to my own complete adolescent satisfaction.

Frankly, I cannot remember doing much actual hard manual work except in rush periods such as lambing, haymaking, or harvest. There was such a crowd of men about the place. Thirteen horses were kept; six ploughing teams, and an odd horse to wait upon the sheep. This meant seven carters. Sixty dairy cows necessitated six milkers. The Hampshire Down flock of four hundred ewes required two shepherds. Six day labourers were employed, a foreman, and a groom gardener. A grand total of twenty-three employees all the year round, with many more at harvest and haymaking. There were four hundred acres of arable land, ninety acres of down, forty acres of water meadow, and about a hundred acres of pasture.

I don’t think my father can have been an average type of tenant farmer, or perhaps he worked it out on the theory that ‘one doesn’t keep a dog and do the barking oneself.’ What I mean is that he didn’t get up at an unearthly hour every morning. But I did. I was his dog. But even so he didn’t forget to bark when occasion required it. When any of his neighbours chaffed him about lying in bed, he would retort that when he was up he was awake. He would get up early for anything definite: to go cub-hunting, shooting, to a fair, at harvest time, or other important occasions, and lastly, when none of us expected him to do so. I realize now that in this last lay the secret of his success. This, of course, is rank heresy according to accepted agricultural standards, both ancient and modern, but I submit that no text-book on farming should omit its possibilities.

I had been to an agricultural school, where we were taught that unremitting personal attention to detail from early morn to dewy eve and after, was the first essential to successful farming. It was a bit of a shock, therefore, to come in about 9 a.m. to report, and to find the successful farmer in bed. I have inherited his liking for bed, but not, unfortunately, his faculty for making money out of farming.

In those early days my chief duty was that early morning round of inspection with its ensuing detailed report to my father. Afterwards the ‘organizer’, as one or two of his old and trusted hands called him behind his back, took charge of affairs, and things happened; chiefly because they were necessary, and sometimes I think now, for moral effect.

The usual procedure was for me to meet the foreman at 6.30 a.m. We studied the weather, and planned the work for the horse teams. When I say we, in reality he did most of the studying and all the planning. After I had been home a few months I began to make tentative suggestions, which were never approved. Probably they were mostly wrong ones, but anyway, is a man of sixty who started work on a farm at ten years of age going to listen to a young whippersnapper of seventeen, fresh from an agricultural school? I ask you? Mind you, he was very nice about it. He always treated me with a subtle deference as the young guvnor, especially in front of the other men, but all the time I knew, and so did he.

The carters came to harness their horses at a quarter to seven, and, having given them their orders, we were ready to detail the six day labourers to various jobs at seven o’clock. The foreman had absolute authority over the carters and labourers, but the head dairymen and head shepherd were in a class apart; they had charge of their respective departments, and the men employed under them.

My next job was to visit the sheep-fold, and find out if all was well. I feel that in writing this next sentence I am giving away another bit of invaluable information which the student of farming will never find in any text-book. ‘Shepherding qualifications being almost equal, choose a cheerful shepherd.’ There are so many vicissitudes which can happen to a Hampshire Down sheep, from the cradle to the grave, so to speak—I should have written table instead of grave—that a cheerful shepherd is the only type possible to overcome them. I have known many shepherds, and say with authority that the mournful ones are beaten from the start.

From the sheep I would go to where the horses were at work to see if everything was working according to plan, then back to the farm buildings to have a word with the head dairyman, and finally in to breakfast, usually a substantial meal.

Sometimes my father received my report at breakfast, and sometimes, as I have said, in his bedroom. This done, he rapidly decided his plan of campaign for the day. He was a bit crippled with rheumatism even in those days, and used to journey about the farm in a governess cart. The pony, Tommy, had a mouth like iron, an insatiable appetite, and the happy knack of trotting at a slower speed than he walked. Early in their acquaintance Tommy had discovered that as long as he trotted my father was content, and he had developed this slow trot to a fine pitch of perfection. On most mornings I would be instructed to tell the groom gardener to bring the trap round at ten o’clock; there was always somebody to tell in those days.

The farming was on a settled definite system, the result of centuries of experience. The arable land was divided into four fields of one hundred acres each, and was cropped as follows:

First year—Winter-sown corn, either wheat or winter oats.

Second year—Spring corn, oats and barley.

Third year—Half into clover for hay, and the other half into rye, winter barley, and vetches for spring sheep keep, followed by swedes and kale for winter feeding. The clover was alternated on to the other half every four years, as clover will only grow successfully in this district once in eight years.

Fourth year—Summer roots, usually rape and turnips.

This rotation was as unalterable as the law of the Medes and Persians. One always knew what crop a particular field would be growing two or three years ahead, and worked to that end. Any slight variation was considered a sin, and, like sin, it always left its mark. For instance, if one were tempted—I use the word advisedly—to seed a piece of vetches or clover, the extra robbing of the ground showed in the ensuing wheat crop. It mattered not a whit that the produce of this immoral seeding might bring in more money than a good crop of wheat. One didn’t farm for cash profits, but did one’s duty by the land.

This was one of the chief reasons for the inherent conservatism and mistrust of new things so prevalent at that date amongst the agricultural fraternity, both masters and men. If any new method were tried, one didn’t look for its advantages, one ignored them, but one missed no opportunity to point out its defects. My father was quite keen on new things, partly, I think, because the foreman was always dead against them. That worthy would usually finish up the argument with ‘Doan’t ee do it, zur. ’Tis wrong.’ Between them they adopted new things rather quicker than the average.

This same four-course rotation is still practised religiously here and there in Wiltshire and the South of England to-day, chiefly by men who have plenty of money. And they, good farmers all, are watching their capital shrink steadily, year after year, and they do so in a hurt and bewildered frame of mind. They are farming honestly and well, and losing five pounds per acre on every acre of corn they grow. They carry on year after year in the hope that the turn of the tide will come, but one by one they are forced either to drop out of farming altogether, or to adopt other methods.

Under the rotation mentioned it is easy to see that half the arable land was put into corn each year, and the other half devoted to growing feed for the flock, whose continuous and regular folding over the land made the corn growing possible. It always seemed to me that the farm was run entirely for the sheep, and most of the men were jealous of the shepherd’s consequent importance. One of my father’s labourers frankly hated sheep. ‘All we do do’, he would say to me, ‘is run about and sweat atter they blasted sheep. We be either lambing ’em, runnin’ ’em, marken ’em, shearing ’em, dipping ’em, or some other foolishness. And they can have all the grub we do grow, and God knows how much it do cost the Guvnor fer cake.’

I do not think we were very special with sheep; only about average. It was a pedigree Hampshire Down Flock, but we never went in for cups and shows. From my own experience I have come to the conclusion that there were two ways of running a Hampshire flock successfully in those days. One was to give them whatever quantity of cake they would eat, and to consider them and to worry over them far more than one did over one’s own children. The other was to do them very badly, avoiding prosecution by the R.S.P.C.A. by the smallest possible margin. The middle course, which my father adopted, did not pay much, if at all.

But sheep are annoying things, and so are a good many shepherds. During a barren late spring, when you were short of grub, most shepherds would delight in seeing how fast they could gallop over it, pitching out larger and larger folds each day, and never grumbling about the extra work. Given a plenteous season, when you wanted the keep cleared faster before it spoiled, the shepherds would feed it in a niggardly fashion. Any suggestion as to speeding up was greeted with the definite remark: ‘No, zur, t’wun’t do.’ From this there was no appeal. The shepherd’s word was law. The rest of us just grumbled and carried on.

I don’t know whether some shepherds will prosecute me for libel over this, but as a general rule, save for lambing, and other busy times, a shepherd reckoned to finish his actual laborious work by dinner time. After that he studied your sheep. I remember a shopkeeper in a neighbouring town, who retired from business at fifty, and took a farm in this district. Early in his rural career he went out one afternoon, and discovered his shepherd dozing under a bush on the down, with the flock grazing around him. ‘What in the world are you doing, shepherd?’ asked his employer. ‘Lookin’ atter your sheep,’ replied the shepherd.

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well, but you mustn’t sit down. I can’t pay you to sleep. You must get up and cut thistles, chop down some of these bushes, or do something.’

‘Well, I bain’t gwaine to. I be studyin’ your interests, I tell ’ee, same as I allus have fer any maister.’

The farmer in question told my father about it afterwards. ‘When I think of how I used to run up and down behind my counter, it makes my blood boil,’ he said.

Both master and man were right in their judgment of the situation, and afterwards had a sound mutual respect for each other. But shepherds were always studying their sheep, and never seemed to tire of it. It always used to amaze me at our harvest suppers, where we could have a choice of beef, mutton, or ham, that our shepherd always chose mutton in large and repeated helpings. Whether he did so with the idea of supporting his own industry, or in order to get his own back on one of the animals who ruled his whole life, I do not know, but it was always mutton for him.

This autocracy of shepherds will sound almost unbelievable to townsfolk, I expect, but it was a very real thing in those days. Another instance of it comes to my mind. One of the largest and most successful ram-breeders in this district discovered one season that he had a large rick of good hay untouched. He farmed near a racing stable, the owner of which offered him a fancy price for the rick. He sold it, and a few days afterwards mentioned the fact to his shepherd in conversation. The shepherd ruminated for a few moments in silence. ‘Oh, you’ve selled un, ’ave ’ee?’

‘Yes, what about it? We don’t want it.’

‘Not thease year, p’raps, but I reckons to be consulted about a thing like that. Still, ’tis yourn, to do as you likes with. But I shall leave.’

His master paid the buyer ten pounds to cry off the deal.

Usually the dairymen were of a different type from the other farm men. Producing milk twice daily, seven days a week, and railing the product daily savours more of a factory than a farm, and has its consequent effect on the men engaged in it. Even in those days they had a shrewd suspicion that the milk found the money which ran the whole farm, and their scorn of sheep and shepherds was very bitter. And they ran their job without outside assistance. Give them cattle and food, and they would do the rest, literally producing the goods.

I do not think that my father knew how many cows he had, to one or two, and am certain that he had no intimate knowledge as to their different milking qualities. The milk was sold on contract to London, with a minimum and maximum daily quantity. When the daily output went down dangerously near the minimum, or the cake supply was getting low, the head dairyman would come over to the house, the day before market, and ask to see my father. ‘I dunno whether you knows it or no, but we be gettin’ short o’ milk. Thee better get two or dree heifers in market.’ Or possibly: ‘We be nearly out o’ cake, and you’d better get the next lot kibbled, as we be main busy just now.’

This news was like the sight of hounds to an old hunter, and my father would set off for market next day, thirsting for the fray of buying and selling, and taking me with him for educational purposes in this most difficult art.

The cows were kept in two lots. One was the main milking herd, and the other, a smaller lot, consisted of the dry cows waiting to calve and the cows nearly dry. This latter herd was in charge of a dear old dairyman, who, thank heaven, is still with me as I write. He and his wife ran this herd between them, and the entire management was in his hands. My father on his rounds in the trap would drive into the yard at these buildings, and shout, and if this was not successful, bellow: ‘Strong?’ From the depths of the buildings would come ‘Yes, zur.’ Another hail: ‘All right, Strong?’ Again would come the ‘Yes, zur.’ This intricate business being concluded, my father would drive away, having satisfactorily seen to that dairy for the day.

I am afraid all this will be rather apt to give the impression that my father was a bad farmer, and in the hands of his men. He may have been, but they never knew. They respected him and loved him, and he respected and relied on them. But this is the acid test. His methods paid, and paid well. When I think of the worries of farming now as compared to those simple days, I have a great admiration for that period and the men engaged in farming at that time. With all the rationing, recording, and worrying over each individual cow that I have done since: with all the scientific methods of farming in all its branches that I have tried; and with all the work and intense personal attention to detail that I have put into every department of my farming, I am forced to admit that my father was a much better farmer than I. He made it pay, and I have lost more money than I care to think about.