I got a good crop of blisters on my hands before they got used to handling heavy tools, but after a while they became thoroughly tough and I had no more trouble.
I very soon discovered that a farm had a language of its own. In the pre-Land Army days, a fork had been the usual four-pronged tool I used in the garden. This, for some unaccountable reason, now becomes a 'gripe', while the word fork was used for the long handled two-pronged hay-fork.
Such words as sippit, tines, hames, joggle-pin, scruffler, swingle-tree, etc., were added to my daily vocabulary.
It was surprising how quickly the cows became used to me, and how friendly they became. Before long one of them used to follow me around the fold trying to lick my dungarees.
I found that they were by no means all alike. Each one had its own characteristics, and they were certainly not as senseless as they appeared at first sight. The same cow led the way from the field each day into the fold, and without any fuss each one would go straight to its own stall and wait to be chained up. To do this, it was necessary to put your arms practically around the cow's neck and bring the two ends of the chain around, one above and one below its neck. They were then fastened by threading a bar on one end through a ring on the other end. I soon got used to dealing with them, though I was not too keen on some of the jobs at first.
One of the sheds leading from the fold, which was generally a pig-sty, had two bullocks and two heifers in it for a week or two. This sty had a loft above it which made it just that annoying height in which you can't quite stand upright. The turnips and sugar-beet pulp had to be emptied into a trough at the far end from the door, which meant that I had to go in, edge my way around the animals which seemed to completely fill the floor-space, empty out the food, and get myself out again before the cattle flattened me against the wall in their dash for the food.
I was very glad when some three weeks after my arrival I helped Mr. And Mrs. Pick to take these four up to the cattle-market. This turned out to be quite an exciting trip. To begin with, as soon as they got onto the road they turned the wrong way.
'Stop them, Mary!' shouted Mrs. Pick.
I dived over a wall to head them off, and only just got there in time. After that they made a bee-line for every open gate and every gap up the whole length of the lane. And as most of the gates were open, and many of the hedges had gaps, it was quite a business. We dashed around, as Mr. Pick aptly described it afterwards, like 'scalded cats'.
One thing I remember about this trip was that I happened to call one of the heifers a brown one.
'Brown,' said Mrs. Pick, 'That isn't brown. It's red.' Pursuing the point a little further, I learned that the one I would have called black was actually blue! For a moment I had a vision of sky-blue and pillar-box red cows careering around a field, and I fully expected to be told that the white one was really yellow!
About this time I had a visit from the W. L. A. District Representative. She came to see how I was progressing, and also to bring me my uniform. This was just as well, as I had already ruined my own raincoat and one of Mother's.
My first sight of the Rep., (Lady C.) was when she put her head round the door and said 'Is Olive around?'
I wondered who Olive could be, then suddenly realised that as my first name is Olive she probably meant me. She did, and 'Olive' I remained whenever she came.
She came quite often at first, until she decided that I had settled down all right and everything was going well, and then her visits became much less frequent.
One day she arrived with a small dog on a lead, and would not come into the house because the dog was 'new, and not too reliable'. There followed a very confusing conversation.
'What do you call your dog? I asked.
'Who?' said Lady C.
'Your dog.' I repeated.
'Who?' said Lady C.
I began to wonder which of us was sane! I made one more try.
'Your little dog. What is his name?'
'Who.' replied Lady C., 'I call him Who. Don't you think it is an unusual name?'
I seemed to be doing a particularly awkward job whenever Lady C. called. Either I was cleaning out the goose-house, (a job which suggests a very good use for old gas masks,) or 'mucking-out' the pigs, or grovelling in the bottom of a ditch, clearing it out. And as she came wherever I happened to be, she certainly saw some of the worst parts of the farm in the years I was there. And if she came in the evening, I would be sure to be half way through washing my hair, or having a bath, or cleaning my bike. And once I was in bed!
She usually came, too, on a Friday, when I had worn my dungarees for a week and was looking anything but spruce! Never once did she manage to come when I was doing a nice clean job and looking spick and span. She came once up to the harvest field, which would have been all right. But that time, having worked for hours, Mr. Pick had thrown me an apple from the tree at the gate as he passed, and so, of course, she found me sitting with my back against a stook, eating it!
But I must say that she did a very good job, and was always very friendly and helpful. She took everything in her stride, and would come walking across a heap of manure to see me, as unconcernedly as if she were treading on a carpet.
The L. A. uniform was well suited to the job. Dungarees, breeches, woollen socks, boots, shirt, pullover and milking jacket. There should have been wellington boots, but there never seemed to be enough of these, and many of the girls had to manage without them - in spite of the fact that all the Italian prisoners of war around Easingwold, doing the same jobs and for shorter hours, were equipped with them.
Eventually, I managed to get a pair for myself, for though they were unobtainable in the shops I was very fortunate to have a relative in Suffolk who was a Mens' outfitter. He let me have a pair of boy's wellingtons which answered to the purpose well. I don't see how I could have managed without them, and I blessed him often when I was over the ankles in mud or water for hours on end.
The uniform was quite a good fit on the whole, which was rather surprising. At the end of the first year, when I was due for some new breeches and dungarees, they sent me a pair of breeches which were six inches too small around the waist, and a pair of dungarees which would have held two people of my size together. How they expected these garments to fit one girl I couldn't make out!
Having exchanged an office chair and a pen for a milking stool and a bucket, I found I also had to exchange town shoes for Land Army boots. These boots, though remarkably suitable to plodding across ploughed fields, certainly took some breaking in. In spite of the wool socks, my ankles soon had a wide circle of broken skin on a level with the boot top, and my heels and ankle-bones were very painful. But before the summer was half over, I could wear them all day without socks and they were very comfortable. Marching along the roads leading a horse, the clanging of the irons on my heels made me feel quite the professional farmer's boy.
It was another matter when I went home to Leeds for the first time in uniform. The irons on the heels of my shoes were startlingly out of place in City Square, and the next time I went they had rubbers on instead!
The dungarees I found to be the perfect wear for every job. The two large pockets were a boon, and became gradually more and more filled with an odd assortment of useful things - a penknife, a few nails, various pieces of string, a bit of wire, a pencil, etc. I also had a small tin, attached to a key chain. This was a patent arrangement for holding my watch while I was at work. I found it too dangerous to wear it on my wrist. For a while I carried it loose in my pocket, but one day when I was driving my horse and cart down the lane, I pulled out my handkerchief and out flew the watch. Up in the air it went and landed just in front of Prince!
I took a flying leap from the cart shaft, and grabbed his head. And only just in time, for I reached him just as his big foot was raised, and forced him back a little so that his iron shoe stamped to the ground less than two inches away from my watch.
I also found my large pockets very useful for carrying eggs down the ladder while going the rounds of all the odd places where the hens chose to lay their eggs. This was quite a performance. They had any number of straw-lined boxes in their huts, but most of them preferred to lay in inaccessible places like the tops of straw stacks, or the thatched roof of the cart-shed, so that collecting the eggs usually involved the carrying of a ladder along with the egg basket or a bucket.
Perhaps they were trying to follow the example of the geese, which invariably built a nest on an island in the ponds, living more or less in a wild state, but never failing to come up to be fed and put in their house at night.
The old gander made a great show of ferocity when I first knew him. He would follow me around, his neck stuck out in readiness for battle, his blue eyes never wavering from my legs, and if I inadvertently turned my back on him he would lunge forward and make fierce jabs at the back of my legs with his strong beak. This went on for some time, until one day I saw him coming and landed out at him with my heel. It caught him squarely under the beak and bowled him over. He flapped feebly for a while, and then lay still and I had a moment of panic wondering if I had killed him. But as I went toward him he jumped up hurriedly and went squawking off to the ponds. Evidently this was the right kind of technique to employ, for from that day he treated me with something like respect and never again attacked my legs, much to my relief. He would often fly in a rage with the dog. When the sheep-dog, Roy, was a puppy, the gander would corner him near the door of the meal-shed, and keep him there until he was rescued by someone. Roy did not forget this, and as he grew big enough he took a delight in chasing the gander on to the pond, and would stand on the bank and bark at him until he swam out of sight
But I never saw the gander interfere with any of the cats and kittens around the farm, though they spent a great deal of time near the ponds. One of them, Mouser, was adept at catching young water hens. And when she had kittens to feed we would often see her carrying in a bird almost as big as herself, and jumping with it into the fold over a wall about five feet high.
There was one cat, a manx, who was known as Billy. Then one day we discovered that 'Billy' had had four kittens! We re-christened her Milly, but before long she had reverted to Billy, and Billy she remained.
The moment she heard a milk bucket rattling, Mouser would appear, and cats and kittens would arrive as if by magic from all parts of the farm. They would all sit watching us as we milked, and as soon as we began to strip the cow, they would get up and clamour around our feet until we had finished. Then they would make a combined rush for the square tin on the floor, and all stand with their heads in it so that it was impossible to see where the tin was at all, and we had to pour some milk more or less in the middle of the pile of cats. Some of it went over their heads, but it didn't seem to matter, and the ones which could not reach the dish would lick the milk from the fur of those in the centre.
It was very amusing to watch, though there was usually not much time for watching, especially in the mornings, when the end of milking was a signal for the calves to start shouting for their breakfast. Besides which, I felt like shouting for mine! For it was an inflexible rule (with which I most heartily disagreed) that everything else must be fed before we broke our fast. I am sure that I could have fothered in much less time, especially in winter, if I could have had my breakfast first!
Fothering (feeding all the stock) was heralded by various grunts and calls from the pigs which nearly deafened me as I mixed the swill. I would stir it quickly, to an accompaniment of wild screaming, so that I flung the food down the chute hurriedly in self-defence. When it came to feeding young pigs, it was almost worse. They would meet me at the door, and swarm all over me in an attempt to get the first taste, or to see who could get the largest share.
Their squeals could be heard all over the farm, growing more and more insistent until it came to their turn.
I liked feeding the calves the most, though that could be rather messy at times.
Then, of course there was always the trough at the pump to be filled. It was amazing how often it was emptied. I have read somewhere that a milking cow drinks 10 to 20 gallons of water a day - and I can well believe it, judging by the number of times in a day when the trough had to be pumped full.
This pump was our only water supply on the farm, except of course for rain water which was always collected. Pump water was very hard for washing purposes.
We had to carry water to the shed at the far end of the stack-yard whenever that was in use, and as one gallon of water weighs 10 lbs., it was a long way to carry the two buckets.
The house itself was quite in keeping with the pump, as it had stone floors and oil lamps. Neither could it be described as weather-proof. Perhaps it had been, in the dim and distant past, but that was long before my time.
It rained in in eight different places in my bedroom, and the ceiling was adorned with a variety of patches, most of them of thick cardboard. The floor boards had such wide cracks between them that Mrs. Pick would sometimes hand me my letters up from the kitchen through the bedroom floor!
The bedroom door, in common with quite a few around the house had no fastener, but had a hole through it about an inch and a half square where there had apparently once been a lock.
The door which fastened most securely was one at the foot of the stairs, leading from the kitchen. I learnt this to my cost, one Saturday afternoon when Mrs. Pick went up the fields, and fastened the stair door, not knowing that I was up there. Unfortunately if fastened only on the kitchen side, so that when I came down I found I could not get out. However, I soon decided what to do, and came out via Christine's bedroom window and down the wagon-shed roof to the ground.
The damp walls and stone floors worried me very little at first. For who cares about leaking roofs, in April when the first willow-warbler of the spring is singing in the tree at the gate, and the wood pigeons are cooing in the orchard trees?