Memories of another time, one Sally to another

As I was painting the tea room doors the other day two ladies walked hesitantly into the yard. One, walking straight and with purpose nevertheless needed the support of her companion’s arm to guide her way. As with all visitors, I greeted them effusively & welcomed them in for a cup of coffee. I learned that they were mother & daughter. Mother, now 90 years old, had lived at Northfield Farm for 10 years between the ages of 6 & 16. Her father had been farm manager during that time. She had come to live here 84 years ago. The more we talked and looked around, the more she remembered about her life here. She told me that her Father, a large man with a booming voice and a kind heart, had left Northfield for another job in the late 1930’s and regretted leaving ever after. She talked of a life lived by candle, the one tap in the house from the spring which would dry up in hot summers. The only toilet facility, a fair walk away from the house. In high winds her mother would refuse to stay in the house until after the huge steel stays, still visible, were run through the walls from one side to the other. Prior to this feat of engineering the house would shake during storms. In those days Northfield was run alongside two other farms making up a co-operation of activity. Northfield ran sheep, pigs and fattened cattle. There was no mechanical machinery, all the harvesting was horse powered by huge Shire horses together with the sleeker, less hirsute Suffolk Punches. Apparently the Shires would tolerate any amount of pestering from the little girl & her brothers & sister, while the Suffolks were quick to show their disapproval.  Harvest took place in September. The horses would be brought in from the fields at 9-00 in the evening, fed, groomed and turned out to roll & frolic in their paddock. All this when it was still light at that time, unlike now. This may be a lesser known aspect of the turning axis of the world, or it could be that Northfield was not in time with the new fangled concept of British time changes which had only recently been implemented. The little girl was kept indoors when the young men from local villages came to help with the harvest. Then she would rush out to play with the family’s huge white sow, Sally, or roll around in the straw beneath the bellies of the huge Shire horses. I can picture the long-suffering Sally, trotting, dugs flapping across the yard to be hugged and pestered by the little girl. In the farm-house there was one room, the dairy, which received the milk, and across the hallway, another, large and cool with white washed walls, where the previous occupants had made cheese.

Life was not all bucolic and rosy. Months would sometimes pass without seeing anyone new, blacking the ranges and cooking in the front room by and over the fire, the morning ritual of emptying seven or so chamber pots into a pail & carrying it down stairs and outside without spilling a drop. All must have seemed a burden then, but are recalled with a certain pride today.

The annual rare breeds show & sale at Melton Market attracted so many people that the over flow car park needed an over flow car park. I went hoping to expand the pig breeds which we have at Northfield, and so came away the proud owner of the Champion Male British Lop Male and an in pig top notch British Lop Female. The British Lop remains the rarest of the British Rare breed Pigs.

So the wheel has come full circle and now, 84 years later there is another huge, white, friendly sow at Northfield. No prizes for guessing the new sow’s name.