Those last three or four days were amongst the coldest I ever remember. We had two very heavy falls of snow, and a really keen frost.
I cleaned two loads of 'wuzzle' and yoking Prince in the cart I took them to the fold.
In the afternoon, Mr. Pick and I sawed logs and stacked them up for use in the house.
The following morning we started to cut the hedge at the far side of the small field beyond the ponds, ready to lay it.
The next morning I put my hot-water bottle (a rubber one) on the chair near my bed as I got up. When I came in a tea-time and went up to have a wash, I found that the water was frozen solid inside the bottle. I had to gradually thaw it out near the fire that evening before I could empty it. My face flannel was frozen in a solid lump to the oilcloth on the table, and even the jar of cream in my drawer was frozen and had to be thawed before I could use it. Certainly the weather was giving me a good send-off.
On the day before I left, Mr. Pick and I sawed down a big old pine tree in the hedge. It fell with a loud crack, and frozen snow came down with it and scattered in all directions. As we cut up the trunk, my hand froze to the saw handle (even through my gloves) so that it was quite painful to pull it away, and when we tried to move away, the irons on our boots had frozen to the ground.
This was my very last job. When I came back later - as a visitor - the hedge was finished and beautifully laid.
Mrs. Hicks was at the farm when I left, and Mrs. Pick went to the station with me.
'Goodbye Mary,' said Mrs. Hicks, 'and don't forget, if ever you want a job you can apply to me.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Pick, 'and if ever you need a reference, apply to me.'
'And,' said Mrs. Pick, 'if you ever need a home, apply to me.'
As the train took me back to Leeds, I thought over the years I had been on the farm. Filled with hard work they certainly had been, but filled too with the reward of work - the satisfaction of jobs done to the best of your ability; of crops saved in spite of difficulties and bad weather, and safely harvested; of seeing good results for your work (not, I must add, in terms of money. Far from it!)
From the window of one of the two coaches pulled by 'Coffee', I looked across the fields and could just see the farm in the distance. I could even see the Rowan tree in the hedge, which Mr. Pick had left standing because I liked it so much.
Goodbye Brickyard Farm, and all the Picks. But no, - goodbye to the farm work perhaps, but only 'au revoir' to you, I hope. And so it was, for I have been back many times since then.
A few years later, many alterations has taken place, for Mr. And Mrs. Pick had bought the farm themselves, and the roof is repaired and the house has new, modern windows in it. They had Calor gas lighting put in, and later on, electricity reached them. Water is laid on, and the second dairy has become a bathroom, and there is a Rayburn stove in the kitchen.
Christine is now a children's nurse, and Sam, who is more than six feet tall, is going in for electrical engineering.
On the land, a tractor has taken the place of the horses for most of the jobs.
My first reaction was that I had been there some years too soon. But on reflection, I don't think so.
I loved working with the horses far more than I ever should with a tractor. I know that new machinery is necessary. I know only too well how much labour the machine can save. But I am still glad I had the chance to live and to work under the old conditions; glad that I had the chance to ride on a swaying, horse-drawn load of hay, before it gave place to a noisy, dirty tractor; glad to know that I could feel at home there; that the ways of the city are only a thin veneer, and that underneath I belong to the country - to the land of green fields and brown earth, of smokeless skies and wide horizons. I have learned to love the land, as well as the people. Now I look at them with eyes which see much more than they once did, because I understand what I see. I have a deeper respect for the people and the problems they have to face - not least the problems of the weather.
Yet in spite of this, in retrospect I always picture the land at its sunny best. Now when I pass a field, I want to look over the hedge and see what the crop is, and how it is doing. And however long I live, I shall always thrill at the sight of a line of stooks up the stubble, or new lines of corn up a dark brown field, or at the touch of the soft muzzle of a horse.
In spite of the work, it was a wonderful life, and I would not have missed it for anything.