Autumnal August
Even though we’re only halfway into August the weather is turning decidedly autumnal. Everywhere is so dry that in places the leaves are beginning to fall, and the lawn is looking very dry and scorched. We have had meagre amounts of rain, but not enough to penetrate the ground, which is parched.
Acton Scott Working Farm Museum
Last Sunday we visited the local Working Farm Museum at Acton Scott, we, being my family and friends. It was an ideal day, just warm enough to walk round in comfort. It is a lovely, peaceful place, taking me back to my roots! (Excuse the pun!) I find wandering about amongst the memories of a bygone age somehow sooths the soul. It’s how life should be. Although I know from hearing my parents talking just how hard life actually was in those days!
Water Fowl, Tamworth Pigs and Shorthorn Cattle
Ducks and geese waddle about or swim on the pond, often ‘upending’ to search the bottom for titbits. Hens scratch about, and wobble away when chased by small children. The Tamworth pigs were an absolute delight, with three sows showing off their offspring in varying degrees of growth, the smallest being only four days old! Three Shorthorn calves graced the cowshed, where due to inadequate gating my LTA ended up ushering small children out then expertly rounding up the livestock and shutting them back in! Years of working on a variety of farms is obviously a case of ‘once learnt never forgotten’!
Heavy Horses and Muscular Men
The highlight of the ‘tour’ was the heavy horses. The farm now boasts four! They hold a special place in my memory as my dear old dad worked with ‘the horses’ for most of his life as an agricultural worker. Walks up the fields on Sunday evenings with him and my mother, when I was five or six years old, often resulted in him whistling his ‘team’ and across the fields they would come at a gallop to accept the treats from dad’s pocket! Magnificent beasts, rippling with muscles honed by toiling in the fields day after day pulling a variety of implements, with my dad toiling just as hard behind them, walking many miles in a day! (Dad had biceps which a lot of the modern ‘gym frequenters’ would die for!! And all for free!)
On the tour of the farm with the ‘farm bailiff’ we were told that there is a chance that due to the ‘cuts’, which are affecting nearly everything in one way or another, the museum might have to close! What a shame that would be! Especially for the children from the towns and cities who, unlike me and mine, have little or no knowledge of how the countryside ‘worked’ in the Victorian age, or any other age for that matter! Surely it is as important to preserve our working class heritage as it is to keep open all the stately homes! After all, the working classes were the ones who kept the ‘better and well off’ in the manner to which they had become accustomed, over many generations!
The Case of the Missing Cream Horns
As already mentioned, my dad worked for most of his working life with heavy horses. He was born in 1907 on the 10th of August, which is St Lawrence’s day. St Lawrence was patron saint of cooks and bakers, which reminded me of one of dad’s ‘tales’! Most unmarried farm workers ‘lived in’ wherever they were employed when dad was a lad! One night, arriving back at the farmhouse, late and rather worse for wear due to a visit to the local hostelry, dad fancied something to eat! The workers’ rations were definitely not on a par with what the old farmer and his family ate, so, seeing cream horns lying temptingly in the pantry dad decided this treat couldn’t be ignored. Dad was woken from his sleep earlier than usual the next morning by the irate farmer shouting him to get up! Having done so, dad was ‘given his cards’ (sacked)! But, unbeknown to the farmer, dad had already been offered a job by the farmer’s brother who lived but a few fields away. And that’s where dad ended up! Anyone who could ‘milk’ could get a job anywhere! My dad was a man of many talents!
Thanks for your time! Speak soon!
The Bumpkin Rambler xx
