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Growing Up In Feltwell in the 1950s & 60s – Part – 22. In the Harvest Field
I had first started work in the harvest field in 1965 just after we had moved from Cambridge House to Addison’s Close. Mum and dad were still taking the annual holiday in Wales and I was left happily in charge of our newly built bungalow. Up at 6.30am, I appreciated the solitude and the still, quiet, early morning sunshine; broken only by bird song and my latest Bob Dylan single Like A Rolling Stone blasting from my Dansette record player. By 8am we were in the field preparing the Claas combine for work, which as well as clearing the sieves inside the Combine, meant greasing a lot of nipples.
Yet the risk of rain was never far away. When the corn had been cut the little red “scarlet pimpernel” flowers were more noticeable in the stubble and Jim was interested to learn of the tiny blooms’ apparent ability to foretell the likelihood of rain, with a degree of accuracy a little greater than the strands of seaweed we used to bring back from the seaside, supposedly for that same purpose. An aunt and uncle had bought Jim “The Observer’s Book of Weather” and he had more than a passing interest in the subject, although even he could hardly have imagined then he would one day be presenting the weather on BBC and later, Anglia TV. We heard the expression “it’s looking black over Will’s mother’s” more than once. Farmhands could happily discuss the likelihood of a particular front bringing rain and whilst corn dryers existed, they were expensive to run. And I remember one of them once coming out with a line seemingly straight from one of Thomas Hardy’s novels: “Ah! A thunderstorm rarely clears the air”!
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But by the time harvest came around in 1966 Jim and I had been joined by another friend (and Ken’s son) Terry. Jim’s brother Richard was less fortunate as he was the sole young hand employed by the Rices at Home Farm and was probably worked harder than us without as much fun. We were now 16 and riding our scooters and motorcycles – and also taking a turn at driving the tractors. When the Combine needed to empty its tank of grain we had to take the trailer with the holding tank to it, passing under the auger which was tilted up at an angle of 45 degrees with its spout pointing 45 degrees down. The top of the tank was some 4ft above our heads yet there was only a few inches leeway either side of the perfect line: if the tank was too close it hit the auger and too far away, the spout would not reach it. I am sure all 3 of us nudged the auger at least once!
A nice solo task was turning the hay or straw. When the baler on the combine malfunctioned, rather than halt the harvesting the straw was allowed just to fall to the ground. Most farms had a simple “acrobat” turner which was very easy to operate. It was towed behind the tractor like any trailer and the wheels moving forward also drove the spinning of 4 simple tined “wire wheels” which lifted the hay or straw briefly into the air, turning it as it did so and then setting it down again in a neat row ready to bale. When the tractor ceased to move forward the tines stopped turning and you could also disengage and re-engage the tines’ spinning at the end of a row by simply pulling on a rope. One Saturday morning I was left in the field on my own doing that job and told if I wanted to continue in the afternoon I could take the tractor to my home in Addison Close to have some lunch (rather than go back to the farm first to collect my scooter) and return with the tractor afterwards. This I happily did.
Most meals at work however were pre-planned, prepared and very simple. I liked to include a round Lyons fruit pie, which cost less than a shilling. “Dockey” time was a time for some reflective conversation and breakfast was particularly pleasant in the open field when the early morning sun was shining: cold tea in a bottle (no milk and with the tea leaves in it) was still a favourite drink for the men. They could get quite excited to hear the corn crackling as it gradually dried out in the sunshine, as if it knew its time had come.
We were told about the poor young Canadians who had crashed their bomber in the very field we were then harvesting because the landing lights were no longer switched on (possibly because of that German fighter that had landed at Feltwell in thick mist, the pilot probably thinking he was over France before taking off without being hit!); of the murderer Nicholls arrested in the Cock pub and hanged at Norwich gaol; how the knot on the noose had to be placed just under the left chin if it is to break the neck cleanly; of the 4 Methwold guides – including former Feltwell 22 yr old, Margery Neville, who died after eating poisonous mushrooms and of a soldier who had been shot in France in WW1 and was saved by his cigarette case in his breast pocket – only to come home on leave in Feltwell and be killed by lightening while sheltering under a tree. Ken told us of a young man who had got a young lady “into trouble” in the early 1930s and our then rector drove him to Lakenheath station, paid his fare to London …. and told him never to come back! Ken knew all this because some 20 years later the then not-so-young man did come back (having made good in Oxford) to say a proper farewell to a few folk he had known here and stayed 2 nights with Ken and his wife.
One drizzly Saturday morning Ken asked me to join him “for a ride over to Methwold”. A spare part for something was needed from much used agricultural engineers Cowlishaws. It was a slow, cramped journey in the cab of the orange Nuffield tractor with a maximum speed of about 25mph and me trying not to slide down the side of the mudguard I was half leaning and half sitting on. All that way – and the shop was closed! So we went to the Swan at Brookville for a slow half pint and, with only the landlady for company, came home.
Compared with other farms in the village we started our harvest late, though Home Farm was usually only just ahead of us. On the Friday before Harvest Festival and with at least a week’s harvesting still to go, Herbie muttered gloomily: “I suppose they’ll all be singing ‘All is safely gathered in,’ this Sun’ay mornin’ once agin in church?’ On my last day I collected my pay from Aunt Edi and went to him to pay for some corn I had taken for my chickens and wide-eyed with his finger in front of his lips, he hushed me immediately: “Sshhh! Thass my pocket money...not hers!!”
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