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| My mother with the calves |
There have been news reports recently about how little money
farmers are receiving for their milk, making dairy production uneconomic and
this reminded me of my childhood when I would go out to the field with my
cousins to call in the cows for milking.
They were usually lurking by the gate but we would call, “Kye, Kye,” to
make them follow us along the muddy path to the milking parlour. On one occasion it was so muddy I left my
wellington stuck in the mud as I lifted my foot to walk on.
Living in south London, my regular holiday visits to my
uncles’ and grandfather’s farms on the west coast of Scotland were paradise. There was a hill behind the farms and the
lochside in front. All day long I would muck around on the farm with my cousins,
interspersing chores such as collecting eggs with damming the burn (stream) or
making dens. In the early 1950s they
still had two Clydesdale horses to pull the plough but they were later replaced
by a tractor.
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| My uncle ploughing |
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| My grandfather driving the tractor |
When the cows reached the milking parlour they walked to
their regular place and waited for their milking machine to be put on
individually. Occasionally a cow would
be hand-milked and I tried, with very little success. The milk churns were taken to the station at
the bottom of the lane, where they were collected by train but on Sundays there
was no train so my uncle would drive them to a depot in Arrochar in his Land
Rover. I loved riding in the back between the churns, sliding along the shiny
metal bench. When Dr Beeching closed the
local station it was no longer viable to produce milk on isolated farms like
theirs.
From these photos it is evident that I was used to lambs
from a very early age but what I liked best was helping to wean the
calves. My uncle would mix food into
half a bucket of milk and then I would put my hand into the bucket and feed
the calf from my fingers which it would think were teats. After a while I would extract my hand and the
calf would realise that it could eat from the bucket. There were always cats and kittens on the farm,
fed with bread and milk to make sure they still hunted for mice and rats. The sheepdogs were collies who only became
pets in old age. I loved to watch the sheep being sheared and even the
dipping was interesting.
At Harvest time
our job was to keep the men supplied with flasks of tea and “a piece and jam”
(jam sandwiches). We would dare each
other to hold on to the electric fence for a second, hoping to miss the pulse
of electricity. Sometimes we missed it
and sometimes not. The train from London
to Fort William passed the field so we could wave as it went past. Sometimes I went to the farm in the winter
and was able to toboggan down the hill.
Looking back, farms in the 1950s were pure Enid Blyton adventures
for children, but not such a picnic for the farmers and their wives, working
hard every single day.
