The Early Years
I suppose I had better start with my early life at Wards Hill, Minster. Me and my brother James were both born at Upper Wards Farm, Wards Hill, Minster. Our father had a small dairy herd of about 20 cows which in those days had to be milked by hand, they were grazed on Minster cliffs before all the houses were built. There was only about 50 houses in total on the area north of Wards Hill at that time and I can remember delivering milk to all the houses after school in the evenings. At certain times of the year our school days started with me and some of my mates driving cows from Wards Hill across Wybornes Chase to a field behind the old Minster School before school and then after lessons had finished we would take them home to Wards Hill again. Another job we had to do as children was to go and ride horses back from the blacksmith which was in Chapel Street next to Minster post office as it is now.
My father also owned the farm where I am now at Bell Farm Lane, most of what was grown on this farm had to be taken by horse and cart back to Upper Wards Farm where my mother ran a shop, I spent my early years driving heavy horses and carts between the two farms.
My work on the farm increased once the war started, two of my fathers workmen left to join the forces so it was me and a couple of friends that started doing a lot more work on the farm, ploughing, harrowing, drilling crops and general farm work which of course was done with the heavy horses. Not much time for school in those days but we were always hampered by the army camp that was built on our 14 acres of land and was taken over by the army, we had to keep our eyes open for any red flags or sirens that was sounded by air-raids or firing practice that was carried out. We had to take the horses in as fast as we could out of the way the army also took over our Fordson tractor to pull their guns about so we never had the use of that, it eventually went away and we never had the use of that again. Towards about 1942 the Ministry of Food or what we used to call the War Agricultural Society where farmers could go and hire tractors and machinery by the week which helped a lot with the ploughing and heavy work, we also had to cart with the horses hay and cut grass which was green meat (green grass) to Upper Wards Farm in Minster 2 or 3 times a week for the dairy cows which my father and another worker looked after. Later in the war at the weekends the horses had to be taken from Bell Farm to Upper Wards to stop them being frightened by a battery of rockets which the army fired in practice at the weekends and then ridden back on Sunday evenings so they were ready for work on Monday morning.
During the war years when I was about 11 years old I learnt to plough when my father used another farmer to contract plough our arable land, I used to bunk off school, ride up to Bell Farm on an old bike and spend all day sitting on the mud guard of a standard Fordson tractor watching the ploughman ploughing, I must have spent weeks doing that just watching what and how to do it. When I got to about 12 years old we could hire a Fordson tractor from the War Ag which meant I could do most of the ploughing myself, we only had one older horseman left working for us so I was allowed to work one of the older horses on a hay rake or hay turner during hay time, I also graduated to a hay sweep that had just been invented, it was called a tumble sweep, which was pulled by a horse into the hay, when you got a nice load on it you drove the horse as close to the stack, lift the handles a little bit, the points would stick in the ground and it would tip up and over leaving a pile of hay behind then away you went for another load. Then 2 or 3 people would fork the hay onto the stack that they were making.