Early years in one’s
life often become rather more vivid, and perhaps more rosy, as one approaches
an allotted life-span of three score years and ten. However, there was something
almost unreal about being brought up on a hill farm in North Yorkshire in
the war years. This way of life, “self-sustaining farming”, has
been lost forever – it was a life with no tractor, no car, no
“mains” electricity; paraffin or candles to provide light, peat
and wood to provide warmth and water from a spring. Such a way of life had
been followed by generations of county-folk in that part of the world and
I can only offer admiration for all those parents who raised families on
homesteads of, typically, fifty hectares by a continuum of
work.
Being younger than
my two brothers I was not in the front line of the work force and they, together
with my father, ran the farm. The yearly pattern of work hardly ever changed;
sowing crops (cereals, potatoes, turnips, etc) in the spring, haymaking in
the summer and harvesting the crops in autumn. Before haymaking there was
an opportunity to cut peat briquettes on the moors and, after these had dried
throughout the summer, they were carted home in autumn to provide winter
fuel. Autumn was the season for gathering in the harvest and all other produce
which was then stored for use in winter. Ploughing followed the harvesting
and the frosts of winter could then break down the soil to a fine tilth.
The winter months were largely allocated to looking after the stock. Also,
odd-jobs were carried out: carting
manure onto the fields, ditching, attending to fencing, repairing farm
implements, and the like. In addition, threshing , i.e. separating the grain
from the straw for cereal crops, was carried out in the winter months. Almost
all these activities relied on “horse-power” so the prized possession
of any farm resided in the stables. These huge animals consumed a fair proportion
of the stored fodder and, unlike a tractor, did require “fuel”
even when they are not working. Milking and butter making, collecting eggs
and feeding the stock was a continuous activity so that any farming family
could rarely have more than a day or two off for
“holidays”.
Gardens and orchards
were stocked with vegetables and fruit so that, in many ways, farmers were
rather better supplied with food during the difficult war years than many
city dwellers. A permit had to be obtained to kill pigs and it was illegal
to kill other animals on the farm. So killing two pigs each autumn gave us
a supply of meat during the winter months and, in summer, there were a plentiful
supply of rabbits. Collecting hazel nuts during the autumn gave us treats
at Christmas time and, with some illegal fishing, even the occasional salmon
graced our dinner plates!
This way of living
is, possibly, very similar to that of the Amish and Mennonite communities
of North America but most of the farming in UK today is highly
mechanised.
Never the less I share
my memories with those of my friend P. N. Walker:
“Another of my
schoolboy pleasures in the 1950’s was to visit Hart Hall Farm which
stands below the school at Glaisdale. My friend and I would sit and chat
beside the flickering fire in the kitchen. It was an old fashioned iron range
and the floor was of stone. The lighting was by oil lamps and on a dark autumn
night the wind would howl round the buildings as the cattle, snug in their
own accommodation next to the house, would fidget in their stalls and rattle
their securing chains. Crickets sometimes chirped in the hearth and the calm
quality of life was like stepping back a century in
time”.
A fuller account of
farming methods in this period of time is given
below:-
Life in the Moorlands
of North East Yorshire
By Marie Hartley and
Joan Ingilby
Dent and Sons
1972
ANOTHER EXAMPLE WILL BE GIVEN OF A SMALL SCALE FARM IN
HONDURAS WHICH DOES NOT RELY ON FOSSIL FUELS
(note - water is not included, below, but must have been freely available also the ownership of the land is not specified; it is assumed to be owned by the farmer otherwise rent would have been included as an outflow in costs )
The sustainable workings of a Hondurian farm was given some time ago in Scientific American, September 1980, page 74 and part of the input/ output flows are given below:-
As shown, the family provide most of the labour - 403 man-days (MD) but has a supplement of 185 man-days for harvest periods. Also, in slack periods 59 man-days are used elsewhere to provide an income of $88. The farmer earned a total of $1,830 (green lined box) in the year from selling maize, rice, eggs and renting out his ox and his oxcart (together with the 59 man-days). The outgoing amounted to $1648 which comes from a totaling up the red-boxed items on the left hand side of the diagram. Starting from the bottom, household articles - $431, food extras - $246, 84 Kg of beans and 70 Kg of rice. Although these crops were grown additional quantities of these commodities would be needed from outside during the growing season unless they had been stored from a previous year. The sum total for the year's hard work is
a net surplus of $182
The additional part of the diagram has details of work activity and is given below.
The ox-days ( OD ) are marked with a dotted line and a total of 181 days are listed but only 115 are needed for cultivation and cropping. Thus the ox is hired out for 66 days bringing in an income of $82.
There are 1.8 hectares of rice, 3 hectares of maize, 0.2 hectares of beans and 1 hectare of pasture for the oxen. Total sustainability is not achieved in that fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides are used on the crops and the family require items that cannot be produced on the farm. However, fossil fuels (apart from a small amount of kerosene) are not used anywhere on the farm as the work is carried out by man-days or ox-days. On line 14 we see that fruit is not costed and is grown purely for consumption by the family. Line 12 shows that the farm requires 529 man-days of which 350 are needed for maize cultivation and harvesting and 179 are allocated for the rice and beans. A very small time allowance is given for the pasture, chickens and fruit area and any activity in these areas may even have been done by the children of the family.
(Note - the input/ output balances on commodities are as follows:-
Maize + 2237 kg, Beans + 24 kg and Rice - 144 kg but these have not been costed in monetary terms. There is a typographical error in the original diagram 44kg of chicken food refers to the maize and 12 kg is placed on the rice box)
At my home on the Yorkshire farmstead the main income was from milk, free range eggs and chickens, sale of sheep and cattle for meat and wool for fabrics. Again, apart from a small amount of paraffin there was no requirement for fossil fuels. Work was mainly carried out with horses and these huge animals did consume large amounts of hay in the winter months.
