An illustrated interview with Miss Annie George

Haymaking

And then we get to hay making and that's different to the big tractors and things we have today isn't it? All the people went out to help, the ladies as well who took refreshments down to the menfolk. And there again this was even before the elevators were invented because that would have to have been pitched up onto the wagon by hand with long pitchforks and so it was a very slow process. 

And that's another one which I think was taken at Mr Young's farm although I'm not sure. Again it was all manual work putting things onto the cart. That big rake at the side there. The man in the hut doesn't look ready for manual work - but they all wore hats in those days. Hard to imagine. I should think he's the owner of the farm. The horses had to work hard carrying loads like that. Did you say that the children had time off school? Sometimes they did to help, yes, and to help with bird scarring with the corn and digging the potato crop. 

That was a rick made by hand. That would all be tossed up with the long rakes and then someone has been going round tidying it up. I think that's Mr Jakeman on top of that by the way he's standing. It wasn't very safe because that hay was very loose underneath and you could very easily slide.

Early Mechanisation

In front was Mr Tom Watts and he used to work up at Pear Tree Farm - it was his brother in law who owned it and so he was very prominent in lots of the pictures we've got. Even the time it took to build the rick and get the hay in now we are moving on a bit because we've got a bit of machinery and that's an elevator. That was run by a horse going round and round and round and the cogs all worked in so that the conveyor belt went up with the hay on it and this horse would almost do it in his sleep because he would go round and round and round and we, as children, used to like to sit on the shaft and go round with it, but of course, it was a very dangerous thing to do which I learned to my horror, because I caught my foot in the cogs and I still have a scar now, it's a wonder I didn't have my foot taken off. I screamed and the horse stopped dead, he was an old horse and someone came over and rescued me. It was a great advantage though when they had a bit of machinery on the farm.

Ploughing
I don't think this is around Grendon, it looks more up the Wycombe way. Ploughing that huge field with two horses and walking, again it was real manual labour. Very hard work.

Sowing

This is a man sowing the seed by hand. He has the seed in the bag over this shoulder and that gradually runs through and goes into the drills that have been made, so he goes up and down.

This goes back to the end of the century or the 1800s and this is someone cutting a field of corn with a sickle, all by hand you see. It must have taken hours and hours to do. The corn is tall, almost as tall as him, not like these days. But you don't wonder at a man's back being a little bit bent after doing all that work for hours on end. All the men used to have their trouser legs tied, whether it was to stop things running up their legs, it could have been - mice or rats. When you were threshing the corn the rats were huge. It says on this slide 'fagging". A fagging hook was like a sickle and in the left hand he would have a little piece of wood with an angle and would hold that. I've still got one of those and an old sickle.

There's another picture of Mr Watts - I said you would see him several times. He was the one by the rick. Cutting a 4.171 acres of oats by hand. By himself. 

Another harvesting one where they are tying the sheaths by hand before machinery binders that did it. There were a lot of men involved - farmers would help one another - if the corn was ripe they would do that field and they would all work together. And they are school children? I would imagine so. Wouldn't it be nice to have days off to do hay making. That machine was cutting it. Obviously it wasn't binding it because they are doing that by hand.
  

 That's the elevator again down at Mr Young's farm. I think that is Mrs Young helping with her rake and I should think it was just when the elevator came in. 
I think that would be when they came round to get the corn and this would be the thresher machine and so the corn was put in there and threshed out and the corn would come out in one place and the straw in another.

I don't know if this is Mrs Brazier. Middle Farm is the name of the Young's farm.  Pat Brazier's mother is Mrs Young.