THE FARM AT DEERFOLD
My mum used to put us on the bus at Leominster and my aunty Annie, who was my mother’s younger sister, used to meet us at Lingen and then we would walk to the farm. It was all uphill. There were cob nuts on the hedges which we used to pick and wild strawberries and we used to enjoy eating them.
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The farm was down a long winding lane. It was ever so pretty, and the farm house was really nice . There was a field, a wainhouse (storage barn), stables, cow shed, pigsties and a house for the chickens to go in at night. There was no electricity, gas or running water at the farm, but we loved it.
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My aunty used to do her washing on Monday and clean her bedroom on Tuesday. She always took tea leaves from out of the teapot which she used to drop all over the carpet and then brush them up. On Wednesdays she used to make the bread for the week and I used to help her. We had to go out and help bring the wood in to put in the oven. The oven was brick, built into the wall in the kitchen and when it was hot she would put the dough in to cook. One day I started counting the loaves and Aunty said, “You mustn’t count them before they are cooked. It’s unlucky”, so I did it in my head anyway.
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When they were hay making they would lock up the house and I would have to sit outside and they would leave the dog with me and my aunty would make food and tea and we would carry it over the fields and sit with the men and eat it. I remember thinking how nice it was; the sun was shining and the hay was all golden.
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One day we went to the orchard with Aunty and pick up windfall apples. The orchard wasn’t flat ground so we had to go to the bottom and walk all the way up with the bucket and when I got to the top I dropped my bucket and my apples fell back down and I said “Oh damn!” and Aunty said “Vera, you naughty girl. Now you must go back down and pick them up and don’t let me hear you say that word again”.
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They used to kill the pigs and you could hear them squealing into the kitchen. There was a roller towel behind the kitchen door. I used too wrap it round my head so that I couldn’t hear it. After that there would be pig meat for tea at night. There were chitterlings and scratchings and Granddad always said that I had got to eat the pig’s tail. It was on the dish and I used to be really frightened all through dinner, but in the end Granddad used to eat it.
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Thursday was the day for making butter to take to the town on Friday. All the week there would be great big bowls in the dairy and the milk would be put in them and when it settled Aunty would have a tool like a big sieve but it had holes in it; it was slightly tilted and she would run it under the cream and then put the cream in a special container ready for making the butter. She would get the churn ready, it was all in lovely wood, and put the cream in it and fasten it down, and then Joan and I would have to take turns at turning the handle. It took a long time to make and we used to get very tired during it, but it really was lovely butter. Aunty had two wooden spatulas she would use to pat the butter into shape and make a nice design on top. We also had to wipe all the eggs ready so they looked good. On Friday Granddad would get the horse and cart out and take the produce to market. I think that was their main income. He would sometimes come back drunk.
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Mr Jones, who used to play the organ in the chapel, used to sit me on his knee and tap out hymns and I had to guess what they were. He said to me one day “Promise me Vera you won’t ever smoke cigarettes”. He told me it would be sinful if I did. He was a lovely man and had a fine tenor voice. I used to watch him playing the organ and singing hymns. If I had some good things to tell anyone, I would walk all the way from the farm to the post office where Mr Jones lived with his mother, just to tell him. I think I loved him. He was so kind.
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They used to have a bazaar in the village hall and people used to give Aunty things to go in the bran tub (lucky dip). One day someone from a farm nearby sent some small things over, already wrapped, for the bran tub and Aunty said she must open them and see what they had sent. They were salt and pepper pots with real silver tops. She said she would have to change them and put something else in their place. She said it wasn’t wrong to do that because they were much too good
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Granddad used to come to chapel, put his glasses on and hold his hymn book but he couldn’t read. They say he used to play truant from school. One day Aunty was away and a man came with a note for Granddad and I had to read it to him. He had borrowed some equipment and not returned it.
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Aunty used to take us to a house in the village where Mrs Pope lived. The chapel ladies used to meet there one night a week to practice doing a play for the chapel, and they used to dress up in all their funny hats and furs. I used to love it. When we were walking home I used to get tired and Aunty would carry me and I remember I would look up at all the stars in the sky. She was always very kind to us.
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We were at a farm house one day and they had a daughter of about eight years old. There was a leather sofa in the room and all of a sudden she pulled out a pan from under it and sat on it to do toilet. Well, Aunty didn’t stop talking about it for weeks.
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One day my uncle George’s wife, aunty Ada and my cousin Esmé came to stay at the farm. Esmé and me decided to go for a walk over the fields. We were coming over the field which would lead us to the lane that would take us back to the farm; it was a shorter way back. There was a man in the lane and he was waving and calling to us to go to him. I thought it was my uncle Harry, and when I got closer I said to Esmé that I had a feeling not to go on. I said, “Let’s go back the way we came” We started to turn back over the field the way we had come and we ran panting into the kitchen and there was my uncle Harry. We said, “Was that you calling us in the lane?” He asked us where and as we were telling him he pulled on his boots and was out through the door. When he got up the lane the man was still there, and when he saw my uncle he ran for his life. My uncle never caught him. I don’t know what would have happened if he had.
