The Farm Sale 190

No I am not having a farm sale here, but a couple of years ago a neighbouring farm sold up and I sent quite a few items up to be sold back then. Now another neighbour is having a dispersal sale and again I am contributing some more of my deadstock, to be sold at his sale this spring. (2014).

I have been selling off items of machinery privately over the last three years as and when a buyer came up, but you get down to the last few thing that could still be worth selling for further use. I have been  scrapping all that what I call "useful reuseable metal", you know, the sort of metal that you can make or mend stuff with, but its got to go at some point in time.

 Everything is on a priority list, and I keep gleaning through my workshop scrap heap, some of my tools are the old Whitworth and AF spanners, but I fear they are getting frightfully close to going to the crusher. An old brushing hook kept for trimming nettles and briars off the electric fence, I doubt if the younger generation have ever heard  of  or would know what it is, and that was the way we cut all the hedges not fifty years ago. 

An old scythe, when you see them using them on the television programs, it make you cringe at the mess they are making. not a clue how to use or sharpen it. The old men, before they had lawn mowers would be cutting the lawns around these stately homes, not as short I grant you, but it was always a very tidy job. 

The last serious job I remember with scythes was to cut a "road" round the corn fields (wheat barley and oats, for those way over the pond). It was absolute sacrilege to run a wheel, or run corn down with wheels back then before the days of the combine. A few days before we were ready for bindering, two gangs of three would head one each way round the outside of the fields of corn, one scything, two picking up the crop into bundles and tying them with what we called a bonce of straw, no string. It was just wide enough for the old Standard Fordson to travel pulling the binder for the first time round.    

You just get carried away, just thinking back on how we managed, setting too with a two furrow plough in a fifteen or twenty acre field in winter with no cab, but that just another tale for another day.

The farm where we were brung up, my first farm, my present farm, and the house we are retiring to all in one picture, seventy five years all in one village. 

A village fete advert mown into some stalky grass in thirty foot letter, (by some silly bgguer who has nowt better to do ) it made it into all the local press, photo taken by the local gliding club, the tug plane pilot.

  I just wish it was as easy and simple as I make it sound in the verse I writ a couple of years ago,

 --see below   

The Farm Sale

The years have come the years have gone, its time to sell the lot,

And now I've got to organize, the sale of all I've got,

To pull it out the sheds and then, n’ lay it out in rows,

For all and everyone who comes, to have a dam good nose.

The tools and all machinery, bought it years ago,

Ploughed the land and worked it, encouraged crops to grow,

Harrowed all the grass in spring, soon as the Daff’s appear,

Cattle would be turned out, and sold that big fat steer.

Job to know where to start, and find things long forgotten,

Things we used like brushing hooks, n’ pitch forks stale gone rotten,

Shovels spades and muck forks, all standing where last used,

Some I've had a long time, and some they were abused.

Workshop that’s a nightmare, the scrap ruck will increase,

Wading through the junk to find, that lost now found tailpiece

All the things you save as spares, but things move on apace,

Out dated now and far too small, with newer one replaced.

The tractor that’s seen better days, reliable it has been,

Well used and got a loader on, could do with a dam good clean,

Worked it hard all day long, every day of the year,

Last day now it has arrived, and to the field must steer.

A second one it’s older still, with a draughty cab,

Tyres worn and torn about, n’ the paints a little drab.

Steering wobbles brakes no good, useful to have about,

Its winter when it wonner start, I have a dam good shout.

Be sorry to see an empty yard, and all the cleaned out sheds,

The damp old house abandoned, and empty old farmstead,

Silence now for few a weeks, until new folk move in,

Then once again start from new, new livestock make a din.

Owd Fred

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Booker T. Washington  (1856 - 1915)