Country Holiday

After I left the Farm, I used to go to my cousins in the holidays and help him with his dairy farm and stopped there for two weeks at a time. I used to help him with the mowing, hay turning, but first thing in the morning I had to clean the sheds out, brushing and shovelling and putting it on pile in the yard. The I would go on to the field works. He didn't have his own baler, the next door farm did that. Then we'd carry the bale. We had a bale grab, pitch on the trailer. I did the loading. Bill put them on the trailer with the grab, I put them in place on the back. We used an ex-railway train trailer, just like the one in the picture, which had a dolly made for it, it was just made from a piece of beam about 3ft 6 inch which went under the axel and pinned to the turntable. A bloke used to make these trailers out of railway vans and trailers and sell them for £250 per time, in the 1970s. I think he had a contract with the railways to buy them and sell them for farm 4 wheel trailers, they were called 'A' wagons. My cousin bought one, and he thought it was a lot of money for the time. The bloke he bought it off was a friend of his, his nickname was winky! Once the trailer was full, we'd take it to the farm and unload it with a Leicester Bale elevator and Bill and Alan would stack it in the barn. The most bales I ever handled in a day would 3000, which I had tomove twice. Each bale was weighted about 40 lb. %0 bales would equal a tonne. The drier the bales the lighter they were.

Third Post - The Foundry

Hello Again,

After i gave up my job at corona and did a little bit of farming that summer i stayed at home all winter and most of the spring until the next September 1970 ish. My mother went into hospital and she decided to go into a home, i wasn't very good at looking after myself, so the doctor and the woman next door decided that it was best for me to stop in a hostel, so i did. I had to go to work from the hostel, i got a job on a foundry after about 3 weeks. A foundry is a place that makes machine parts. The foundry was in Newcastle, I did that for about 18months, i was even trusted to let the hot metal out of the furnace, into the casting bucket. I did that for about 3 years. I left one or two times and went back again, in the mean time i started to go home at weekends. After the first 18 months i decided to go home for a while and go to work for the foundry. I managed very well for the first 6 months, then i went to Blackpool one Easter and i had a bad turn and ended up in hospital. so i went back to the hostel. In the mean time it had been decided by those who run the hostel that I should go to into sheltered accommodation. This was a difficult time on my life, more difficult than the first time i was ill in 1965ish.

I volunteered to go and live in emberton street wolstanton in a shared accommodation, there was about six of us, we all shared a room each two to a room with other people who were experiencing mental ill health.

I was still working at the foundry. I stayed at the house for 12months then i decided to go back home because we never sold the house so i could still go back there. I tried a job at Hanley in the training centre in clough street, you worked there to train , earned a wage packet but it didn't affect my green card benefits (disability card) I trained to be a machine operator, they also said that they would get me a job down campbell road at trentside engineering, doing a bit of metal work.i went there for a trial for a week and at the end of the week they said that i could get the job. In the mean time i decided that it was too far to travel, on two buses. So the training centre got me on another course GEC milehouse doing the same thing, only i went to the training school for three months, this was also on a grant of some sort. At the end of the course they gave me a job pressing staters into shells into electric motors for milking machines and washing machines for canada.

The trouble was i was cutting the wires off by accident! i did it for three days and then asked if they could find me a labouring job instead. he said he would and i was working at the same area as i was pressing the shells in but this time i was loading a belt. I did that for about 5 more years. They then moved the plant from the bottom factory to the top and divided the motor sections up. I went to the top factory where the B25 motors were (BIG 1's) there i was putting the motors ready for the builders, i did that for about 4 years. They then put the plant back as it was when i first went there. I went back to the bottle factory. I was still putting motors on belts for the builders.

Its worth mentioning that for all this time i was still helping Sirrel at his farm. He had another one now at Maildley.

I bought myself an old tractor with the money that i had been earning at the factory. It was a David Brown 25D it was red and it had shortened mud guards and was diesel. I gave £70 for it. It needed a new set of tyres which i put on. The two back tyres cost £68 for the two. I had to put a new one on the front too that cost £10. The other front one was ok. I also fitted up lights which i had from potteries diesel Fenton. One of the lads at the factory told me where to go.

I was doing this whilst i was still working at GEC. When Sirrell got the farm at Maidley i had a plough made up for the Ferrgison and ploughed the Maidley farm 6 acres. It was only a small field because the rest of the farm was 176 acres!

I sewd the field with the Massey Harris Corn Drill and also we used the D25 for working and sewing the land. I was happy doing what i liked which was moving around. I found farming a little lonely after the first time i was ill. But i have always gone back to it, and if i was fit and well enough to do it now then i would.

I only had to go to work for the money! People tend to move on, but i tend to stick to the past & go back to what you know & was bought up from a young age helping my dad buy farm equipment. i bought a mowing machine with him when i was 3 or 4 in 1946 ish for 30 shillings & it worked for 12 years!

when it was all done by the tractor a man always had to sit on top of it to oportate it because it wasn't really designed for a tractor!

But to get back to the story... when the summer came in at Sirrels farm i had already bought a B23 mower to fit the D25 tractor. I paid £37 for that to a farm at Bortolley i first used it on the Maidley farm. I started to cut the first field with it and i cut about 20 acres with it. Sirrell also bought another second hand tractor which was a 165 Ferrguson and the Fergusson 70 mower. Which he got from selling 20 acres away . He sold some of the land for mowing the money he got for that bought the tractor and the mower. He also bought a new bailer! which cost 1100 pound! it is still there today in working worder and it is still used today! It is now 30 years old it was bran new when we had it in 1976.

i'll leave it at that for now & write again soon.

Ken

My second post

When i left the farm at 24 i had a job at Corona, a pop firm. How i got the job? i got it through Hassel street Newcastle dole office, they sent me there for an interview with a manager, he only wanted me for four days he said. He said the job was for four days because one of his men were ill. i was there for three days and then i twisted my ankle, he said you'd better go to the doctor and have a look whats the matter with it, and when you've done that if you want to come back for a while you can do. i was off all weekend and went back the following Tuesday loading pop bottles again!

He said 'do i want the job permanently?' I said i wouldn't mind, i'll see how i go. I was there from 7 in the morning till 7 at night, it was that sort of a job. bottling up 8 - 5 then sweeping up the plant and sorting out the broken bottles and taking the labels off of them. that made it 7o'clock when we finished.

The farm had already gone and the cows had been sold. we were still living in the farm house. i got to know the lads and girls at work, there were three labourers i used to help them mix the pop some days which was from essences of oranges and lemons and those sorts of things. To make a batch we used to use a ton of sugar per 400 gallons!! It was all stirred up with a paddle, the tank was a bit like a bulk milk tank. It was then piped through the factory to the bottling plant.

i also helped the fitter when the plant broke down, when the bottling machine went dead, i had to lift a big cast wheel while he welded the shaft, i think it weighed about a hundred weight and a quarter!

i learned a lot off the fitter whilst i was there.

We also used to paint water tanks with Bitcherman. which stored the water that went to make the pop. In the mean time, i went to see the butcher, who we had meat off when we had the farm. He was also my second cousin, and while i was at corona, the man that worked for him on his farm left. He only had 10 cows, i decided to stay at the corona factory, for the mean time. But I agreed to help him at weekends, he had one tractor which was a massive Ferguson 35 which was grey and gold and built in 1958! He also had some old implements from the Forsdon days which was a plough, a cultivator, a roller and a turner. I altered some to fit the Ferguson tractor because they were made to fit the Fordson one. The Fordson had been scrapped in 1960.

I took the wheels off the plough which was made for the Fordson, to make it fit the Fergi on the hydraulic lift. I also altered the cultivator, i also made a trailing fertiliser drill. when we'd altered what we could he decided he wanted a few more machines to fit the Ferrgi which i bought from three farm sales. He sent me to buy them at the sale. I bought and acrobat hey turner. A Lester Tedda that fitted on the lift. I also bought a Massey Harris corn drill. The hey turner is still in the shed and also the corn drill is still there and they both still work!!

I did all this whilst i was still working at corona which was for about 3 and a half years!

Me mother didn't like me working so hard because when i wasn't at the factory i was at the farm. He used to pay me with some of his butchers meat for my work on the farm, so i ate well!

After a while i think it began to get me down working so hard. I fell out with them at corona, well i didn't fall out with them but they put me in charge of the boiler, but i was frightened that it would blow up so i went home and he said your not coming back if you leave. He didn't really sack me i just left.

I carried on working on the farm and picked up a few extra days in the summer and helped him with the hey making. ( to the left is a picture of how i used to make hey at the old farm when i was 11 - 23 years old! long before i went to the pop factory!)

My first post.

The farm I used to work on was bought for £800 in 1932. My father used to rent the farm and I used to work on the farm with him. I worked for him for three years and learnt how to keep a dairy herd. In the old fashioned way. Then I became a partner when he became ill in 1958. We had to milk 20 cows in a shed, with water bowls in front and the milking machine beneath. It cost £66 for engine and the pump and the pipeline cost £11 for the fittings. The buckets cost £45 each which included the unit - we had two of them. We first used a petrol engine to the power the machines to milk the cows, it needed an overhaul, so we decided to put electricity in. The landlord's son put it in for a tenner and it cost £35 for the fittings, including the switches. That included the farm house (which had previously had gas for light and heat). We had parafin lamps in the outbuildings.

In five years I only ever missed two milkings, one was when I went to the county show in 1962 and the other time was when sowed a grass seed in 14 acres, I had to do it from 10 am to 7 pm at night. The cows were milked twice a day at 8am and 6pm. Then I had to clean the sheds out. I had to be up at by 7.30 am ready for the cows. They stayed out from may to october and three heffers that stayed out all through the winter. The cows were Frisian, and they were black and white. When the cows are the most productive, just after they calved, they would give 5 - 6 gallons of milk per day.

We had two tractors and a pick up bail (which was German) mine was a low density bailer with a little engine on it. Recently when I was at farm sale in Shraley Brook I saw the same machines sold, one made £360 and the other made £480, more than they cost when we bought ours 4-00 years before. A David Brown crop master was the name of one of the them, which cost £125 and it came Dales nursey in Hilderstone. The reason they had to be an engine one, when we bought it secondhand it cost £160 but it only made small bails, but they could dry out easily. Whe we sold the farm stock it sold for £40 in 1966 - the year England won the world cup. I've been able to drive a tractor since I was 11, and I passed my tractor licence test when I was 20, so I could drive on the roa and I've still got it.

To improve the land I put manure on, which was left on the top of the soil and washed in. You do this in Febraury, March and April. You'd do anything from 7 - 14 loads today. I worked with my nephew, who was only 12 or 13 at the time. Each load would be 1 .5 tonnes. the spreader was an Massey Harris which cost £90 and was built in America. We bought it in 1952.