Farmer's Glory

by A G Street

  ‘What about you, Jim? Coming back next spring, or are you going soldiering?’ asked Henderson.

  ‘Oh, if the war’s over, I guess I shall be back in time for seeding.’

  ‘Like hell you will,’ said Haines. ‘Think your father’s going to finance you in a farm over here when he’s got one at home for you? ’Sides, you’d be a blame fool to come back. Betcha I’d like the chance to farm at home. No work to do. Just ride round and do the heavy. I guess it’ll be hard luck on you if this war ain’t soon over, ’cause of course, you’ll join up.’

  I supposed that I would join up, but I was more immediately concerned with leaving a place where I had been so perfectly happy and contented for three years. Still, good-byes to Mrs. Henderson and her kiddies were at last said, Henderson drove us to Barloe for the last time, and when the train pulled out, I confess it, my eyes were wet with tears, and they are not exactly dry at this moment as I write.

  I said further good-byes to Ben and Joe in Winnipeg, and journeyed down to New York, as I was sailing on the Lusitania from that port.

  It is curious how little trivial things stick in one’s mind to the exclusion of more important ones. All I can remember about that land journey is that the moment we crossed the Canadian line I seemed conscious that I was no longer under the British flag. I stayed one night in Buffalo, which was full of Germans and had a definitely German bias at that date. However, I made friends with the Scottish bar-tender at the hotel, and he shepherded my steps that evening.

  Of New York I remember two things, one being that the taxi-driver, who drove me to the Belmont Hotel, refused to take Canadian money, and was most offensive. The policeman who was called in to settle the dispute treated me in a similar manner, and I was at the age to resent such treatment, and did so.

  After much bad language the difficulty was solved by my getting some Canadian bills changed into U.S. currency at the Belmont, an hotel which catered for Canadians. The only other thing I remember was that I ate a good meal of devilled kidneys in the grill-room, for which they charged me four dollars, and the waiters watched my prowess at the table with amazement and admiration.

  We saw a few destroyers on the voyage, and I heard a lot about the war, which made me realize that it was a serious business. I also realized afterwards what a ghastly business the sinking of the Lusitania must have been.

  I forget which land we first sighted. It may have been Ireland, or it may have been Wales. But it was green. That seemed wonderful, for I had left a white world. I do not think I shall ever forget that first sight of British coasts.

  England, when I landed, seemed strange and crowded. There were people everywhere, and I felt an alien in my fur coat. And if Liverpool seemed crowded, London was a black dirty hive. There were soldiers everywhere, and all the talk was of war. I taxied across London to Waterloo station where a girl presented me with a white feather. This England seemed a very strange country, and I preferred Canada.

  But when, on my arrival at my home station, I could see Tommy and the trap outside, and found my father beaming on the platform, I knew that I was home at last.

  PART III

  THE WANING OF THE GLORY

  CHAPTER XVI

  In spite of the war, I found home life little changed. My father was decidedly more crippled with rheumatism, and walked with two sticks, but mentally he was as alert and vigorous as of old, while my mother did not appear to have altered at all. She was still a staunch churchwoman, and took me to service with her on the Sunday morning after my arrival home.

  That also seemed unchanged save that the congregation sang ‘God Save the King’ with martial ardour rather than reverence at the close of the service. When the clergyman came to the finish of the exhortation with the words ‘Saying after me’, there was the same old ‘rumble rumble rumble’ as we knelt down. The choir still sang the fugue at the end of the ‘Te Deum’, which gave me great joy. The same choirman boomed out the bass bit of it: ‘Let-me-nev-er-be-e-e-con-fow-ow-ounded’; and the congregation heaved the same unconscious sigh of relief when the organist successfully brought his wandering vocal flock into the fold on the final ‘confounded’. The schoolchildren made just the same clatter when they came in, and presumably the same two sparrows twittered in the roof.

  I renewed my friendships with the farm men. There were a few new faces, and one or two old friends, notably Dick Turpin, had died, but the majority were just the same. The foreman ‘allowed as ’ow I’d fallen abroad smartish’. The shepherd asked: ‘Did ’ee ’ave any sheep out abroad?’ and when I told him ‘No’, he shook his head as though Canada must be a poorish sort of place. The groom-gardener welcomed me with open arms. ‘I’ve a got a stunnin’ trip o’ young ferrets, just fit fer work, and there’s plenty o’ rabbits. The Guvnor han’t bin well enough to go atter ’em, and they keepers don’t half do it.’ The old dairyman said: ‘Guvnor’ll be main glad to ’ave ’ee back. ’Ee do falter a bit. You be gwaine to bide yer, I s’pose?’

  The dairyman at the home dairy surveyed me with scornful approval. ‘Humph,’ he snorted. ‘Made zummat out o’ ’ee abroad then, somebody. ’Ave ’em taught ’ee any sense?’ I grinned and said that they had done their best. ‘Then let’s hope thee’t use it. There’s a duty in front ov ’ee.’

  ‘Soldiering?’ I queried. ‘No!’ he said shortly, and continued his churn-washing, as though the conversation was finished. ‘Then what duty, Frank?’ I asked. ‘If thee cassent see it, ’tis no use talking. Why, damn it altogether, ’tis stickin’ out a voot.’

  I knew what he meant, and about a fortnight after my return we came to it. During this time I had got some idea of the war position as related to our immediate neighbourhood. Nearly all the lads I knew had enlisted, and I decided that I must follow suit. Quite frankly, I don’t think that I came to this decision on any patriotic grounds. I had been brought up during a period when soldiers as a class were looked down on, and I did not want to become one. I wanted to return to Canada, but at the time to enlist was the thing to do, and youth usually chooses the popular thing as the easiest way out. Besides, at my age I did not want to be out of the hunt.

  As the war had completely prevented any idea of a holiday in England, my father asked me what I was going to do. I told him that I had intended returning to Canada in the spring, but that under present conditions I must enlist. When I said this I suddenly realized how old and feeble he was. ‘I can say nothing against your wanting to enlist,’ he said heavily, ‘although God knows I want you here. I never thought to see a son of mine a soldier, but, at your age I should enlist as things are to-day.’

  Thinking that I would prefer to ride, I tried to join the Yeomanry, and, to my great annoyance and astonishment, I was rejected as unfit on the grounds of flat feet. This was a great blow to my pride, as I had always reckoned that I could hold my own with other young men at anything until then. My feet may not have been of the regulation pattern, but, dash it, I could ride. I returned home railing against the authorities, who did not know a good man when they saw one, and did not realize my good fortune in the least.

  My father scarcely disguised his satisfaction at the way things had turned out. ‘Now, don’t think about Canada, Jim. There’s a man’s job here for you, and I need you. ’Tis getting beyond me. I can’t do without you.’

  This was an appeal which I could not ignore. There is, and I suppose always will be, something in family ties. For a strong independent character like my father to admit that he needed me, his son, touched me very much, and it must have cost him something to say. We fixed it up that I should help him at home until the war was over, when the idea of my farming on my own in England or in Canada should be reasonably considered. So I wrote to Billy Page that I should not be returning until this German squabble was finished, and settled down in the routine of English farming once again.

  And it was being carried on in just the same manner as of old, with the Hampshire Down flock as its ruling motive, against which the da
irying side was rebelling as before, but much more strongly. Naturally, I considered many of the methods, especially the methods of cultivation, as being archaic and expensive, and having now the authority of experience, I pointed out this to my father and the foreman. Those two worthies had seen a heap of young men make mistakes through scorning old and tried things, and although they listened to me with interest, they altered nothing.

  At this time wages were still at the pre-war figure, and only a few of the younger labourers had enlisted. In the spring of 1915 the military authority commenced to build camps all around our neighbourhood. This altered the labour market with a vengeance. Boys who were not yet of military age, were at a premium, and could get three times as much money as their fathers, by working for the contractors who were constructing the new camps. At that period the farms in our neighbourhood would have been denuded of almost all labour, but for the fact that the married men lived in the farm cottages.

  The labourers’ wages rose from twelve shillings weekly to eighteen shillings, with the customary effect of rendering the men less valuable as workmen. I do not say this in any sarcastic spirit. I am simply stating a fact. When an employee thinks that he is indispensable to his employer, his value is lessened, and this sudden rise in wages of fifty per cent told all the men that they could not be done without. Young carters being especially in demand for camp-hauling, we were hard put to it to man our six two-horse single-furrow plough teams, so I suggested a carter driving three horses on a double-furrow plough.

  The foreman said flatly: ‘I tell ’ee double ploughs bain’t no good on thease farm.’ I said that I knew that they would do; whereupon he said: ‘I do know. Nobody can’t tell I nothin’ about a plough.’ ‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s your trouble. You don’t know, and you can’t be told.’

  There we were in six months back at the same deadlock, as when I left home nearly five years before. However, the shortage of labour forced my father to give a double plough a trial after the harvest. He left the choice of make to me, and I got one with rolling coulters in addition to those of the usual knife pattern.

  When it arrived, I asked the foreman if he wanted me to start it, and was informed that he had driven a double plough some thirty years before. So I left them to it. They started with it on the piece of land from which the mangolds had been carted. This land was covered with mangold leaves, which were pushed up by the knife coulters into a tight heap in under the beams of the plough, thus bunging it up solid. I arrived in the middle of this, and the foreman said triumphantly: ‘What did I tell ’ee?’ I inquired the whereabouts of the rolling coulters. ‘Oh, they wheel things? They bain’t no good.’ ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘Have you ever seen any before?’ He was forced to admit that he had not, whereupon the carter chuckled.

  I am afraid that I appear rather priggish over this business, but I am telling it as it happened. I will readily admit that the foreman was a good, reliable, honest servant, but he could be, and had been, very annoying, and I could not hide my satisfaction at getting one up.

  I sent for the rolling coulters, took off the knife ones, and fitted the new type. ‘Now then, Bill,’ I said to the carter, ‘get on with it.’ The horses started and the plough went smoothly along, the rolling coulters dividing the mangold leaves, and doing their job perfectly. The carter’s comment, ‘Coo, I’m b——’ speaks for itself. And later on in the day I overheard him say to his mates: ‘There be zummat in wot ’ee says.’ That was indeed high praise.

  From that date more and more responsibility devolved on to my shoulders, and I began to forget Canada. One transplants easily in youth. I can see now that I was then obviously the right man in the right place. Until that date English farming had always been equipped with a sufficient staff of labour to cope with any weather contingency. Then we had only a bare sufficiency to carry on that system of farming under ideal weather conditions, which never continued for long. Consequently, the experience of a man who was accustomed to farming with almost an entire absence of labour, was, to say the least of it, useful.

  And I could do any and every job myself. That beats employees every time. I can remember fitting sheaf-carriers to the binders for the next harvest. These appliances drop the sheaves in fours or fives at regular intervals, thus saving the labour of gathering the single sheaves together from where they have fallen from the machine. The men said that this hindered them in ‘hiling’ the sheaves. I laughed, and asked them how many acres a man could ‘hile’ under the old method. They put it at six acres daily, so single-handed I ‘hiled’ sixteen acres of oats one day behind a sheaf-carrier, after which I heard no more about its disadvantages.

  I think that my father held the balance between ‘impetuous youth’ and ‘crabbed age’ very skilfully and justly, playing us off against each other to his own advantage. At this sort of thing he was a master. He paid me one pound weekly in addition to my board and lodging at home, and this cash payment rose to thirty shillings at the end of my first year at home. And he was a man who always reckoned to get value for money.

  Of course, every product and every need of the farm mounted steadily in price as time went on, and it was this fact which led me to my first business gamble on my own account. Egyptian cotton cake, which had remained stationary at about five pounds per ton for several years, now had reached ten pounds per ton, at which price a merchant in the local market town besought my father to purchase for forward delivery. He refused, and rather guiltily I bought twenty tons on my own one September for delivery after Christmas. In the following January the dairy and flock of sheep required large quantities of this feeding stuff. My father found out in the market that the lowest current price of this commodity was twelve pounds per ton, whereupon I offered him my purchase at eleven pounds ten shillings. He was annoyed in one sense, but greatly pleased that I had started in business, and paid up smilingly, saying: ‘You’ve made some money, Jim, but you’ve learnt nothing. Go on until you lose some, and then you’ll have learnt a valuable lesson. I’ll finance your operations.’

  In the fall of 1916 my father sold off his Hampshire Down flock. Our regular staff had so dwindled that the needs of the flock had become a constant nightmare. Besides, sheep were dearer than they had ever been in his memory, which made it seem sound policy to sell out. The shepherd was heartbroken, although we were only giving up the breeding of sheep. We were still going to keep a fatting flock going, by buying in store lambs according to the season’s supply of keep, and fatting them for the local market. But our shepherd had always had a regular breeding flock, and could not entertain an existence without them. ‘I don’t want to leff, zur, but I shan’t be ’appy wi’out a lambin’ flock.’

  Owing to the shortage of labour he had no difficulty in getting another post in charge of a breeding flock, and in his place we acquired another shepherd to look after the proposed fatting flock. This shepherd was a man of parts. As my father said: ‘He had an open mind.’ He certainly needed one, for sometimes he would be swamped with sheep, and at others there would perhaps be none at all for several weeks until a favourable opportunity to buy store lambs occurred.

  This type of sheep farming suited us all during that difficult time. It suited my father, as he was now master of the sheep situation instead of the flock ruling his farming operations: it suited the foreman as there was less urgency in the necessary work for the sheep; and it suited me, as it enabled me to start trading in sheep on my own account.

  I began by buying little lots of store sheep at the local markets, and paying my father for their keep until I sold them. As sheep kept steadily going up and up, I kept on making money at this game, and thought it was a simple business and also that I was a clever chap. My father egged me on.

  Accordingly, my ventures got bigger and bigger, and one June I bought a hundred regular draft ewes from a neighbouring farmer for three guineas each. I paid my father sixpence per head per week for their keep, and a month afterwards I offered them for sale at a local fai
r The bidding only reached sixty shillings a head, so I brought them home again, in spite of my father’s ‘First loss is best loss, Jim’.

  I tried to sell them again at another fair about a month later with a similar result, and eventually disposed of them at sixty-two shillings per head some three months after I had purchased them. During this time my father entered up against my name his bill of fifty shillings for their keep each week with great glee. This deal cost me nearly forty pounds, which loss he said was buying experience well worth the money. I do not think that I profited by that experience as I should have done, although it steadied my immediate trading operations.

  I was becoming more responsible for the management of the working of the farm, but my father, wise man, kept the business end under his own control, and he would hobble about the markets and fairs on his two sticks, thoroughly enjoying the combat of buying and selling. Only when his rheumatism prevented him from travelling was I entrusted with any business.

  The first time this happened I was sent with the dairyman to buy three heifers and calves at the local market. Full of pride, I set off with him in the milk float, but he soon pointed out not only the impossibility of satisfying my father’s requirements, but also my own incompetence for any business of this character.

  ‘Now, ’tis no manner o’ use fer you to think as ’ow you be gwaine to be clever, and buy zummat cheap. There’s a limb ov a lot o’ cleverer vellers than thee in market. ’Sides, whatever we do buy, ’ll sure to be too dear fer the Guvnor. Best thing fer we to do is to buy dree good uns, and then all as ’ee can grumble about ’ll be the price.’

  The more I thought this over the sounder it seemed, so we picked out three of the best heifers, and bought them at about forty pounds each. When we returned with our purchases my father hobbled over into the yard to inspect them. He grudgingly admitted that they seemed to be ‘niceish’ cattle, but when I told him the price he raised his two sticks to high heaven, and said: ‘My God! The best cow I ever had I gave eight pounds for.’ And he hobbled away leaving me with the impression that bankruptcy was imminent.