Counrtry Life in the 1940's

Inspired by Duff Hart-Davis and his book on rural life in the war I’m writing about my boyhood memories from a little later. I don’t remember much of the war as I was only 2 and a half when it ended. However we lived in the middle of the country and I observed country life close up as I grew a little older.

My first ambition was to be a farmer. At a young age that mainly meant I wanted to be a tractor driver. To me the Fordson Major in gleaming blue was incredibly glamorous. Bill who lived next door drove one and occasionally brought it home at lunch time. A working tool it has lost its gleam but was still an object of awe. The boy next door, Johnny, and I would stand around the edge of fields just to watch the tractors at work. Around then I have a photo of Johnny and myself on an older Ford. The older had large flat mudguards easy to sit on and the photo has Johnny on the mudguard and I’m sitting in the drivers seat

In the north of Warwickshire the life in our village revolved around farming. The main alternative employment was coal mining . The farms were mixed arable and livestock. The arable land was mainly wheat ( plus a little barley )with some potatoes and a small area to mangolds( for cattle feed )

The rural year began in late autumn with winter wheat sewing. The land would be ploughed, have manure spread on it ( by towed muckspreaders ) then harrowed to a fairly fine tilth and then sown. Winter time was mainly tending livestock and doing all the out of season jobs like hedge cutting. In those days hedge cutting and laying was a laborious manual job but producing stock proof hedges which lasted for many years. This was very different to the annual motorised trimming seen today.

In spring some pasture was set aside for mowing grass. We were strictly forbidden to go on these fields although generally we had the run of pastureland but on cultivated arable we had to go around the field edges. The grass would be mown in June, turned using a hay rake and hopefully dried in long summer days. Making silage was only introduced in the early 50’s.

Wheat harvesting from late August was a multi stage process. First the crop was cut with the mower probably a reaper/binder producing sheaves ie. bundles of a few hundred stalks of wheat. These would then be stacked in wigwam like stooks with 3 sheaves leaning against 3 opposite producing an open arrangement for drying. Rain during drying was a problem. On small fields with older reapers the edges were cut with scythes. Often the field was cut in a circle and as the uncut area grew smaller workers with shotguns stood ready to kill rabbits escaping from the uncut area: not only was this great sport it added to limited diets. Then the great day of threshing after drying for a few days. The threshing machine was powered by a wide flat belt from a tractors powered take off point ( a powered drum about a foot in diameter at the side of the engine). The threshing engine was a large, awkward piece of equipment ( maybe 20 feet long and 10 tall ). I recall the gate and gate posts had to be removed to gain access to a field adjacent to our house.

The stooks would be gathered in and often taken to the threshing machine( sometimes vice versa ) on carefully piled trailers. There the sheaves, bound by string ( binder twine ) would be elevated to the top of the thresher where a farm worker would cut the string and scatter the wheat stalks into the threshers maw. Out would come corn in a stream and straw in another. The corn went into sacks for transporting to a granary while the straw would be compacted often into bales bound also with binder twine.

After the field had been cut there were still the odd ear of corn on the ground. The gleaner might search and gather these in. We kept poultry and mother used to glean near our house knowing the hens would be delighted by the corn. From the wartime Dig for Victory campaign the growing of fruit and vegetables was still common as food rationing continued. A field on the outskirts of the village had been subdivided into allotments so that more land was available. Unfortunately for us the allotment was on the far side of the village and my father would tie a few tools to his crossbar and cycle there. As his health worsened maintaining the allotment was too much and like many others in the village we abandoned it in the early 50’s as food became more plentiful.

A combined harvester was being introduced. I remember it was a source of wonder when I saw the first in 1948. This cut and threshed in one step leaving a trail of straw to be picked up by a baler. It is unusual nowadays for the corn to be handled in bulk into a trailer following alongside the combine.

Then towards the end of September the potatoes were harvested.  The rows were turned out using rotating tines and pickers with buckets would collect them from the ground into sacks  or possibly into potato camps( covered straw and earth piles for winter storage ). My first ever paid job was potato picking. Although I had half an adult stretch it was hard, back breaking work. The break sitting on the upturned bucket between rows was all too short. The pickers were allowed a bucket full of large baking potatoes to take home at the end of the day.

Village life was almost feudal in its structure. A local landowner rented land to the farmers- it was sometimes the case the farmer owned the land he farmed.  A landowning farmer ranked above a tenant farmer. On the farm the hierarchy was the skilled workers at the top such as the cowman who looked after the herd and dairy with the agricultural labourers at the bottom. Ranking with the farmers were the professionals in the village, the clergyman and slightly lower the teachers. In the village near where I lived  practically everyone was either a coal miner or worked on the land. In  our case the local landowner who owned many thousand acres was only seen on ceremonial occasions such as tree planting. She did however give money to the village school for a Christmas present for every child.