The contributor's wife was present during the interview and sometimes joined in.
You're going to tell us about your life as a nurseryman ...
Well, I lived next door to a working farm and so I remember quite a lot of the old ways of Norfolk farming, and my father being a nurseryman with glasshouses, I also know a bit about horticulture, which I took up later in my life. My first recollection of the farm was a lady farmer Mrs W, she had lost her husband and had taken the farm over from him. And my first recollections really were when she used to come and collect me - we only lived 50 yards from the farmhouse - and she would come and take me to help feed the chickens.
The holdgy boy
This is when you were small?
This is when I'd be about 3 or 4 years old, and she always looked after me, and when I suppose I was about 4 she used to sit me on the back of the old farm horses. When I was on the horses one of the things would be the harvest time, and I would be sitting on the horse's back, and I was what they called a "holdgy boy", and I did this from a very early age. And as you moved from shock to shock, which were the sheaves of corn put together like the roof of a house. Each time you loaded one shock onto the wagon, or the tumbrel, the holdgy boy would shout "Holdgy!" and the person on the tumbrel would stick their fork into the shoves on the tumbrel to steady themselves, and then the horse and vehicle would move forward to the next shock, and he would then stop and they would load the next shock on, and this would continue right through the field. And at the end of the load the chap on the top would hold tight and the horse would be led away and then taken to the elevator which would load the corn sheaves up onto the stack, You would then have a stacker who would make the stacks. I always thought how interesting stacks were because it's not just a bundle of corn thrown together to make the form of a house. The base is usually formed by a thicket of what we used to call brush which were the trimmings of the hedges which were cut in July, a month before harvest would start, laid on the area where the stack would be, so you started off with perhaps a two foot layer of brushwood.
Why done that way?
To keep the corn off the ground, because if the corn was on the ground and got damp it would germinate and once the corn has germinated that's no good.
Then the stack was made with what the old farmers used to call "arse end outward", which was the butt, the bottom of the shoof would be out towards the weather, the corn ear would be towards the centre and you always build, or start, from the outside and work inwards, and the ears of the corn were always higher than the butt end, so if rain drove onto the outside it wouldn't run in'ards. So you always filled the middle of the stack first and then worked outwards towards the row that you'd already put round to make the shape.
That's a real art!
That IS an art. And ‘course then after you'd finished you'd do the topping up, and again it was in the form of a roof so that the water always ran to the outside. And then, at a later date, which I didn't actually see done for quite a lot of years, was the actual thatching, when the roof was thatched with wheat straw.
That came later did it?
Well, harvest came first, and you always had to fight against the weather, didn't you? You had to get that done while you got the chance, and then you waterproofed it with a thatch later. And then in the winter time, when there weren't too much on, the farmers would have a few extra hands from perhaps the neighbouring farm, and perhaps one or two chaps would go round with a thrashing machine. I mean I can remember they always used to have a few stacks right here, where this bungalow is, and they'd bring the thrashing machine and there'd be two, perhaps three, men'd come with the machine. One to look after the steam boiler, one to look after the thrashing engine and cut the bonds, the bonds being the strings round the sheaves. He had a knife and he would stand on the top of the thrashing drum and as the sheaves were thrown to him he would quickly slip his knife upwards and outwards and cut the string.
Harvesting - from steam engines to combines and from hands to hoovers
Was that that curved knife you see sometimes?
Yes, sometimes with a little curve right on the bottom.
Like a hook?
Yeah, and that would catch the shoof and cut the string. This had to be done because the corn and straw couldn't go through the drum in a lump. It had to be fed evenly, preferably crossways of the machine, and that was done so that the rotating part in the drum scrubbed the corn out of the ears. That was that. And ‘course all the time when they were harvesting the rats and mice would be running, so all the local boys had their little lurchers and greyhounds and Jack Russells and they used to catch the rats. Some of the farmers used to put a wire netting about a yard high all the way round away from the stack, so that they couldn't get out and then the dogs had fun! Of course the old-fashioned engines were all fuelled in those days by steam coal, which were huge lumps, I suppose some of them must have weighed a couple of stone a piece, these great big lumps, and they were fed into the machine, into the engine. Always surprised me, the size of those massive engines, they were only about 8 horse power. You know when you think of a little Fiat car the engine power weren't ... they weren't powered more than that, but they were geared down that much they had terrific power.
We'll now go forward a bit till I was 10 or 11 and then I helped on the farm, and that entailed driving an old Fordson Standard tractor, again for holdgy boy, but I had by that time got up to cultivating and harrowing.
And that was at the age of 10 or 11?
And that was 10 or 11. I mean you had a tractor. I can always remember my boss borrowed one from his dad and he had one of his own and the one he borrowed from his dad was a Standard Fordson but it was an American one, and they were brought over from America I assume just before the War and instead of having "petrol" on the cap they had "gasoline".
Then another job I did at the age of 10 or 11 was sitting on the back of a self-binder, tractor driver on the front with a Fordson tractor and I would sit on the back. I had two operations to perform, one was to drop, raise and lower the cutter bar of the binder to get the right height for cutting, and the other one was a foot pedal which when the shoof carrier, which
was like a massive rounded fork - however would you describe it? - almost like a semi-circle of tines were bolted on the side of the self-binder - and every time you got about six or eight shoves in it, which was the equivalent to a shock, you'd push your foot on the pedal and it would drop them in one place, so that the farm workers who were then, perhaps, shocking behind you didn't have to walk about for them, which would have meant a lot more time. So that was one of the first time-savers, I suppose. And I can remember my boss buying that, which was quite an innovative thing at the time.
Roughly what date would that be?
Oh, I was ten .. . .. possibly 11 .. . '41, yeah. The tractors were started with petrol. My boss, not only was he a farmer, he was a contractor and we went a wide radius cutting the corn. I used to bike there in the mornings for seven o'clock and call in the farm on the way to get a Corona bottle full of petrol to start up the tractor. He would then come later with a 5 gallon drum of paraffin or kerosene.
I suppose then, when I'd just turned about 17, still at school, and I was driving a Ferguson tractor, rolling, cultivating and harrowing, and also did a harvest on the farm.
So when did you start getting paid for this? I mean, were they paying you when you were 10?
Yes. It weren't a sight I can assure you! I remember working two days and my boss gave me an air rifle, which . . . I don't know.. . I suppose that was good pay at the time. Don't really know. But I think I used to probably earn about £2 a week, which in the 40s weren't that bad. I mean, early 40s I think a farmer was only getting about £3 . . £4.
Because farm workers pay is notoriously poor, isn't it?
Yes it was. I mean, there were certain benefits which some farm workers had. Some lived in tied cottages, but if you fell foul of the farmer you were out on your ear and nowhere to go. Your perhaps got a few benefits .. . eggs, the odd chicken.
During the War that would make a difference.
Yeah, well I don't think we went too far. . . now that's another thing I can bring in about the War: Because a lot of the farmers diversified and went into growing top fruit crops, blackcurrants, strawberries and things like that, because anybody that went to pick the fruit got extra rations. You got extra tea, sugar and jam, didn't you? To his wife: You did it.
Wife: I picked fruit, yes. When I was about 12 (laughs). I earned 8 shillings and that bought me a pair of shoes.
So if you helped to bring in the crop and contribute to the jam, you got jam .. .. .?
Well, yes and no. Everybody, if you did potato harvest . . .. because when you're going back to the War time there weren't these machines . ... everybody did the potato harvest. They were either cultivated or spun out with a potato spinner, and mostly picked up by ladies, single ladies and married people, who wanted to earn a little bit more, and they would get extra sugar, tea and jam.
The people who picked the currants and that were paid with a little . ... like a cinema ticket, years ago, and you were paid per basket, either 4lb chip or a 12 lb chip.
So piece work, effectively?
Piece work. The potatoes, a lot of them were picked piece work and they were paid by the ton. Sugar beet were drilled with tractor or horse and then the harvesting .. when I first went there .. . you went into the corner of a field so that you didn't crush and spoil the sugar beet, you dug them by hand. A little two-pointed fork, and one-handed you pushed that into the ground, got hold of the top of the sugar beet, pulled it out, and when you got two you knocked them together. And you laid them in neat rows with the pointed end of the sugar beet facing one way, and you would do four rows like that and lay them all on one single row, you would turn round, do four rows coming back and lay them the opposite way, so that the two lots were pointing inwards. Then, after they'd been done like that, you'd then go along with a sugar beet hook, which was a curved hook with a point on the end - still got mine! - and you did a swing which got the hook end, the pointed end, into the sugar beet, lifted it up, grabbed it with your left hand, cut the top off and threw the sugar beet in the gap between these rows of sugar beet. But they weren't put indiscriminately, they were put in piles, so that after the field had been done, or the farmer wanted to get a truck load out, you then went along with a tractor and trailer, which would run the wheels over the sugar beet tops. Not on top of the tops, but spread wider, each side of the tops, and two men would be able to fill one from one side and the next row of piles of beet from the other side, and they were thrown onto the trailer.
That's very labour intensive.
Yes, and on the farms where they also had cattle those tops would be collected and fed to the cows. The only thing was at certain times of the year you could taste the sugar beet (laughs) which is a peculiar taste actually in the milk . .. To his wife: Can you remember that smell in the milk, and the taste?
Wife: Oh yes!
Contributor : Oh yes, you always knew "They've started feeding sugar beet tops". The sugar beet were then taken mostly in this area to the stations and they were then loaded onto trucks, which would hold anything between 10 and 16 ton of sugar beet. If you dropped a 10 pence piece, or two shillings as it was then, to the head porter he'd make sure that you got a truck what they called "in dock", which was in a siding which had got high sides so that you could walk straight into it virtually, so you only had to throw your sugar beet sideways and downward, rather than upwards. But the boss wouldn't always come up with the two bob piece!
That must have been hard work!
That was VERY hard work!
Where did it go?
Cantley. From Aylsham, yes, that went to Cantley. And they were then sliced and whatnot and then in ... I would have been about 20 ... about 1951, my boss bought a lorry and I used to take sugar beet through to Cantley, and that weren't too bad. You either went up the highest slope and threw the sugar beet down into an area where they'd be taken into the factory, or you went into the flumes, I think they called them - you went down a slight slope, opened the back of the lorry and they had two guns, water guns, which blew them off. I think they were working under about 40 lb pressure, and they looked as though they had about a 4 inch aperture where the water came out and that really rocked ... you know, if you were sat in the lorry when they were done that really jumped up and down. That really hit the springs! And that only took a few minutes and then you just drove out and the next one came in.
Better than at the station!
Oh yeah! Well, I mean you could get through there and out again in a matter of minutes whereas at the station you were throwing the lot into a 16 ton truck. You'd just loaded them on by hand with a sugar beet fork. The old sugar beet forks, they're not like an ordinary fork, they've got little round knobs on the end so that they don't stick into the sugar beet.
As I say in 1948 I was full time on the farm. Sugar beet in those days, the seed, was drilled very thickly and after they came up and were horse hoed they then had to be cut out, which means they had to be spaced and you had quite thick rows of sugar beet and you had to leave one tiny weeny plant every 9 to 10 inches. Then a few weeks later - this was all piece work, you got so much an acre - and then so many weeks after you had to go in your own time to go and get the weeds out. Whatever did they call that? That's gone! You had to chop out the weeds. [Contributor informed later that the word is "Scoring".]
In your own time?
Well, it would be included in the cost of the chopping out. So much would be allowed for the chopping out, which was the biggest job, and if you made a good job of the chopping out, which mean you took out all the weeds with it, you could leave a small amount for the clearing of the weeds a few weeks later. So the better job you did to start with the more money you made because you didn't have to go . ...
Can you remember how much you were paid an acre for that?
Let me think. Probably £4 an acre. Roughly a farm worker could cut - an average farm worker - about a quarter of an acre a day. A good farm worker, a REALLY good one, could do half an acre, but he had to have a very, very strong back.
That's really back-breaking work isn't it?
Well, I'll come to the back-breaking work now if you like. When I first went on the farm the corn was cut with a self-binder - the first year. And that would have been 1948. That was cut with a self-binder. The following year a contractor, Richard Stevens from Aylsham, bought a Massey Harris 726 combine with a 8 foot 6 cut, which meant that's the width of the cut of the corn, and it was brought into the field and he started it up and before he could move it the engine seized up, because it should have come with oil in it and it didn't! So we ended up cutting the corn with the self-binder again. The following years my boss decided that he would buy his own combine, and that combine cost him £750, and that had a Perkins L4 diesel engine in it, and that never had a fault. And I can remember we were cutting the corn late . . the forecast was good, the pressure had got very high, so my boss said "We'll work into the night." And he said L can go and drive the combine, J you can fix the lights on. But don't stop." And I was hanging ... the front of the combine is lifted up and down electrically - had an electric motor ..... and I was sitting underneath it on some crossbars fixing electric wiring to the battery, with lights up on like a handlebar where the steering wheel is, and we worked that night till about one o'clock.
Sounds like Health and Safety hadn't been invented!
Well, Health & Safety I don't think had been invented then! (laughs) Because I can tell you one thing, when my boss was planting blackcurrants just up here, 200 yards from here, we were preparing the land and I was disc harrowing with a Ferguson, and he shouted to me "It's your lunchtime. I'll take over." So I stopped the tractor, he got on, I got off and I came home to lunch, which was not that far because I only just lived round the corner. And I came home to lunch, had my lunch, went back. When I got back he was still disc harrowing and instead of stopping the tractor he just jumped off, expecting me to jump on, which I tried to. My left foot went onto a little stud thing what you put your foot on, a little foot rest, just a little tiny bar about three quarters of an inch wide with a little round ball on the end, and it slipped off, and the tractor, as I went down crawled up my leg, over my back, pressed me into the ground and just as my foot touched the disc harrows which would have cut them, probably minced me as well, the boss managed to jump on the opposite side, which is a similar thing, which is the brake, and he stalled the engine.
How badly injured were you?
I weren't injured. I just carried on. He went home and he told me that night he shook like a leaf. It didn't seem to affect me.
Wife: The ground was soft.
Contributor: The ground was soft, pushed me into it, you see. But when you're now saying about Health and Safety, I was working on potato harvest, ‘cos my boss was ahead of his time, and he had a prototype one that was made at St Albans, called a Globe, and it was a trial and error one. A jolly good machine, and all the modern ones are based on that. That had one inherent fault, that was the gear box and that just kept giving out. And we were using it one day and the foreman started shouting, and when I looked - I was on a tractor running beside getting the potatoes - and we managed to stop ... I believe I blew the hooter on the tractor and managed to stop the one that was pulling the harvester because the foreman had got his tie - and there was a belt drive that was running the elevator for the potatoes - and he'd got it in there and it wound it round and round the shaft and, by the time that stopped, his chin was on the top of the guard. He could hardly speak and as always - still do - carry a knife, I cut his tie off.
Another time I was working at my boss' workshop sharpening knives for one of the cutters, and a lady come running across, "J, J come quick. Help!" And I ran out to see what had happened, and one of the other tractor drivers was getting up potatoes with what they call a potato hoover. It's a machine which goes into the ground under the bulk of potatoes and there are metal elevator rods going round and round, but the whole thing is driven by a power shaft from the tractor. And he'd got that blocked. He didn't stop the tractor, he left the tractor running, jumped off, went to kick the soil and weeds off the front of this, and he got his jacket on the power shaft and he was wound completely round the power shaft. And again I got my knife out and I cut his jacket, his pullover and his shirt right down to the skin to extricate him from the power shaft. He was in a bit of a state! Bruised ribs, he'd gone black and blue, and I ran across, and the boss weren't there, and his wife said "Take my van, J, take him to the doctor's." So I brought him up to the Aylsham doctor's .. .
I should think he was lucky to be alive.
He was. Because the tractor, he'd slowed the engine down to short throttle, and then there was enough power there to wind him round it, but that stalled. But he couldn't breathe, that was the trouble you see.
It does show doesn't it? People complain about Health and Safety but there are some very good aspects to it.
Absolutely!
My boss had a big sandpit at Skeyton from years gone by, probably about an acre. It was 14 or 15 feet deep and he gave permission for Westwick Frosted Products, which is now Heinz, to put their waste from their operations into this pit. Well, what waste food does is to encourage rats and in no time at all we had thousands and thousands of rats. And the trouble was they were getting everywhere. They went down into the farm itself and they were running along the beams in the pigs' house - he had several pigs - and they were also getting into an old farmhouse which ... it weren't allowed to go derelict but there was nobody living in it, so we filled it full of sacks of corn. Now the boss said one day "I'll give you chaps 6d for every tail of a rat you can catch". He only did it once because we . . . I think we only went the once because we weren't getting paid for it after that ... . We got masses! I borrowed a little 2-2 shotgun, which is something you don't often see now. It's not with a solid bullet. It had dust shot in, and this dust shot you could shoot in an enclosed place, and you could shoot at a piece of asbestos and it wouldn't break it. That'd kill a rat.
So we bought 50 cartridges, and I think we probably got 40 odd rats. Well then we went round to the back of the farm and at the back of it there used to be . .. they called it the Mill Piece ... it was a 14 acre field on which there was a building consisting of a corrugated roof and no sides and at one time a previous farmer used to mill wood, timber. That was a saw mill, and, of course, all the sawdust was tipped into this field and so the field was covered in sawdust and the rats used to run just underneath the sawdust. They had their holes, but they were very, very shallow. So what we used to do, we used to get one of these wire traps where they can get in but can't get out, we put at the end of one hole, and then he had a huge water tank which was filled by the rain off this roof, and we got the water and we tipped a bucket of water in one end of the hole and, ‘course, they'd all run out the other where we'd got the trap. And it'd be nothing to get about ten rats in a trap at a time.
So that was a day when you made quite a bit of money!
Well, yes, but he only did it the once!
Earlier I was talking about the blackcurrants. These were picked into chips and then they were put into wooden trays which were supplied by Norfolk Fruit Growers at Wroxham for distribution. These were probably sent to Ribena and other manufacturers that made jellies or whatever wanted blackcurrants in. We also sent a lot of the strawberries that we picked to Norfolk Fruit Growers and gooseberries. That's the job that weren't very nice because when you're picking gooseberries they weren't the gooseberries what don't have prickles, they were the ones that you knew when you picked them.
Not many farmers at this particular time were growing wheat because our ground at that time weren't good enough to grow wheat, and most of the crops were spring barley and some oats, and some grew kale and cabbage seed for seed. Autumn sown wheat came in more popular later when they could get heavier crops, shorter straw and they were easier to combine. Didn't have such a job with the straw because some of the time some of the straw was burnt until the law came in banning that. The corn was all bagged up into coomb sacks. Now coomb sacks are quite high, not too wide, but they were very, very strong. A coomb of oats weighed 12 stone, barley 16 stone, wheat 18 stone, and peas and beans I think were about 23 stone in weight. 24 stone was 3 hundredweight, and a man carried that. There was no mechanical lifting until about the last year I was on the farm when there was a mechanical lifter worked by the hydraulics on the lorry when we could drop a coomb onto the lifting device and that lifted it up so that the chap on the lorry could then lift it off and stack. And when you think of the barns . . . my boss had a barn where we would stack 4 or 5 coomb high. The first two rows which were put on the ground were stood up and then you backed up to that with the second row high, which were then leaned up against the wall. When you got out further away you would drop a sack flatways, so that you used it as a step and you'd probably have to step up about a foot before you could get your next foot on top of that sack, and that was done like that progressively across the floor of the barn. And boy, did you know it! That's why I've got bad knees!
Now read on in Part two .......
