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.