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.