On the land, a particular kind of weather seems often to be associated with a particular job. Just as sugar beet lifting is synonymous with wet and mud, so the mention of hay-making brings a picture of sun and blue skies, and a summer breeze. Lifting wuzzle is usually accompanied by damp, misty weather, and pulling turnips by morning frost with the consequent icy leaves. Parsnips make me think of the freezing winds of January, and the trees were felled as a rule when the ground was covered by snow.
Pulling and topping sugar beet is without exception the worst job I had to do. Mr. Pick did much more of the pulling than I did, but what I had to do was more than enough! Row upon row of wet, muddy beet, half ploughed out but still needing a good tug to free them from the sticky earth. Working backwards up a field, and pulling two rows at a time, one with each hand. Every time I took a step backwards the leaves emptied half their rain water down the tops of my boots, and every time I pulled a couple of beet they poured water over my hands and arms and dungarees. Banging them together to remove as much of the soil as possible, of course, added mud to my dungarees too. My regular job at this time of year was topping the beet. This consisted of holding the muddy beet in my left hand and slicing off the top (in exactly the right place too) with a knife. Sometimes I was alone in the filed, sometimes Mr. Pick would be pulling beet or ploughing some out. Sometimes odd men would be hired to help. Some of them were 'odd' in more ways than one! Percy was one of the oddest. He was very scruffy, and looked as if he hadn't had a good wash for weeks. And, as young Sam remarked, 'Percy dribbles!' He certainly did. So much so that I always tried to work it so that I had my 10 o'clock drink either before he had his or at the other end of the field. It didn't always work out though, because he did his best to have his with me! On one of the occasions when we were having it together, he asked me to walk through the fields to Easingwold with him that evening. Needless to say, I was otherwise engaged!
There was one wet day when I almost gave up the job for good. I had spent the morning alone in the field, with no-one else in sight, and was back again for the afternoon. Everywhere was soaking with rain, and a steady drizzle was falling. I was splashed with mud from head to foot, and my hands and feet, from being wet and cold, had long been at the stage where I was not sure whether I possessed any or not. A freezing wind was blowing, and the outlook ahead consisted of an endless succession of rows of beet awaiting my knife. My back felt as if it might break in half at any moment, or as if someone was having a good time running red-hot needles up and down it, for I had been bent double since early morning.
Why ever did I volunteer to join the Land Army of all things? And what I wouldn't give up to be dry and curled comfortably in front of a roaring fire! I pictured the weeks ahead - day after day bent almost double all day, and almost always wet.
A stray sunbeam, the first to appear that day, fell across a pile of beet. A robin hopped onto the topmost beet, and sang, in a pool of light, not a yard from where I was working. I stopped for a moment to look - I could see the bright rust feathers rise and fall with the force and rhythm of his singing.
And suddenly I knew that if I had the chance to choose my war job again, in spite of the fact that my back ached, and my hands and feet were numb, and in spite of these seemingly endless rows of wet beet - I would without hesitation make exactly the same choice as I had made so many months ago.
What is it about nature that suddenly and unexpectedly lifts you out of the common-pace things, and gives you back a sense of proportion? The utter perfection of every detail of bird and flower and tree is one of the things which increasingly fills me with wonder and worship.
And so, after a brief half-minute I returned to my sugar beet, and my robin stayed within a yard or two of me for the whole of the afternoon until I returned to the farm to do the milking.
And so the weeks passed- a long succession of sugar beet rows, or so it seemed. Although it was really interspersed with a number of other jobs.
Autumn had gone, with its misty mornings when the gossamer threads of the spider, woven between the blades of the grass or the bars of the gate or in the garden hedge, were strung with dew-drops. The swallows had left on their long flight. The blackberries were over, and hips and haws gleamed on leafless bushes. The plough had turned the pale gold stubble into lines of dark brown soil.
We had pulled the mangolds on a very cold day, when the leaves were thickly coated with ice, which crackled as I grasped them. The big mangolds came away easily as they have only a small root-hold, and I found that I could maintain a steady rhythm as I pulled with my left hand, swung the mangold across, and chopped off the top with a knife in my right hand. Pull - swing - chop. One after another the huge red and yellow roots rolled right into a line down the field, from where we later threw them into the cart and put them in a pie in the stackyard.
The carrots which we had pulled and topped (a nice job) were in a long pie near the gate of the carrot field up the lane. I spent one morning covering the pie with soil to protect them from the frost. Here they would stay undisturbed until we were ready to bag them. Undisturbed, that is, except by a hungry field mouse or two. For when we did uncover them we found a few empty shells - just the thin outside case of the carrots, whole and in one piece, with all the middle removed and eaten.
The days grew shorter. The stars were still out when we got up in the morning, and we milked in the evening by the flickering light of a storm lantern.
At the end of November we pulled the turnips. Rather slower work than mangolds, because the roots have to be cut off, which takes two or three chops of the knife for each turnip. Most of these we put in a pie. But some we bagged up and carted to the road side. This was one of the wettest days. As Mr. Pick and I slung each bag up, hold of the top of the sack with one hand and a short pole with the other on which rested the heavy end of the sack, we got absolutely soaked, and mud flew everywhere - even into my ears! So heavy was the rain that day that the dairy and the wash-house were flooded.
The next day Mr. Pick got word that there was a truck ready for him at the station, so back we went to the sugar beet. This time we each took a horse and cart. Down the field we went, filling each pile of beet into the carts. For this we used a thing like a big, wide gardening fork with about ten prongs, and slightly curved so that it held a number of beet. The end were not pointed, but finished in a small knob. This was called a sugar beet gripe. It was heavy work to swing this up full of beet, from ground level and over the side of the cart, especially as the load got higher.
When both cart were filled, and piled up as high as they would go to ride safely, we set off up the lane, each walking and leading a horse. Sometimes it was easy going, but at times it could be difficult. When the road was covered with ice, it was sometimes a job to keep the horse on its feet, and I had to keep his head up by force, while his big hooves slid on the ice. When there was no ice, we could just jog along and take it easy.
Reaching the station, we turned into the yard, and here we had to get the horse and cart squarely onto the weigh, while Wilf jotted down the weight in a big black book. Then off we went to locate the huge truck which we were to fill. Having found it, we backed the carts up to it, climbed onto the loaded carts, and began to empty the beet into the truck. Heavy work again, but easier than filling the carts.
While this was going on, Price would stand like a rock, and never so much as blink if a train began to shunt and whistle just under his nose. But Dolly was another matter. At the first sign of shunting, she would begin to dance around, and one of us would have to go and hold her head until it was all over, or she would have been off.
When the carts were empty, off we would go, not forgetting to stand on the weigh so that Wilf could note down the weight of the horse and the empty cart.
On the way back we had a short respite - each driving a horse and cart. I loved to perch up aloft at the front of the cart, my feet on the shaft, the reins in my hands, and jog along down the lane. Now there was time to look around, to see how far the other farmers had got with their beet. Time to note the colours of the countryside, and see the vivid splash of colour in a spray of blackberry leaves in the hedge, which had stayed on long after the others had fallen and had turned a brilliant red. Time to note the clusters of holly berries on the trees, and to see a flock of redwings in Donaldson's field.
Then back to the farm, to repeat the whole process again. Keeping at it, we could take six loads in the morning, and six in the afternoon, by which time the truck was full and we could climb on to it to pack it firmly for its journey to the sugar beet factory in York.
The next day it would be back to the field again, topping more beet ready for the next truck. Sometimes they would be wet and muddy, sometimes so frozen that they stuck to each other and to the ground.
Sugar beet tops are loved by the cows, and these we raked up and carted back to the farm. If the cows were in the field, they would come running, and pull off any tops they could get hold of, so that it was pretty hectic trying to get a horse and cart through a gate, and close the gate with the cart on one side and the cows still on the other!
Then, at last, usually just before Christmas, we would arrive at the part I had been looking forward to for weeks, the final joy of being able to say - 'We have finished the beet!'
Thankfully I trundled up the lane beside Prince, with the last load. Joyfully, I heaved the very last beet into the truck, and jogged back to the farm, wet, tired and unbelievably muddy, but entirely content.