Farmer's Glory

by A G Street

  The General, strong man though he was, bowed to the mightier force, and carried out his wife’s instructions, thus enabling Granfer to glare triumphantly at him from the garden of his new cottage.

  Granfer having won the first round, the second definitely was the General’s. The Clerk of the Weather proved to be on the side of the Army, and ordained two dry years.

  During this time many things happened. Granfer’s wife died, and his daughter Mary and her husband came to live with him. Granfer himself became more and more crippled, and also more crotchety, whilst the General’s fowls throve amazingly. Scandals and other topics engaged the interest of the village, and Granfer’s flood prophecy was forgotten. But Granfer remembered.

  The third summer after the quarrel was an absolute drought. Apart from occasional half-hearted showers, there was no rain from early May to well on in October. The machinery of Granfer’s gnarled and twisted body was nearly worn out, and the persistent absence of rain was breaking down his indomitable spirit also. During harvest he took to his bed, and got gradually weaker as the weeks passed by. Doctor Graham told his daughter that the old man could not possibly last much longer, and the general opinion in the village was that Granfer would not see another Christmas.

  Then in the last week in October the long drought broke. Warm south-westerly winds lashed the rain incessantly against Granfer’s window, day after day. Doctor Graham, who called twice a week to see him, was amazed to find the old fellow decidedly stronger. ‘This weather seems to suit you, Granfer,’ he said one morning. ‘It do,’ replied Granfer. ‘We’ve had a dry time, an’ now ’tis a levellin’ up. We be due fer a mort o’ rain, and it be cummen, thanks be. How be the glass, Doctor?’

  ‘Pretty low and still dropping. Looks as if we shall get another gale to-night. Ah, well, I must be on my rounds. Good morning, Granfer, you’re doing fine.’ And down the rickety stairs the doctor clattered, while Granfer lay back on his pillows and listened to the rain.

  That night the weather broke all records, both for wind and rain. Trees, chiefly elms, were uprooted by the dozen. The mud wall of one cottage in the village collapsed, Farmer Bartram’s windmill was blown down, and untold damage was done to thatch and buildings.

  Next morning after breakfast Granfer struggled out of bed. Mary, surprised to hear the noise, ran upstairs to find the old chap getting into his clothes. ‘Feyther!’ she cried. ‘Whatever be you a doin’? You get back to bed.’

  ‘Thee find me boots,’ ordered Granfer. ‘I be gwaine out. ’Tis come at last.’

  ‘What be come?’

  ‘T’water, ye vooil. Cassn’t yer thic rumblen? ’Tis awver Bickton Mill, I tell ’ee. ’Elp I downstairs, an’ get me boots.’

  ‘But you mustn’t, Feyther. Doctor said as ’ow——’

  ‘Dang the girl! I tell ’ee I be gwaine out. Zummut’s up. Come on, oot?’

  Unwillingly Mary obeyed and Granfer toiled downstairs, and struggled into his boots. ‘Now, ’elp I on wie me cwoat, an’ gie I me sticks.’ Mary did so, and Granfer tottered outside for the first time for eight weeks.

  He toiled slowly up the lane with difficulty. When he reached his favourite spot by the farmyard wall, he looked down on the Alder Plot. It was a scene of devastation. Some fowl houses were floating in the flood, and most of the remainder were leaning drunkenly at all angles. Dead and drowning fowls were being swept away, and in the midst of the maelstrom, he spied the General and his gardener trying to rescue some of the hens.

  Granfer gazed on the scene for a few moments in silent satisfaction. Presently he saw Bill Yates and another man hurrying towards him.

  ‘Hoy!’ he yelled, waving one of his sticks in triumph. ‘I telled un, I telled un. Wot about it now? B——y owd vooil! Look at they hens. I knowed I wor right. Ho! Ho! Ho! Nackernism I be. Hoy! General!’

  Here he turned and waved his stick at the General. Suddenly he stumbled, and fell to the ground. When Bill Yates and his companion reached him they thought he was dead.

  ‘Poor wold feller,’ murmured Bill. ‘’Twer too much fer un. He be gone, zur, I’m thinking.’ This last to the General, who by that time had joined them.

  They carried him gently down the lane to his cottage, and laid him on the sofa in the front room. As they looked at his withered old figure on the couch, his eyes opened. His gaze wandered vacantly round the room, but lighted up as he recognized the General. ‘’Tis a pity about they hens, General,’ he mumbled, ‘but I wor right. I be ’appier now in me mind.’

  And then he died.

  As the desire to be proved right in one’s prophecies is one of the strongest forces in human nature, it would seem fairly certain that Granfer died ‘’appy’.

  CHAPTER VI

  I always thought that the agricultural labourer of those days was very capable with machinery. Of course, he despised any new invention, but when a machine became part of the farm’s equipment, he soon learnt how to manage it, and, what was far more important, how to do running repairs with only a very few tools at his disposal. And even twenty-five years ago, farms had a considerable amount of machinery.

  Most of this was used only for a short period in each year. For instance, the binders had possibly three weeks’ activity, the hay-making machinery about a month, the threshing outfit some twenty to thirty working days, and the corn drill about twelve days’ work in the year. But they were all necessary, as to borrow or hire was impossible; all one’s neighbours wanted the same machine at the same date. Any breakdown, therefore, was a serious matter, as a day’s delay in harvest, hay-making, or sowing, might lose the suitable weather.

  So you would find on any farm two or three weather-beaten peasants, to a townsman’s eyes just dull, vacant, and suspicious yokels, who were rarely at a loss in running a machine as complicated even as a binder or thresher.

  Whenever I think of them, I am reminded of Pyecroft’s remark concerning Hinchcliffe, the engine-room artificer in one of Kipling’s stories—Their Lawful Occasions I think it is. ‘If you hand him a drum of oil, and leave ’im alone, he can coax a stolen bicycle to do typewritin’.’ Well, if you gave a farm hand of that period a rusty screw hammer, a bit of wire, an odd bolt or two, and a plentiful supply of ‘hoss studs’, he could make most farm machinery live up to the reputation its makers gave it. For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should perhaps mention that a ‘hoss stud’ is a nail used in shoeing horses. It has the merit of being easily pliable, and of having a large head, and, when required, a labourer could be relied upon to produce one or two of these useful articles from some hidden recess in his corduroys. I imagine that they used to purloin a supply of these when the blacksmith visited the farm stables, and probably they picked up others in their travels…. They collected any piece of iron or odd bolt in the same way, and stored it away for future use in an emergency. Possibly this was one reason for their stooping gait.

  Our threshing machine was driven by a seven horse-power portable steam-engine, which was in the capable hands of one, Thomas Toomer. He died in March 1931, at the ripe age of eighty-four, so that in the days of which I write he was a comparative youth of sixty odd. He ran the engine, and Charlie Bailey, the mower referred to at the beginning of this book, fed the sheaves into the threshing machine.

  On threshing days they would leave home much earlier than the other men, to get steam up and everything in readiness for a seven o’clock start in the morning. For this extra work and for covering up the tackle with tarpaulins at night, they received one shilling per day extra. This does not seem an adequate payment in the light of present-day values, but at that date a labourer only received two shillings daily for ordinary time.

  They were not supposed to light the fire in the engine if it looked like rain, and rarely was their judgment at fault. Of course, there must always be a great difference in the countryman’s attitude to the weather compared with that of the townsman. In town, the weather is only an incident—a pleasing happening or an infernal nuisance. It may aff
ect your decision as to whether you will play golf or go to the pictures; whether you will wear a mackintosh or not; or whether you will have the hood of the car up or down. But it only touches the fringe of life, and the townsman looks upon it merely as an acquaintance of rather doubtful temper. But in the country the weather is the warp in the loom of life. It is your livelihood, your pleasure, your friend, your enemy, and your continuous study. The farming community studies the heavens as the racing man studies the book of form.

  I do not suppose there was a moment in the waking life of an agricultural labourer, when he was unconscious of the weather. He noted instinctively when the wind changed, and considered its possible effect on his life and work and upon those of his neighbours. If you met him even on a Sunday, and remarked that it was a nice day, this was no mere formal civility, but the prelude to a discussion of weighty matters. Of course, he ‘didn’ ’old wi’ work on Sunday’, but to give advice to the ignorant was another matter. He would gaze critically at the sky, and perhaps warn you to hurry up with your barley sowing as ‘the wind be gwaine back agen the sun’, and therefore rain was on the way.

  Of course, everyone enjoys remarking that it is a fine day, but if, on a wet day, you meet a man who greets you with the remark that it is a nice day, you may rest assured that you have met a true son of the soil, who knows that all sorts of weather are necessary. Such a one I know, a very good friend of seventy-five years. We met the other morning when it was pouring, and he hailed me with: ‘Grand rain, this be. Do a power o’ good.’ I agreed; one does not argue lightly with seventy-five-year-olds. He turned his weather-beaten face to the heavens, and I could see the raindrops splash on his forehead, and run down the side of his nose into a forest of whiskers as into a sponge. ‘Ah!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Wind’s droppin’ back. It be cummen, thanks be.’ And after a few moments conversation he stumped away quite convinced that God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world.

  But I am getting away from threshing. It was hard work. There was a balanced team of men to run the outfit. Two men pitched the sheaves on to the top of the thresher, where one man cut the strings and another fed the grain steadily and smoothly into the machine. Two men made the straw rick, one took off the chaff, and one the grain, whilst Tom, the driver, was in charge of the machinery. Any one man slackening speed would slow up the whole business. No extra money was paid to the regular farm men for threshing, but beer was allowed on threshing days, one quart per man. Personally I did not like threshing as the dust made me sneeze continuously all day, but I have done every job in connection with it, even to minding the chaff or dust, as it was termed locally. That was a dirty job. You stood in a narrow passage-way between the machine and the corn rick, and worked in a dust cloud all day. The man who usually did it had whiskers growing out of his nose, and these would be festooned with cobwebs in the first hour.

  Tom and Charlie must have known much more about machinery than I gave them credit for in my unthinking youth, as I cannot ever remember a serious breakdown, and their reliability was extraordinary. On the evening before a threshing day you just said: ‘Oh, Tom, we shall be “sheening” to-morrow,’ and, if fine, when you arrived at the ricks at 7 a.m. on a January morning, say, you would find Tom standing in the glow of the fire with wisps of steam playing around his head. And the old boy had left his home at 5 a.m., and walked perhaps a mile and a half to the ricks!

  The first arrivals would greet him with: ‘Marnin’, Tom. You do know zummat, you do. I ’low Tom do meet a young ’ooman, zno, up yer in marnin’.’ And old Tom would grin a sheepish grin, as if he had really been guilty of this suggested early morning dalliance with the fair. I think he had been involved in some moral peccadillo in his riotous youth some forty-five years before, and they would never allow him to forget it.

  The foreman’s greeting was of a much more dignified nature. ‘Marnin’, Mr. Toomer. Weather gwaine to wear?’ Perhaps it would be drizzling, but Tom would reply: ‘Ay! Thee cannst get ’er stripped. Wind’s gwaine round wie the sun. This yer flit doan’t mean nothin’.’

  ‘Now then, chaps. Let’s ’ave you,’ the foreman would say. Some men would strip the thatch from the rick, whilst others would pile it out of the way of the machinery. Charlie would mount to his feeder’s place on top of the thresher, and his mate would sharpen his knife on a whetstone. When all was ready, Tom would shout: ‘All right?’ ‘Ay, Tom. Let her goo.’ Tom would push the throttle lever a little, the driving belt would tighten, clap once or twice, and in a moment or two the rich hum of the thresher would fill the countryside, and dominate all of us till lunch time at nine-thirty.

  Ricks which were not threshed until after Christmas usually contained some rats, and this added a spice of sport to the finish of the day’s work, as most of them remained hidden until the bottom layer of sheaves was moved. They were killed ruthlessly; a pitchfork is an efficient weapon for this purpose. Some would leave the rick and perhaps get into holes in a bank or hedge nearby. These were bolted by pouring boiling water from the engine into the higher holes, thus driving them out of the burrow in a semi-scalded condition. This may sound cruel, but rats were rats, and as such, enemies to farming, so they received no quarter.

  At some time in the forenoon Tommy and the trap would arrive bringing the master mind. My father would inspect the corn by dipping his hand into a full sack, a method of judging whether the corn was dry; you cannot push your hand into a damp sack of wheat. A handful would then be smelled vigorously. I can see them at it now, with grains of corn adhering to my father’s moustache and the foreman’s whiskers. Before he left father would study the portion of the corn rick still unthreshed, with a shrewd, calculating eye, and say to the foreman: ‘Well, you’ll be able to finish all right in nice time?’

  The foreman would never give a definite answer. He knew the variable quality of the weather, of the machinery, and of countless other influences which might hinder the work. ‘Well, we mid, zur, if we do ’ave luck.’ Nothing more definite or hopeful was ever forthcoming, but, barring accidents, the rick was usually finished in the day. Most of the men went home on the top of the last load of grain at the finish of the day, but Tom and Charlie stayed behind to cover up and to see that all was safe and ready for next day. Tom always walked home, using a piece of dry wood as a walking stick. It might be of any shape, like the one used by Sir Harry Lauder, only more so, but he walked from his home to his work without any stick, thus taking home a piece of dry firing each day.

  The only definite holidays for the men during the year were Christmas Day, Good Friday, and the local fair day. On the first two the essential jobs in connection with the livestock had to be done, the men not regularly in charge of any stock giving a helping hand to the stockmen to enable them to finish early. On Good Fridays they planted their own potatoes in land set aside for this purpose each year. Ten rods were allowed for every married man, and five rods to bachelors and boys. The milkers’ potatoes were planted by the others, as the milkers could never get off.

  On fair days the men drove the sale sheep to the fair in the early morning, and were then finished for the day. This fair was a business one in the morning, and a pleasure fair in the evening. In addition to sheep selling it was the recognized hiring fair. Men in search of a new situation wore the badge of their calling in their hats. A carter wore a plait of whipcord, a shepherd a tuft of wool, and cowmen sported some hair from a cow’s tail.

  Men were hired from Michaelmas, October 11th, for the year, usually by verbal agreement, the essential features of this being noted down in the farmer’s pocketbook. All sorts of things came under review during the discussion of these agreements. You might agree with a man subject to a favourable character from his present employer, to find on inquiry that although he was all right, his wife was of a quarrelsome disposition. This might be a hopeless drawback. A farmer doesn’t just employ a man, and remain in ignorance of his life during non-working hours. He has to live with him, and these
domestic differences can upset the whole farm. In many cases the cottage available might be one of a pair having a common front door opening on to a passage between the two houses. Some blocks of cottages had only one copper and washhouse, so that washing days must occur in rotation. Still, if it happened that you had a single cottage available a bad-tempered wife did not matter.

  I can remember one carter agreeing with my father subject to the cottage chimney not smoking. ‘I’ve a lived in a smoky ’ouse fer seven year, zur, and my missus do say as ’ow she bain’t goin’ to another less she do know the fire do draw nice and suent. You do know ’ow ’tis wi’ wimmenvolk.’ He and his wife journeyed over a few days afterwards to inspect the chimney, which, I remember, proved satisfactory, and the man worked for my father for several years.

  The pleasure fair in the evening was a whirl of roundabouts, swinging boats, coconut shies, shooting galleries and sideshows and cheapjacks of all kinds, the whole place being lit up in the evening with reeking naphtha flares. Here rural youth made high holiday.

  In my childhood days, I can remember being lifted on to a bench, and, kneeling there, shooting with an airgun at a bull’s eye on a large box some two yards away. When you hit the mark, the lid of the box flew open, and a large stuffed monkey on a piece of elastic jumped out.

  Then there was the ‘Bombardment of Alexandria’ in a large tent. This was a glorified magic lantern show, the forerunner of moving pictures. I have never enjoyed any London theatre more than I did that crude entertainment in my boyhood.

  There were ‘Try your strength’ towers, where you drove a weight with a large mallet up the tower where it rang a bell if you got it to the top. Farmers and labourers vied with each other at this trial of strength. One of our men could do this one-handed with ease, and used to coach the inefficient, much as a golf professional in later years supervised my beginner’s efforts. The words used by each teacher are different, but the meaning is the same. ‘Doan’t ’ee goo at un zo ravish. You wants to take it easy and suent, zno, but you wants to ketch un jist right. Like this.’