Farmer's Glory

by A G Street

  I must have shown my dismay, for the dairyman said: ‘Now, doan’t ’ee worry. We’ve a got dree good heifers, and ’ee do know it. You didn’t expect fer un to praise ’ee, surely. ’Twouldn’ be natural. Praise do make young folk uppish.’

  Very certainly I was never allowed to get uppish. Looking back on my youth I cannot imagine anyone being very uppish with my father, although he was distinctly uppish with most people.

  Although my father was making money out of his farming at that time, neither he nor the men had any joy in it. There was no definite system. If the labour shortage made it impossible to do a certain job at a certain season, the fact of its being left undone was resented strongly. For instance, to have a good plant of rape and turnips, and to be unable to get them hand-hoed and singled out, rankled. Thinning them out by repeated harrowings was reckoned a poor job. To see banks untrimmed, ditches uncleaned, field corners not dug, and one’s farm generally untidy, hurt one’s proper pride. But there it was. There was only barely enough labour for essentials, and the frills had to be cut out. From 1916 the farms in the countryside were allowed to deteriorate or to ‘go back’, a local term which describes the situation admirably.

  Not only did the farms deteriorate in general appearance, but, very definitely, they did so in fertility. In our district, it was possible by good farming to grow two corn crops in four years on most of the land. Food shortage caused the Government to ask for an increased grain acreage, labour shortage fostered this demand and high prices made it an attractive proposition. Accordingly, sixty per cent or even more of the arable land was put into corn each year with a consequent loss in fertility. However this loss was not apparent at that time, as the land had been treated fairly for generations previously, and could stand a fair amount of overcropping. But even if the corn-grower did well in those days, the grass farmer and milk-producer did better. Milk went up as did grain, and there was an eager and increasing demand for it.

  Home life was naturally not so spacious and carefree as in pre-war days, but there was no lack of prosperity. Amusements and pleasures were practically non-existent. One farmed, one made money, but war conditions made it impossible to enjoy it, so one carried on, as did every other class, hoping and longing for the finish of the war, and a return to normal conditions.

  It may seem curious, but I can remember less detail of that war period of farming than of earlier days. That time seems now as an unpleasant dream. There was no planning for future years—the future of all England seemed very dark and uncertain—but there was always more necessary work in front of us each morning than could possibly be done in the day. So we did what we could, day by day, and left the future to Providence.

  As livestock grew scarcer and dearer, it became necessary to go farther afield to buy store sheep for the fatting flock. Our bold Tommy, who was still hauling the governess cart as of yore, proved unequal to these new demands, more especially as the road traffic—ours was a camp district—had increased greatly. As my father regarded motor cars as his natural enemies, it was with many misgivings that he purchased a car, and instructed me to take on the duties of chauffeur.

  These duties were by no means easy. My father knew all about driving a horse and trap. Indeed, to go out with him for a drive was a liberal education for anybody. Amongst other things you learnt that, while Tommy ostensibly did the work, it was necessary for the driver and all the passengers to assist. The whole journey was a series of adventures and difficulties which it was only possible to overcome by team work. You sat back when going downhill, and you sat forward when going uphill. If you did not you were told about it plainly and very forcibly. On the level parts of the road there would be other trials. You circumvented the Scylla of the oncoming motor car on the one side, to be confronted with the Charybdis of a piece of paper in the hedge, at which Tommy was expected to shy, on the other.

  Amongst other things you learnt that no motorist had any road manners at all. Incidentally, my father’s were atrocious. When we passed a broken-down car, Tommy would be urged to his most spirited gait, and with a conscious air of superiority we bowled by. Motor cars meeting the trap, and endeavouring to pass at speed, would be slowed down by my father carrying his long whip at the horizontal right across the oncoming car’s path. On narrow roads Tommy was halted bang in the middle in a death or glory fashion, thus forcing the car to stop and allow an older and more dignified civilization to pass by at its leisure.

  But as Tommy’s highest speed was about eight miles per hour, and his customary gait only six, a motor car was the only way of accomplishing any journey of longer than eight miles. So, as I have said, a car was purchased, and I learnt to drive it. When I was pronounced efficient by my teacher, and had managed to return safely after a few journeys on my own, my father entrusted himself to my tender mercies. It was either that or letting me go alone to buy sheep, which would have been much too expensive a business in his opinion, and I have no doubt that he was right. So he put his own feelings on one side, and braved the terrors of the road with me.

  Mind you, on these expeditions he was still captain of the ship, and he hoped master of his fate also; I was but the mere engineer. He sat with one eye on the road and the other on the speedometer. Anything over fifteen miles per hour was considered speeding, and I drove that car for several months to the accompaniment of ‘Steady! Steady!’ For a long time he still sat forwards going uphill, and sat back with his feet braced against the footboards when going downhill. We literally stalked our corners, and we went carefully and slowly in traffic, usually in low gear. But we never had any serious mishap, and after a while he quite liked this new mode of transport.

  And then, quite suddenly, in the middle of the harvest of 1917 my father died. He was ill only a few days, and then he was gone, leaving a gap which it seemed could never be filled. I do not know whether I have drawn him quite fairly in this book. Like King John in one of A. A. Milne’s rhymes, ‘he had his little ways’, and I seem to have written chiefly concerning these. But unlike King John, if history tells us true, he had his ‘big ways’, and they were splendid. In my youth I railed often at many little things he did, but in every big crisis in my life I never turned to my father in vain. That is, I think, a wholesome memory for any man to leave to his son.

  I have often thought about my father since his death. I suppose that he might rightly be described as one of the Victorians. He certainly possessed the virtues of that era, and possibly the vices also. Personally I have no patience with the modern habit of sneering at the Victorians. Whatever else they may or may not have done, they did their job. They worked, and worked hard. To-day we are rather apt to point to them as people who lived their narrow sordid lives solely in the pursuit of material things. Bet that as it may, who are we to criticize them? The Victorians accomplished things, possibly to our modern view, in somewhat nasty fashion. Is it not possible that, by comparison, we Georgians accomplish nothing of note, and also that our efforts are conducted in a manner less admirable?

  CHAPTER XVII

  Immediately after my father’s death responsibilities were showered on me from all sides. I was a woefully thin and inadequate peg to fill such a large hole. A bare week ago my father had been there to make the final decision about anything, to act as the last court of appeal in our farming problems. And now he was dead and buried. It seemed unbelievable. Was I never again to go indoors, after my early round of the farm, and mount to his bedroom to report?

  Still, I had not much time for these vain wonderings. Suddenly I had become the last court of appeal. We were busy at harvest, and decisions had to be taken. So I took them, many wrongly I expect, but I took them. I had to do so—the men saw to that. They seemed to delight in finding problems for my handling, in order to find out how I would shape.

  The foreman decided that nothing was ever quite fit to stack, and presumably never would be now that my father was gone. ‘If you picks that up to-day, mind, I bain’t responsible.’ ‘No!’ I said. ‘
You aren’t, anyway, so we’ll pick it up.’ And I stacked everything on my own judgment, and chanced the consequences. Providence and the Clerk of the Weather proved to be on my side on this occasion, for everything went off all right.

  Then, before we had finished harvest, one of the men, Bill Avery, who lived in one-half of a double cottage, having a common front door, gave me a week’s notice on Friday night. There had been domestic trouble brewing between him and his neighbours for some time, and, but for the scarcity of labour, either Avery or his neighbour would have been sacked long since. But Avery was the better and more valuable man, and knew it.

  ‘I bain’t gwaine to bide long side o’ wold Fray and thic ’ooman o’ his no more. Either you gets rid o’ they, or I gies ’ee a wik’s notice.’

  While he launched forth into a list of Mrs. Fray’s iniquities, I thought it over. I would have a difficulty to replace Avery, but, dash it, badly as I might be managing the farm I was supposed to be managing it. Anyway, Avery was not, and very definitely he was not going to do so. To let him go was bad, but to keep him on his own terms would be worse. So I cut into his list of wrongs with: ‘That’s all right, Avery. I’ll take your notice as from to-night as you wish. Let the foreman have the key of the cottage next Saturday morning when you leave.’

  ‘Ho!’ he snorted. ‘I be to go, be I? Be I a dog to be turned out when thee’s alike?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘if you must know, you’re a silly fool, and you’re leaving your job and your house at your own wish. You’ve given me a week’s notice, which I’ve accepted, and that’s that. Good night. I’m too tired to argue.’

  Social reformers may consider this procedure heartless, and point to it as an example of rural tyranny, but subsequent events proved that it was the right course to take, and it definitely established my position as boss with all the men. If any one can point out a better solution to the difficulty, always bearing in mind that my job was to run the farm, I shall be glad to hear of it.

  This business with Avery impressed even the foreman. That worthy unbent quite graciously a day or two afterwards, and ‘allowed as I’d done a good job’. He was a veritable Biblical patriarch in appearance, and held the same ideas concerning women in their relative importance to men in the scheme of things as his Old Testament prototype. ‘Ay,’ he said, fingering his beard, ‘’tis a good job as Avery’s gwaine, but you maun finish it. Fray’s missus be that puffed up wi’ pride awver it, you maun set her to rights. She do fairly flaunt up and down the village. You ketch she one marnin’ an’ tell she off proper. It don’t do fer a ’ooman to get like that.’

  On reflection, this seemed to be sound advice, so I plucked up my courage and called on Mrs. Fray a few days later. She greeted me with a beaming smile, and almost bobbed a curtsey. Was I not her friend? Had I not taken her part against the hated Averys? She invited me to go inside.

  This would never do. I must say what I had to say on the doorstep, where the other village dames could overhear, or the effect would be lost. ‘No, Mrs. Fray,’ I said. ‘I won’t come in. I just called to warn you to be careful of your ways. The Averys are leaving, and I shall have some more folk next door in a day or so. Now mind, if you can’t agree with them, or if I hear one word of complaint, you and your husband will have to leave. I’m too busy to be worried with such nonsense, and you are old enough to know better. Good morning.’ And I hurried away up the lane feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself. Verily, there was a lot more to farming in those days than the mere growing of crops or raising of stock.

  However well or ill I may have managed the farm during the year following my father’s death, there is no doubt but that it was managed profitably. It was impossible to lose money at farming just then. Wages had gone up, but there was still a considerable time lag between them and the selling price of agricultural produce. For instance, I think it was in that summer of 1918 that we seeded ten acres of vetches. These had been planted for sheep feed, but as our fatting flock was a variable quantity, in this instance we had not required them. They yielded twenty-four bushels per acre, and I sold them for thirty shillings per bushel. This crop realized thirty-six pounds per acre, which was at least three times the freehold value of the land. Fancy feeding stuff of that value to sheep!

  As my father had died in August 1917, his executors received a year’s notice to quit the farm at Michaelmas, 1918. I had nothing like enough capital to take it on, but it was arranged that I should borrow the necessary from my mother at five per cent, and have a try at it. Accordingly, I interviewed the estate agent, and was informed that I could have the farm at nearly a hundred per cent increase in rental. I was also told that the estate was not going to bargain with me, that they could in all probability obtain an even higher rent in the open market—this was true—and that I must take it or leave it.

  During the last two years I had been called up by the military authorities many times, and it was about this time that I went up for another medical examination. The doctor in charge asked me how far I could walk at my own pace. I thought of my plodding behind a grain team in the Canadian snow, and told him twenty miles. He examined my feet again, informed me that I could not walk five miles, and that accordingly he should reject me for military service of any kind.

  Being therefore a comparatively free man, I arranged to take the farm at the estate agent’s terms as from Michaelmas 1918, and I got married that summer.

  That seems a rather bald way to mention such an important thing in a man’s life, but this book is intended to be primarily about agriculture. So of my wife I will say but little. She has put up with me and my varying moods for a good many years now, for which I hope I am sufficiently grateful. A husband, obviously, cannot be unbiased in his opinion of his wife, but the only serious differences which we have had up to date have been concerning the mysterious disappearance of all combs from my dressing-table since she succumbed to the prevailing fashion for short hair.

  My mother refused to carry on in the farmhouse after my marriage on the grounds that it was much too big and that to live alone in it after her full and busy life there would be too painful. So she made her home with one of her sisters, who lived a few miles off, and insisted that my wife and I should live in the farmhouse. I can see now that this was a big mistake on my part. We began where our respective parents had left off, which is always wrong. I must have had some faint glimmerings of common sense even in those days, for I can remember that I wanted my mother to stay in the big house, and let my wife and me go into a little house in the village. But I allowed myself to be over-persuaded against my better judgment. I suggested letting the house, and was told that the little I should gain by doing that would be more than lost because I should then not be living in the middle of my job. So I came back from my honeymoon to the house in which I had been born, and began gathering my mother’s last harvest. I was able to thresh her entire crop out of the harvest field that season, and to settle up all accounts with her at the end of her tenancy in October.

  I took off the whole of her stock and implements at valuation, which was calculated by a local auctioneer. There were no sheep, as I had so arranged things that the last lot of my mother’s fat sheep were sold in early October. Everything was dear, very dear, including sheep. Whilst I was quite willing to borrow money to purchase horses, cows, and implements at times prices, to borrow money to buy sheep at these high prices seemed to be too much of a gamble. Even the auctioneer, who was a sheep man, advised against such a risky course. Horses and implements were necessary; cows would bring in a return from their milk almost immediately; but it took a very long time to obtain any return from sheep. Besides, their cost would have increased my debt greatly and it was alarmingly large without them.

  I often chaff my mother to-day about her wisdom in going out of business at that time, and my own corresponding foolishness. But I knew the farm, I knew the men, and I thought I knew how to manage the place. Of course it is easy to be wise after the event, but what
a fool I was, what a silly, silly fool! What I should have done was to have managed the farm for my mother at a wage until to-day, for in spite of the present depression in farming, now is the time for a young man to start.

  But I did not think. I was born on that farm; it had always paid handsomely, and very certainly it was a paying proposition then, so I started farming on my own account eagerly and with no fears for the future, save the all-pervading fear of the outcome of the war.

  The estate had reduced the number of farm cottages considerably, so I sorted out the men in my mind, and engaged those whom I considered the most suitable. The foreman retired gracefully to a cottage of his own. He had a nice bit of money, my father had left him fifty pounds, and, as both he and his wife drew the Old Age Pension, they were fairly comfortable in their retirement.

  I cannot remember that I had decided on any definite rotation to follow. Broadly speaking, the idea was to grow a rather larger acreage of corn and of clover hay, and to summer-fallow most of the other arable land, which, under the old rotation, would have been growing feed for the flock. I would grow a certain amount of sheep feed, and get a neighbour to feed it off for me. This was much the same as the last year or so of my father’s farming, the only difference being that I proposed keeping more milking cows and no sheep of my own.

  As all the world knows, the war ended in the November, and it was as if a heavy weight had been lifted from the whole country. The reaction to this was that the whole population went pleasure mad. All classes indulged in a feverish orgy of all those sports and pastimes which had been impossible for four long weary years.