The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  The recent practice did, however, differ in one particular from the above: the baiters’ mates, who were not normally allowed to feed the horses, were expected in addition to cleaning out this yard, to rack the horses up for the night—that is, to fill their racks with fodder. And they usually filled the racks with stover.

  A yard such as Arthur Young described is to be seen in its classical form at Morston Hall, Trimley. With the stables and the stalls and the sheds around it, it covers three-quarters of an acre; and the whole is as compact and square as a Roman fort. On one side are the long stables, without stall divisions, with the root-house at one end, the chaff-house in the middle with the corn-bin not very far away from the chaff; and, at the other end, the groom’s room where the head horseman sat up at night whenever a mare was expected to foal. On the adjoining side, on the left of the yard, is the open shed, complete with stover-racks, where at night the horses could shelter and take their bait. On the other two sides of the square are the boxes, or separate stalls for horses. At the time of writing this huge agricultural fort held one horse, though at one time it held a hundred—thirty or forty working horses, and the rest a breeding stud of Suffolks.

  Mrs Leslie More (born 1884), of the family of Newson Garrett of Aldeburgh and Richard Garrett a well-known breeder of Suffolks, gave a glimpse of the way the horses were stabled before they were turned out into the yard in the evening:

  ‘On many farms the Suffolks were all crammed into a long barn and head-roped to a rail running its length. No stall divisions. When staying, years ago, with my mother at Thorpe, I saw the Punches crowding into their barn, on a farm near Friston. “Is that safe?” I asked. “Won’t they get snagged up and do each other harm?” The farmer laughed: “They? Not likely. They fare to be all one family and each knows his place.”’

  Yet another quotation14 serves to pick out and sum up the salient points in a horseman’s day. Although, like the Arthur Young account just quoted, it refers to a period about 150 years ago, it is in its essentials a true description of a horseman’s life right up to the First World War—a time that brought in so many changes in the organisation of the farm and the rural village community:

  ‘When I became a horseman, a day’s work was to be out with the horses from breakfast to nearly three o’clock. In summer this was, except for busy times such as haysel, very easy work; and I had simply, when I returned, to give the horses a bait of corn and chaff, rub them down and then turn them out to grass. But in winter it was different. The horses’ coats were thicker, and they perspired heavily at their work, so to thoroughly groom them took a long time. Besides, as they had worked on heavy land a considerable quantity of soil adhered to their legs and bodies, all of which I had to remove…. In winter they were turned out, after I had my supper, into a straw-yard, which had an open shed. The rule was “early to bed and early to rise” so that as soon as we had done with the horses we were off to bed. When hoeing wheat the men worked from six to six, and a day’s work on haysel depended on the weather. Men living in the house (as this man was) were not expected to leave the premises without the master’s permission; and in winter there was not much opportunity to do so even if desired.

  ‘Before coming to the farm I had considerable practice with the plough; but I could not, as it was called “take my work and leave it”, and it was a long time before I could draw a furrow so as to satisfy the farmer’s critical eye.’

  A family memory, dating back to the end of last century, gives a final view of the horseman’s job. George Garrard (born 1891) farmed, until a few years ago, at Gislingham; and it is from north Suffolk that this story comes: ‘My father went to work on the farm as a boy of eleven. Later, when he started ploughing he had to go into the fields before it was light, so he’d have to scheme round in the dark to find the whipple-trees.15 He became a head horseman on that farm; and on Saturday night the farmer used to give him a gold sovereign and tell him:

  ‘“Pay owd Sam out o’ thet.”

  That were ten shillings and sixpence for the head horseman and nine-and-six for the second.’

  1 E.V.C., pp. 119, 120.

  2 A judge: he uses upright sticks to estimate the straightness of the furrow.

  3 The metal ‘spouts’ down which the seed from the drill runs into the soil; often called counters in the dialect.

  4 G.V.A.C.S., p. 46.

  5 A.F.C.H., p. 126.

  6 Ploughs and Ploughing, Thomas Constable, Edinburgh (pamphlet).

  7 E.V.C., p. 124.

  8 Y.A.G., p. 171.

  9 E.V.C., p. 118.

  10 E.V. C., p. 124 and 382: see also A.O.S., p. 295.

  11 E.V.C., pp. 382–3 He also quotes Varro: iugum—quod juncti boves uno die exarare possint.

  12 The Times, 1st March, 1958.

  13 G.V.A.C.S., p. 219.

  14 The Autobiography of a Farm Labourer with Recollections of Incidents etc in Suffolk (1816–1876), The Suffolk Mercury, 1894.

  15 Or swingle-trees; a whipple-tree is a wooden cross-bar (pivoted at the middle) to which the traces of the horse are fastened. The whipple-trees were fixed to a pommel-tree, a similar but longer cross-bar, which in turn was fixed to the plough.

  3

  The Horseman’s Year

  In order to show how essential was the horse at almost every step in the progress of the farming year, it would be profitable at this stage to list the various tasks that lay before the horseman in fixed order—as far as weather and circumstance permitted—as soon as that year began. The account is based mainly on Arthur Chaplin’s relating of the sequence at Stowupland Hall: each farm had its own variations but the main framework of events was, from their nature, the same in all essentials.

  Once the harvest was in the stack-yard, there was the seed-clover to cut, make and cart. Then the farmer set the men and horses to the spreading of muck on to the stubble. The details of this process will be recorded in a later chapter; but one can state at this point that muck-spreading was no casual, haphazard work but as carefully calculated and managed as the sowing of the corn. When they had finished muck-spreading at least two jobs were waiting—the pulling and topping of cattle-beet, and the winter ploughing. The beet was usually ready about the last week of October or the first week in November; therefore, if the previous job had finished early, the teams started on the long job of winter-ploughing before the men tackled the root-crop.

  Winter tares were then sown for use in the spring—mainly as food for the horses; and the sowing of winter beans came next—a task that was usually completed by a fortnight after Michaelmas—the 29th of September. ‘But you had to start early if you were a-ploughing the beans in, as that was a very slow job.’ When the beans had been sown they began drilling the winter-wheat. Two, three or even four horses were used for this job, according to the size of the drill and the nature of the land. On the very heavy land where they used a full stetch drill (a nine-foot one for twelve-furrow work, for instance), they harnessed four horses to the drill—two walking at length in each furrow.

  After the wheat-drilling the mangels or cattle-beet were ready for carting off and clamping. As soon as this job was over the horsemen returned to the winter-ploughing; for all the ploughing had to be finished, and the ploughs set-up—taken off the fields and stored away in barn or shed—before Christmas. It was bad husbandry if the ploughing was not done by this time; and the horsemen went to great lengths to avoid the reproach of ‘being behind’. Harry Groom (born 1894) a Needham Market horseman, recalled: ‘If you were behind with pulling your turnips or mangels, and it were getting near Christmas, you used to plough right up to ’em—as soon as they’d pulled a row of roots we came along with the plough; so when the last row was off, the field was almost ploughed.’

  After Christmas, when bad weather was usual, the horses had a rest; and the horsemen kept themselves busy with fencing and various jobs about the farm—cleaning out stack-yards and repairing implements and gear. At this time, too, there was an occasiona
l day of threshing. ‘The seed-barley was thrashed and stored as a regular procedure; and sometimes, when the farmer was short of money, he’d have one of his stacks of corn thrashed. But, of course, he didn’t put it just like that: ‘We’re getting short of chaff for the horses,” he say, “we’ll have to have the engine”. A rare bit o’ chaff that was, and it used to make us men smile.’

  If the weather in February was at all good they drilled the spring beans and the peas; and the spring tares or vetches were sown for use when the autumn crop had been eaten. They drilled the oats and the barley as soon as the weather allowed—in March during most years. Then they made the ridges or baulks ready for the mangels, and sowed the seed straight afterwards. (The preparation of the ground and the traditional culture of cattle-beet in Suffolk deserves detailed recording and will be treated in a later chapter on old methods of cultivation.) After the cattle-beet or mangels had been sown the winter-wheat and the beans were ready for harrowing and rolling. Mention of this prompted the horseman to a piece of farming lore:

  ‘We used to be told: “Never harrow wheat or beans in an east wind”. As you know the harrow scratches out the weeds and snatches blades off the young wheat and makes it branch out and shoot better. But the young corn won’t do this if it’s perished at the same time by an east wind: a cold wind wounds the wheat when it’s bruised by the harrow, and it’s bound to take harm. If a man were in charge of an off-hand place, and the farmer say to him: “Harrow the wheat or the beans tomorrow”, he’d have enough sense, if an east wind sprung up during the night, not to go on with the harrowing but to do some other job instead. But they don’t pay any attention to that sort of thing today. I saw a man harrowing wheat in a perishin’ east wind—only recently; and it made me say to myself: Where are the old methods? It’s all rush today. You hear a young chap say in the pub: “I done thirty acres today”. But it ain’t messed over, let alone done. You take the rolling, for instance. Two mile an hour is fast enough for a roll or a harrow. With a roll, the slower the better. If you roll fast, the clods are not broken up, they’re just pressed in further. Speed is everything; just jump on the tractor and way across the told as if it’s a dirt-track. You see it when a farmer takes over a new farm: he goes and plants straight-way, right out of the book. But if one of the old farmers took a new farm, and you walked round the land with him and asked him: “What are you going to plant here and here and here?” he’d look at you some queer; because he wouldn’t plant nothing much at first. He’d wait a bit and see what the land was like: he’d prove the land first. A good practical man would hold on for a few weeks, and get the feel of the land under his feet. He’d walk on it and feel it through his boots and see if it was in good heart, before he planted anything: he’d sow only when he knew what the land was fit for. But the new farmers they go in and plant slap out of the book. It’s a good job some these book-farmers weren’t a-farming fifty years ago: most of ’em would have starved themselves to dead.’

  This is a familiar plaint: experienced age bewailing the unorthodoxy and over-confidence of the new. But the plaint is worth a hearing at the present time, if only because farming in this county—in common with many other areas in the country—is fast becoming purely extractive. It would be a gross misrepresentation to say that under the old system of farming, that has just been displaced, the farmer was not much bothered by the need to make a profit. He was, certainly. A nineteenth century farmer’s accounts given later, show that he was actively concerned, not only in getting a living for himself and his family, but in making his farming pay. But at the same time the farmer of the old school balanced this motive with a real regard for the land he was farming. The whole temper of the age, nourished by the Norfolk four-course orthodoxy, was such that one of the most sacred articles in the farmer’s creed was: The land’s potential must be preserved; and it was one of farming’s unwritten laws that no man should mulct posterity by degenerating into a landskimmer—a term of abuse that was as bitter to the ears of a farmer of the old school as the accusation of being a common criminal.

  Today the prevailing climate is different: the old symbiotic relation with the land has been broken. ‘It’s all money; get what you can; that’s the story today,’ is the despairing admission of an old farmer, despairing because it goes right against his real instinct. Words, words, words, someone will say. Just tell me what is the old farmer’s real instinct. Briefly, it is this: a traditional knowledge, not acquired from books, direct instruction or even the conscious taking of thought; it is a knowledge that is instinct in the community in which he lives; and it tells him that a rural society’s first concern has always been and can only be continuity; and if the over-riding need to make money threatens to imperil that continuity, he is uneasy. And the economist’s or the historian’s assurance that the money-motive in rural production is historically recent and must needs, in the nature of things, soon be modified or even superseded, is not likely to encourage him, when he sees the land around him, at this moment, being treated not as a partner but as an adversary that must be exploited right up to a point just this side of immediate retribution. Moreover, this instinct tells him that the real tragedy of purely extractive farming is that its evil effects are insidious and cumulative, and that when they make themselves known it is already too late to apply a remedy.

  *

  The next job after harrowing the wheat and beans was to harrow and roll the clover-leys in order to break down the stubble that would be standing. ‘Earlier in the year you spreed (spread) all the mole-hills with a spade. If you left the mole-hills untouched until the harrowing and rolling you’d be doing harm, because the harrow would just skim them off and then you’d have a pancake of pressed mud, caked hard—and no grass could get through that easily. We did the meadows with an old bush-harrow, and it was sight to see the wheat or the meadow just after it had been harrowed—especially when the sun was on it. If there was a tree in the middle of the pasture I was harrowing I did my best to keep the harrow square; to go right round the tree and carry on the other side in exactly the same line. So if somebody were to look at the field as they were passing, they’d think and wonder, because it would look as though the harrow had gone plumb through the tree without stopping.’

  The next jobs were hoeing the wheat and the beans and chopping-out cattle-beet. The beet-seed was sown in rows and the young plants were chopped out with a hoe, leaving isolated bunches of plants every eighteen inches—in fact a little less, for when the beet-plants were singled out by hand they had then to be eighteen inches apart, no more no less. ‘Women and children did the singling. They got on their knees and picked out the plants with their fingers, leaving them in oneses. They got 1s. 6d., and for chopping-out we got 3s. 6d., an acre.’

  Next came ploughing ’tween beet. They took the breast off the plough and used the share only, ploughing three times up and down between the rows or baulks, going up one furrow and down the next, to kill the weeds. The first week in June saw the cutting of the clover, its making and carting. This was the stover that formed a large part of the horses’ fodder. Then they cut the hay; made it and carted it. Once the haysel was over there was a respite until the harvest. This is the period of the agricultural shows, the real holiday-time in the farming year. But on the farm the job was to clean out all the stockyards and to cart the manure to make muck-hales or hills in the fields whose turn is was to be dressed. The hills were left on, or near, the field so that as soon as the corn was off the stubble, later in the autumn, the muck could be spread and the winter-ploughing go forward without delay.

  Finally came the harvest, the climax of the farming year and the busiest time for both men and horses. Then they cut and carted the corn, and afterwards had their brief rest and frolic before the inexorable farming round began once more.

  4

  Some of the Ploughs

  Closely linked with the old horseman in Suffolk is the firm of Ransome, Sims and Jefferies of Ipswich. This firm has made most of th
e horse-ploughs used in this county during the last 150 years; and their researches here have had a great influence on plough-design and plough-making all over the world. Robert Ransome, the founder of the firm, was born at Wells, Norfolk in 1753, the son of a Quaker schoolmaster. With the help of the Gurney’s, the Quaker bankers, he started a foundry business in Norwich; but a few years later, in 1789, he removed his foundry to Ipswich.

  At Norwich Robert Ransome had been experimenting with the making of cast-iron plough-shares: he continued his experiments at the Old Foundry, Ipswich. But he failed to discover a process of manufacture that would correct the one big disadvantage connected with their use: the constant re-sharpening the cast-iron plough-share required to keep it fit for ploughing. Wrought-iron shares, although more laboriously and hence expensively made, were therefore still preferred. Then in 1803, by one of those lucky accidents that have had such a great effect on the course of agriculture, as they have on that of science, he discovered how to manufacture a cast-iron plough-share that would remain sharp in use and be at least as effective as a wrought-iron share but much more economical to produce. George A. Biddell (born 1824), grandson of Robert Ransome and a member of a Suffolk farming family, described1 how his grandfather made the discovery: