Synopsis
This is a book reflecting back on my life, having been brought up on a farm in a small village, in rural England. Born in 1938 and still live not a mile and a half from where I was “dropped” About my early recollections of the end of World War 2, the rationing, the old characters who worked on the farms and estate through the years, about mother and father and family farming through more than sixty years, how they brought us up in the 1940’s, four of us lads in the old farm house with no central heating and no mod con’s. Some of the descriptions are in the form of poetry, and all of it is of what I have actually experienced through my seventy five years of life. It’s in no particular order, and written as and when it came to mind. Cows and cattle, shire horses to tractors , workshop and welding, cooking and knitting, coffins and the wheelwright, blacksmith and mending, gypsies and wagons, school and college and many more stories of the village in between plus a sprinkling of pictures to boot. This is volume 2 in a series and continues in further volumes
About the Author
I was born in April 1938 at a Brook House Farm just outside of the town of Stafford Staffordshire in the UK. At the age of four we moved up to the Beeches Farm, in the next village of Seighford, and that was where we were all brought up, or reared, as to put it in farming terms. I am second of four, father was eldest of four, grandfather was one of eight, G. grandfather was youngest of seven, G.G. grandfather was youngest of eight, and my G.G.G. grandfather was born in 1753. Out of the six generations of farmers, I and my father were the only ones to benefit from the use of tractors. As the second of four boys all sent (I say sent as we were not too keen on school) to the local primary school in the village of Seighford. None of us went on to grammar school, but we did go to Farm College at Rodbaston Penkridge and after leaving school, then went on to start our own farms. My first farm was Church Farm in the same village, starting with 26 dairy cows in 1960, gradually building them numbers up over the next twenty five years to 70 milking cows plus young stock. Yews Farm became vacant in the mid 1980’s (at this point I must tell you that all four farms are within a mile and half of each other), it’s a 250 acres grass and arable Farm, where I went over to keeping a suckler cow herd with the calves being taken on through to finish. I had never ever written an essay or anything like it since I left school, a period of sixty five years, the ten years ago started writing poems and verses, and then gradually filled in the stories behind the poems I had written. It’s all about my family and the old farm houses, the craftsmen of the village from the cobbler to the wheelwright and about the cottages and the folk who lived in them. Finally, I would like to thank all those who have helped my wife and I over the years, particularly my family, and friends and neighbours who have helped us all throughout our farming lifetime, that is what true village country folk are good at. A quote by; Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. As father always used to say “Wear the old buggers out fost”. Fred Waterfall (Owd Fred)
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