by A G Street
The cows were milked in the field in which they grazed, the outfit being moved on day by day to a fresh clean site. The cows were folded over the land almost like a flock of sheep, thus manuring the pastures. Instead of one having to cart the hay to the buildings to feed it, and then to haul the manure back to the fields, the hay could be stacked and fed in the field in which it was grown, while each and every cow became her own manure cart. This enabled one to farm, and, instead of impoverishing the land as by grain-growing, to enrich and improve the pastures year by year.
The cattle were definitely benefited in health, in cleanliness, and in temper. In health because of the sanatorium conditions of their open-air life all the year round: in cleanliness because they lay on clean grassland instead of in dirty, mucky yards or buildings, and in temper—an important point this—because they were never driven along roads, and hustled into buildings to be tied up. In this paragraph I have referred to buildings as dirty and mucky. What I mean is that buildings inhabited by cows will be dirty and mucky, if they are not cleaned out. Most dairy farmers do clean them out adequately, but this costs money to do, an expense which this new method did not entail.
Possibly that sentence about the cows not being tied up is a trifle obscure. The milking procedure was as follows. The herd was collected from the surrounding pasture into the chestnut paling enclosure. Six cows were then let into the six stalls of the portable shed or ‘bail’, and a chain was hooked round behind their rumps to prevent them from backing out. The concentrated feeding stuffs were carried in containers in the roof, and apportioned out to the cows into mangers by movable slides operated by the dairyman. The milk was drawn by mechanical milkers, then carried in a nickel pipe to the end of the shed, and finally deposited in the churn direct from the cows’ udders.
When a cow was finished milking, the dairyman pulled a wire rope and a door opened in front of her nose, through which she walked into the pasture, to resume her life under natural conditions once more. The engine house and milking shed were lighted with electricity for the dark mornings of the winter, and there was a folding veranda outside the cow stalls to shelter the men in bad weather.
When my men came to know that I was giving up the larger portion of the farm and going in solely for outdoor dairying on the remainder, they disapproved very strongly. They had heard about this new system of dairying, and regarded it as idiotic. ‘Mid be all right in summer time,’ they said, ‘but who’s gwaine to milk outdoor in winter? Whoi, it bain’t feasible.’
One man frankly said that the inventor should be strung up by the neck out-of-doors to see how he liked it, and also that he, the speaker, would be pleased and proud to haul on the rope on such an occasion.
I could sense that trouble was brewing, and began to find out which of the men were willing to have a shot at the new job. I had at that time a good foreman. He was hard-working, conscientious, and had always studied my interests, but his heart was in ploughing and corn-growing, where, incidentally, is mine also. At that time I was paying him as foreman of an arable farm, fifty shillings weekly plus his house and various other advantages. I offered him the same money to carry on at the new job the following year, and to my great astonishment he refused, saying that he would sooner starve. ‘Farming’s done, I reckon,’ he said, ‘if ’tis come to capers like that. I shall get a job somewhere else where I can drive a tractor.’
The only man who viewed the thing at all reasonably was my old dairyman, but he was seventy years old, and therefore out of the question as an active participant in this new method. Still, he was cheering. ‘I’ve a seed a main few things in me time,’ he said, ‘and I bain’t gwaine to say as ’ow nothin’s no good till I’ve a seed un tried.’
As I should want but very few men under this new system, I decided to purchase the outfit in the spring of 1928, while I still had the full staff of the two farms, and see which men showed any aptitude for it. I had at that time a dairyman with a family of sons milking my large dairy herd at the home farm, and as I should now want but two milkers, and he wanted work for about five, he would not entertain the new job, which was understandable.
There is a streak of obstinacy in me somewhere—I have yet to meet a farmer without it—and these repeated refusals made me the more determined to go on with the business. ‘Blow the men,’ I said to myself. ‘I’ll do it without them.’ Accordingly, I gave the dairyman and his family notice to leave at Lady Day, March 25th, and took a pupil, finding him in board and lodging in return for his work.
This succeeded, admirably. The new outfit arrived in March, my pupil came a day or so before, and the dairyman and his family departed to a fresh job as arranged thus reducing my labour bill by about eight pounds weekly.
My pupil, Walter Bailey, was a townsman of about twenty, and he had never had any intimate dealings with cows in his life prior to coming to me. I imagine that he had only seen cattle grazing at a distance from the roadside. Thinking I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I made him head dairyman for the new outfit. This was not so silly as it sounds. Granted, he knew nothing about cows, but he knew as much about the running of the new outfit as any of us, and that was precisely nothing. But he was eager to learn.
We began one afternoon to break in some forty-seven cows to the new machine, which we had hauled into a forty-acre pasture. We should have been better advised to have placed it in a smaller field, but this we were not to find out until the following morning.
That afternoon was a picnic. All cows have minds of their own, and these decided that the new shed held no attractions for them. Some were driven into it, others pushed in, and a great number had to be literally carried into it. Strangely enough, they did not object to the mechanical method of milking, and stood quietly enough as a general rule while this business was proceeding. I imagine that they were too scared at the strange experience to object.
But we got precious little milk. This herd of cows had been regularly recorded, and the previous twenty-four hours they had given ninety-three gallons of milk: fifty-eight gallons in the morning, and thirty-five in the afternoon. That afternoon we got only seventeen gallons from them, as they refused to let their milk down, in the same way as they refuse to do so to a strange hand-milker. However, by dint of much coaxing, allied at times to brute force, to say nothing of its usual companion— ‘b—— ignorance’, we got them all through the performance, and went home to our teas.
Walter Bailey must have found the next morning a weird experience. For a town lad to rise at 4 a.m. and to wander out into a dark wet world inhabited by angry cows and still angrier human beings must have been rather terrifying. Of course, it was raining. During many years’ experience of agriculture I have always found that whenever one wanted a particular type of weather on a particular day for a particular job, the Clerk of the Weather invariably ordained exactly the opposite type. I suppose that this occurs just to point out that it is arrogant and presumptuous for any mere human being to arrange the night before to do anything next day dependent on the morrow’s weather conditions.
We started at 4 a.m., as we needed to start milking at five, and we had anticipated a little difficulty in getting the herd into the enclosure. A little difficulty! Ye gods! The labours of Hercules must have been child’s play compared with it.
There were about six of us, including a man sent to instruct us by the makers of the outfit. We found the herd and proceeded to drive them towards the enclosure. They went quietly enough until they got quite near to the outfit, and then they stampeded in all directions.
If there was one corner of that pasture to which those cows were not going, it was the one which was occupied by the outfit. ‘Anywhere but there’ was their motto. Why should respectable aged ladies be subjected to these new indignities? Where were their old comfortable buildings in which each one had her particular stall by right of long tenancy? And who were these fools who persisted in attempting to drive them away from their old home?
I can st
ill visualize it all quite distinctly. Two bobbing lights moving to meet each other, as their carriers ran in a futile endeavour to stop the cattle. Dark shapes of cows on the skyline, streaming away between the lights, with their tails waving high in derision. The vapour of their breath in the lantern-light, when, after rushing straight towards us, they wheeled with hoarse snorts of rage and disgust at a few yards’ range. The squelch of one’s rubber boots, the tumbles at full length on the wet grass, sodden endeavours to relight one’s lantern when this happened, the sound of bad language floating up from all sides through the wet dark, and over all the rain, the persistent steady rain of southern England, which not only damped us physically, but which sapped all our courage and endeavour.
And then, just when we had almost decided to wait for daylight, a final attempt succeeded, and we started the engine and began milking.
There was comparatively little difficulty in getting the cows into the shed when their turn came as compared with the previous afternoon’s performance. The memory of an abundant feed of cake in this strange building was still fresh in their minds. Also they decided to give down their milk, for that morning we got seventy gallons, and went home well pleased to a substantial breakfast.
In four days the milk yield reached its pre-machine standard of ninety-three gallons, and in a week’s time it had gone up to one hundred and one gallons. Walter took to the job as a duck to the water. I put a young dairy lad with him to strip the cows after the machine, and in a fortnight the two of them managed the whole job without assistance. In a very short while the chief difficulty was to keep the cows from forcing their way into the shed before a vacancy was ready, and a gate had to be rigged up between the bail and the enclosure to keep them out until their proper turn.
That year, as I remember it, was a fairly good season. Grain prices were down again, but the drop did not take place until about October. As I was giving up grain-growing, I threshed everything out of the harvest field in order to be able to sell my threshing machinery at my outgoing sale in October, and by doing so I made a fair price on my grain.
A farm sale always appears to me as a depressing sight. Whether its cause be death, sickness, failure, or even success, there is always the sense of a painful uprooting in the background. Ploughs, binders, and other implements, which often look majestic while in the performance of their proper duties, present a mournful appearance when exposed for sale in monstrous, gaunt, unsightly rows. Horses and other livestock are not simply business stock-in-trade, but intimate companions, with whom one has lived and toiled, with whom one has suffered defeat and achieved success. To see them all exposed for sale under the auctioneer’s hammer, to see crowds of keen buyers hunting for their imperfections, and, above all, to admit publicly that one cannot carry on, hurts, and hurts badly.
But I had a good sale, although, as I was keeping my cows, I had chiefly only implements to offer. The utter failure of corn-growing with its attendant grassing-down policy had not yet occurred, and there was still a fair demand for ploughland implements.
However, in spite of this fact, I had a good sale, chiefly, I know, through the good offices of my friends, for which I thank them. There is, I know, a general impression abroad that farmers are self-seeking, grasping folk as a class. This idea has been fostered by many books during the last twenty years. To depict a farmer as a ruthless tyrant, oppressing his employees, and cheating his neighbours, seems to be a popular method. But my own experience with them, both in this country and in Canada, has been a very pleasant thing. I have always found my farming neighbours ever ready to give a helping hand, and I can say quite truthfully and frankly that without the help, advice, and sympathy of one or two of my farming friends in this country, I should have been down and out long since.
In looking back on my life I must confess that the bulk of the worth-while things in it are connected with friendship, which to me is all the more strange, when I think that I have lived my life chiefly struggling for material things, as do most of us, I fear.
Walter Bailey, who had run my milking outfit admirably that summer, came to me in July, and suggested that he was now competent to manage a farm of his own. After consultation with his father, I found a suitable small place for him, and he started on his own there that Michaelmas with seventy heifers, a milking outfit, and two men, after but six months’ experience. He had learnt this new milking business, and he had seen one haymaking, but there was nothing else to it, as his farm was all grass.
It is interesting to record that he made a success of things after such a short training. On a capital of about twenty-three hundred pounds he paid five per cent interest and made a handsome profit during his first year’s farming, and, for aught I know to the contrary, he is still doing well. His success was due to his own personality, to his capacity for work, and to his tenacity of purpose, but in a small way I take to myself some little credit for it. He benefited from the mistakes which I had made and paid for during the previous years.
CHAPTER XXI
Just prior to my sale I planned out my future farming campaign, especially as to which men and implements to take with me. I reviewed the position honestly, and found that it was worse than I had imagined. I thought of my criminally foolish extravagances of some years before, and came to the conclusion that there was no bigger fool in all the county. It was particularly galling to fail now that I felt convinced that I had at long last discovered a possible way out. But it was the back debts of my ploughland farming which were beating me.
Still, it was no use worrying about past mistakes, and the only way to combat the future was by hard work, and rigid economy. Golf had long become only a very occasional game on a Sunday afternoon, but even that must cease. Tennis and shooting also must be given up, not partially but altogether. It was no use messing about at economy, so I sold my golf clubs and arranged for a rabbit-trapper to catch my rabbits at so much per couple, instead of inviting merry parties of my friends to shoot them. Now, if I was not going to play at all, I should have to do something or I should get into mischief, so the best thing would be to tie myself down to a job of work which should take all my waking hours.
I should therefore need very few men. It was a beastly business saying good-bye to many old and trusted employees, but it had to be done. I had about a hundred cows, and should need two hands for them besides a general labourer for the water meadows, thatching, hedging, and other farm work. I arranged with a young man who had just been demobilized after service abroad to take on the milking outfit. He had no previous knowledge of dairying but was willing to learn and, after my experience with Walter Bailey, I felt that willingness to learn was the most important qualification required for this job. I kept on my ‘drowner’, who was willing and able to work on the milking outfit in emergencies. I should require no carters, as my remaining two horses were to live outdoors with the cows, their only work being hauling hay and cake for the dairy. I myself would be the other man on the milking outfit, and that would be that—a small but efficient staff.
There would be no work other than dairying until next year’s haymaking, and that bridge could be crossed somehow when the time came. The foreman had gone to his new job, and the remaining men must take their chance of employment with the incoming tenant on the farm which I was quitting. The groom-gardener would be unnecessary. He was heartbroken, but there would be no place for a groom-gardener in this new scheme of things. My farming from now on had to be cold-blooded business and nothing else; there would be no horses to groom, no car to clean, and the garden must take its chance.
But I found a job for my old dairyman. This was ninety-nine per cent common sense and perhaps one per cent sentiment. There were a small number of the older cows who did not take kindly to the mechanical milking after many years of the hand method, and it would pay to have the old man to look after them. Besides his knowledge of cattle would be valuable. Anyway, he was over seventy, and if he stopped work altogether, it would break his heart and finish
him up in a very short time. And, if any further reasons are required as to why I employed him, well, just because. Anyway, he came over to the home farm with me, and proved a veritable tower of strength at all times, especially in times of adversity.
And in this fashion we settled down to that winter’s work. It was almost a return to my Canadian life. I rose at four-thirty and milked, returning home to breakfast about seven-thirty. From breakfast until dinner time Dick Williams, my new ex-soldier dairyman, and I, hauled hay out to the cows, moved on the outfit to a fresh site, and did other necessary jobs in connection with it. After dinner we milked again, fed the cows their evening allowance of hay, and returned to the buildings. The old dairyman milked his few cows, washed the churns, and cooled the milk ready for dispatch by rail to London. Dick’s last job was to take the milk to the station, whilst I would go over into the meadows to see how Bill Turner, the drowner, was getting on with the irrigation work.
And that was our life that winter; a daily round, a dreary monotonous furrow if you like, from which there was no escape either on weekdays or Sundays. But the fact that it could not be dodged was its strong point. Instead of our work depending on the weather conditions, the weather was ignored. The farm had become a factory. In good weather it was pleasant to do our job, in bad weather it was unpleasant, sometimes very much so, but always our job was done. Every time I paid Dick his weekly wage of forty-five shillings, he had, with my help, milked my cows, fourteen times, whatever the weather conditions might have been. I was paying only for services rendered.
The old dairyman had done much the same with his little herd, and as the drowner was doing the meadows at a piecework price, I was only paying out for profitable work. Therein lies the strength of grass farming of any kind. Contrast it with the arable method. Carters and horses idle perhaps for a month or more owing to frost, and similar hindrances and wastages caused by weather conditions throughout the year.