Chapter III: Panteg (Farming)
In 1917 we moved from an industrial area, or what we used to call ‘y gweithe’ (the works) to a completely rural area, to Panteg, some six miles from the town of Carmarthen – an area on the edges of a mountain of peat and bogs, and an area of small farms on land that could be considered poor and difficult to cultivate, although only about three miles from the rich and productive land of the Towy Valley.
It would seem to be an undesirable step for a young boy to move from a fairly populous and close-knit community to a thinly-populated area in a country district remote from the amenities of more modern settled areas. But really, I was looking forward to the move, for I had proved the pleasures of farm life during frequent visits by my parents to Mother’s parents, brothers and sisters in her native country. Maybe another reason was that, being an only child, I was happy to roam on my own in the remote areas of moor and mountain. Indeed I can claim to be still fond of my own company.
I have many memories, mainly pleasant but sometimes unpleasant, of those visits from the Waun to Panteg. First of all, the method of travel was a total pleasure, although I must admit that I cannot remember when travel by public bus was introduced. However, I do remember travelling by train on the Llandeilo to Carmarthen train, and disembarking at Abergwili station. We were met there by one of my uncles, probably Uncle Rhys, and taken in a horse-and-trap to my grandparents’ farm, Meinigwynion. Although the journey from Station to Farm was a slow one, mainly along quite steep and narrow country roads, it was unadulterated pleasure for a boy from ‘y gweithe’ to see the countryside looking its best, probably, on a beautifully sunny day, then to arrive at the farm to enjoy a typically Welsh farm meal, and then to rush out to see the pigs, geese, cows, and the rest of the varied stock of the mixed farming of those days.
At that time there lived with my grandparents a son and a daughter, both unmarried – my Uncle Rhys and Aunty Hannah. They must have made quite a fuss of their young nephew, for I remember being very fond of their company. There was another unmarried son, Uncle William, who lived with two unmarried female cousins in Bryngwyn. I shall have a lot to write about him later in this chapter. Uncle John, the eldest of the family, lived in Cricklas, Uncle Dafydd and Aunty Dinah in Llainbattis, Aunty Ester and Uncle Alf lived in Penygoiallt, Aunty Margaretta and Uncle Dafydd lived in Tycanol. All these lived within an easily accessible distance from Meinigwynion and so another treat was to be taken by horse-and-trap to visit these farms.
It’s strange how some incidents, either pleasant or unpleasant, stand out in one’s memory. On one occasion I was persuaded to stay in Llainbattis overnight, without the company of my parents. This I thought was a very brave thing to do, as I could not have been much more than four years of age. But the visit had a rather unhappy ending.
After enjoying a good night’s sleep and, probably, a very satisfying farmhouse breakfast, I had to go to the toilet, and, in our terms, to ‘do a job’. That sounds easy to those who have a convenient toilet inside the house, but consider this. There was no inside toilet – as usual, in those days, and especially in farms, the ‘ty bach’, as it was called, was situated quite a distance from the house, exactly where in Llainbattis I cannot remember. Consider too that I was only four years old. But, really, what made the process a difficult one was that I was wearing trousers, or shorts, that had a flap at the back, buttoned up on either side. Such an arrangement was supposed to enable a young child to fasten his trousers easily.
On this occasion, however, I found it quite impossible to fasten the flap. After making several vain attempts I had to leave the flap dangling behind. I could not face returning to the house in that condition and as a result having my leg pulled. So I decided to walk back all the way to Meinigwynion, where my parents were staying. Did I really think that I could walk the distance of at least a mile and a half without being seen by someone or other on the way? After succeeding to walk about half the way unseen, I could hear the clip-clop of a horse-and-trap approaching from behind. In this trap were a farmer and his wife, who in later years I came to know well as Billy Davies Blaencwm and his wife – Billy Davies, who had only one hand, but who could perform every kind of job required of a farmer, even tying intricate knots.
They took pity on a child in tears, and having a trousers with its flap dangling behind. After sympathetic questioning, they found that my parents were in Meinigwynion, and as they were on their way to Carmarthen, they picked me up and then set me down within a few yards of the farm. That’s one of the unpleasant experiences, that has been seared, as it were, into my mind.
One of the pleasant experiences was staying the night in Cricklas, my Uncle John’s farm. My Uncle John had four children, John Howell, David James, Benji, and Glenys. What I can remember of staying on Cricklas was sleeping in the same bedroom as John Howell and David James. Probably Benji and Glenys were not born then. Cricklas was a long rambling kind of house with three bedrooms, one bedroom on one side of the stairs and two on the other. The further of these two was on a lower level and had to be entered by going through the room nearer to the stairs. We three slept in the lower room. This room had a small window, almost level with the floor, overlooking the back garden, and the drop from the window to the soft soil of the garden was only a few feet.
Early on a fine summer’s morning, indeed soon after the dawn, we would get up as quietly as possible, open the window, and then jump down on to the garden. We would then make our way to the out-buildings and play all sorts of games, some allowed and some forbidden. One of the forbidden games was to push a wooden feeding trough on to a pond in a nearby field and use it as a boat.
I have a vivid memory of a visit to Panteg on our way to a holiday in New Quay, Cardiganshire, the mecca of Carmarthenshire farmers after the hay-making had been completed. How we travelled to Panteg and then on to New Quay I have no clear recollection. Nevertheless two events did make an indelible impression on my mind.
These events took place at the very beginning of the 1914-18 War. This war was declared by Britain on August the fourth. I am almost certain that the fourth was on a Sunday. I have tried to verify this by consulting several Modern Histories, but each time the date is given without naming the day of the week. So it was on Saturday, the third of August, that the first of the two events occurred. The Army were making frantic last-minute preparations for the immediately imminent war. This was obvious in Spilman Street, Carmarthen, where all ordinary day to day traffic had been stopped. Army Officers were commandeering suitable farmers’ horses, that had happened to be brought into town that morning. My Uncle Dafydd always liked to have a smart horse-and-trap turn-out. This morning he happened to have a young frisky high-stepping hunter-type horse. What I remember quite vividly is watching this horse being put through its paces along the whole length of Spilman Street. It was commandeered there and then. I am under the impression that we were supposed to travel to Panteg in my Uncle’s trap, and then catch some other transport to New Quay.
One can understand why those memories should be so vague as I was only seven years of age at the time. But I do remember quite clearly standing on a kind of promontory near New Quay on the Sunday morning, the fourth. There was a coast-guard parading back and fore, outside a sort of Look-out tower, and peering every now and then through a large telescope. I asked my father, ‘What is he doing?’. My father’s reply was, ‘Oh, he is looking out for German submarines.’
We moved from the Waun to Panteg in November 1917, while the War in Europe was continuing to be fought with horrible carnage on both side. I have written previously that I failed to find out what induced Mother to migrate from a rural area to an industrial area. Well, I now have my own impressions as to what induced my parents to make the reverse move. Well, you would think that the prime mover in the desire for a move to the country would be my Mother. But it was not so. No, it was my Father who was really keen on making the change. I believe that Mother, always with a practical attitude towards life, realised that the brunt of the farm-work would fall on her shoulders, Father had had no experience at all of farming. However, Mother was eventually persuaded to buy a farm only two to three hundred yards from Clyncethin, where she was born, because she knew that her brother William, who was at that time combining the job of cattle-dealer with that of a part-time farm worker, was prepared to stay with her in Bryngwyn and help with the more arduous and difficult tasks, such as ploughing, hay-making and many other tasks requiring skill as well as muscle.
Conscription was introduced during the War in 1916, but all colliers were exempt. This may have been a reason for my father staying behind in the Waun to continue to work in the East Pit. But I should think that both my parents realised that the earnings in the colliery were still needed, as they had spent about a thousand pounds buying and stocking the farm, and, of course, they were very unsure of the amount of income they would have from such a small-holding as Bryngwyn. So Father continued to work in the East Pit until the 1921 Coal Strike. The wage of colliers until the 1921 strike were very little over two pounds a week but the colliery owners wanted to reduce that. So the miners struck, but, as happened so often under the regime of the coal owners, they had to return and accept the reduction. My parents, especially my mother, must have been very thrifty to amass the huge sum of one thousand pounds in those days. Indeed, I do not think they had to resort to having a mortgage. Building Societies were very rare bodies at that time.
Father came home to Bryngwyn only occasionally – some week-ends and on the few holidays given to colliers. If he could not help with the usual farming tasks, his experience in the coal-mine did help in one respect, and in this respect he was much in demand in the surrounding farms. Many of the fields in these upland farms had rocks and large stones, which made ploughing more difficult and which also cover land which could be made more productive. Father, having learned in the Pit how to used dynamite for breaking up coal seams, could use this experience to break up these rocks and stones, and thus enable the farmer to cart away more manageable pieces of rock. Now, where did he obtain the dynamite, the cable, the detonation caps, and the fuse wire? This reminds me of my previous statement that stealing sweets was no greater crime than stealing apples from heavily-laden trees in other people’s gardens. It seems to me that petty pilfering in the pits was justified by the colliers in the same way that children justified the stealing of apples, especially if they appeared to be in greater abundance than was needed by the owner.
It was fascinating for an eleven-year-old boy to watch this business of exploding rocks. First of all, a hole was made in the rock with a chisel and hammer. Then a packet or two of dynamite was packed into the hole, after inserting a detonation cap into one of the packets. A longish fuse wire was also inserted, and then the wire was set alight. We all, the farmer, Father and I, would run to a safe distance and wait for the explosion. Sometimes there was a huge bang and a scattering of stones and small pieces, some of which landed quite dangerously near to us.
I have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that Panteg was an area on the edges of mountain and moorland, an area of poor land, difficult to cultivate and to be made productive. That description really applied to Bryngwyn and the surrounding farms, situated at a higher level than Panteg itself, namely the cluster of five or six houses, a chapel, and a school, in a narrow valley. There was only one approach road, fit for a horse and cart, from our small farm to Panteg. The road was on the opposite side of the valley, and so in order to cut down the distance of about two and a half miles, you had to follow a path through three fields, and then descend a steep stony slippery lane. In the middle of winter, when there was snow and ice on the ground, we would often have to jump over a hedge and make our way down to school or chapel through more than one field.
Strangely enough, I was perfectly happy in the midst of the solitude of mountain and moor. I was perfectly happy living on a farm – a small farm in an area of small farms. D.J. Williams, Abergwaun, the well-known Welsh Nationalist, has written a book about an Irishman, know as A.E., who advocated a kind of cooperative of small farms being set up in Western Ireland. A.E. gives a description of the small farms which would benefit from being formed into cooperative units. His description of the farms describes exactly the kind of farm Bryngwyn was.
The Irish farmer had a small-holding of about twenty five to thirty acres. His stock consisted of four or five cows, three or four calves, a few sheep, a litter of pigs, a small number of chickens, and perhaps a mare and a foal. Such was usually the stock in Bryngwyn except that there were no sheep. The probable reason for this was that it was too expensive to make the hedges and fences sound enough to prevent the sheep from straying.
Well, how did a family produce, on such a farm, enough to give a decent standard of living? A decent standard of living, in those days, differed very much from what we consider a decent standard today. By now luxuries have become necessities. But as far as I can remember, we were very well fed on what could be called nutritious fare, even though it might be considered monotonous and unimaginative – a thick slice of fat bacon and a fried egg for breakfast, bacon broth with potatoes and cabbage for dinner (or lunch), bread and fresh butter, made on the farm, with jam for tea, and perhaps for Sunday tea a small tin of pineapple chunks would be opened. For supper we would often have a bowl of tea, with chunks of bread in it, and a lump of butter added. Sunday dinner was a special meal, as it has always been in our family. The meat was either a chicken from the farm, or a piece of beef or lamb if we had been in town, i.e. Carmarthen, on the Saturday. The sweet, without exception, was rice pudding made from rich creamy fresh milk. Even in our old age, Carrie and I think that it’s not a real Sunday dinner without rice pudding.
The house in Bryngwyn was what could be called a small cottage with a narrow kitchen and ‘llaethdy’ (dairy and pantry), a living room and a parlour, and upstairs two bedrooms, with a kind of open doorless box-room at the top of the stairs. The outside walls were white-washed annually, usually at the beginning of May, just before the Gymanfa in Panteg. But some pink powder was added to the lime-wash used on the front wall. My cousin Cyril, when he was very young, used to say that he would like to be a farmer, and that he would like to have a pink farm.
There was no electricity and no piped water. In our early days in Bryngwyn, we had only an oil-lamp in the living room, and, of course, candles were used to go to bed. In order to do any reading you had to sit by the table and hold the book or newspaper right near the lamp. However we were soon able to afford a much better lamp – an Aladdin lamp. It had a mantle like the one used in a gas lamp, and it was this I used all the time when at home from school and college. All the water used had to be fetched from a winch-well at the corner of the yard. In the beginning it was a great thrill for a young boy to let down the bucket, attached to a chain or rope, into the well, and then raise it full of water by turning the winch. In nearby Clyncethin, where Mother was brought up all the water had to be carried from a well about hundred and fifty yards from the house.
I am getting into difficulties now with my vocabulary and with my descriptions. The terms used for implements and the various farming jobs were mostly in Welsh, and these Welsh terms are not always easy to translate, as a literal translation can often give the wrong impression. For instance I have used the term ‘llaethdy’, which, if literally translated, is ‘milk-house’. The ‘llaethdy’ was really an extended pantry with a stone trough at the end to hold the milk until the cream had formed on the surface and then could be skimmed by a concave platter. I shall describe later the processes of butter-making and cheese making.
When we arrived in Bryngwyn, when I was nearly twelve years of age, I found the varied work on the farm interesting and fascinating, even though at times they were very taxing on strength and energy. The accounts of these varied jobs, which I hope to give as clearly and as succinctly as possible, will cover the whole period from November, 1917, until April, 1935. However it will be an account of work done during holidays and occasional weekends, because from September, 1918, until I started teaching, I spent most of the time in lodgings in Carmarthen and Aberystwyth: in Carmarthen while I was a pupil at the Grammar School, and in Aberystwyth while I was in the University College, a period of twelve years altogether.
The work on the farm devolved mainly on Mother and Uncle William, but Uncle William was really a part-time worker. His main occupation was cattle-dealing, and it was from this he got his income. The amount of work he did on the farm depended on two factors – one was the time he had to spend going around the farms, in order to buy thirty or forty cattle, mainly store cattle, to be taken on Wednesdays to the mart in Carmarthen. The other factor was the need to carry out such heavy seasonal tasks as ploughing, sowing, hay-making, and corn-making so Mother had to depend quite a lot on the help I could give. I must admit that there were times when I dodged giving such help, making the excuse that I had a lot of school-work to do. Indeed this was often a reason rather than an excuse.
One job I had to do as soon as we settled down after the move from the Waun, was to help with the milking. In the winter the cows were kept in the cow-shed at night, and left out in the morning. Uncle William used to help with the morning milking and feeding, often getting up at about six o’clock, although he would probably have been as late as midnight or even later getting into bed on his return from distant farms. The evening milking was left to Mother.
So when I returned home from school, immediately after tea I would have to fetch the cows, usually from the fields furthest away from the farm. These fields were quite a distance from the farm, because there was a small-holding of about five or six acres situated beyond our nearest field, and cutting our land, as it were, in half. But it was a real pleasure to take Gyp, a very intelligent Collie, with me, open the gate, and send him to fetch the cows, sometimes to the furthest part of three or four smallish fields. But at that time of the year, November or December, the cows were usually waiting at the gate in order to return to the cowshed to be fed and to be milked, even though at this time of the year they were heavy with calf and had very little milk.
I was allotted the quietest of the cows for milking. My first attempts at milking were not very successful, but I persevered. However much I persevered, though, I never gained the skill of my Mother and Uncle William. At any rate, I was able to give some help by pouring the milk from the pails used by my Mother into a fairly large can, which I then carried to the dairy and poured into the stone trough. After supper, about eight o’clock, we would light a storm-lamp and set out to give each cow its ration and hay, and some water. The hay had been brought in during daylight into what we called ‘y côr’, a narrow passage with a wooden palisade built in front of the cows’ stalls. So throwing the hay over the palisade before each cow was an easy chore, but my job was usually to hold up the storm-lamp to enable Mother to see how much hay to give The three or four calves had been given enough food earlier in the day.
I have often wondered how Mother was able to cope with what much have been an inauspicious start to keeping a farm. The time of year was very unfavourable. Not only the stock had to be bought, but all winter feed – hay, corn, bran, Indian corn (maize), barley meal, calf meal, pig meal – had to be bought. And this at a time when there was very little produce to sell. It was the period when the cows gave very little milk, the hens laid very few eggs, and, of course, there was no stock to sell. And yet, I never heard Mother complaining of lack of money. Father’s earnings in the coal-mine must have been of great help, and, what is more, there never was a woman like my Mother to make a little go a long way. Of course, she had only three mouths to feed, and very often only two, as Uncle William was very well fed in the farms where he made his deals.
One of the main sources of food in all the upland farms was the meat produced by killing a pig. That’s another mystery to me – how we managed to have a pig fit for killing early in January, just two or three months after the occupation of the farm. The answer must be that a pig must have been bought in such a condition that it could be killed profitably in a comparatively short time.
There is a definite ritual observed in the annual killing of a pig and this was strictly followed in our second year of occupation, and in subsequent years. A young sow would be kept to produce a litter of piglets, often as many as ten or twelve, and then fattened for the slaughtering at the turn of the year. Before the sow could be slaughtered, the neighbouring farms had to be consulted about the timing of the big day, so that there would be no clashing of dates This was done for two reasons. What could be termed an amateur butcher, living in the area, had to be engaged for each farm in turn. About a week or ten days had to elapse between each killing. This enabled a sharing of certain pieces of meat with the other farms, so that a succession could be kept up for several weeks, and thus enabling every farm to have a good supply of meat at the leanest time of the year.
I have used the term ‘big day’. Well, the day of the killing of the pig was one of the highlights of the farming calendar. Each farm carried out exactly the same ritual. After the day was fixed, one or two neighbouring farmers would be asked to come to give a helping hand. On the previous day a large pile of firewood had to be cut. If I was at home at the time, this would usually be my job. My tools were a bill-hook and a small axe. On the morning of the day everyone had to get up very early, and even before the milking and having breakfast, a fire had to be lit under a huge cast-iron cauldron (a permanent fixture surrounded by a wall of bricks) in order to boil gallons and gallons of water needed after the pig was slaughtered. Very often it was my job to feed the fire – a pleasurable job on possibly a cold and frosty morning.
The butcher would arrive about nine o’clock, carrying on his back a sort of satchel, containing a variety of well-sharpened knives, The pig would then be fetched from the pig-sty, a job requiring two or three men. The pig, as if realising what was in store for it, would resist as well as it could the pushing and pulling, and would give forth an accompaniment of ear-piercing squeals. After much struggling, it was lifted on to a strong wooden bench that had been placed in the emptied cart-house, and then the butcher performed his deadly and indeed gruesome act.
To witness this you needed s strong stomach and an indifferent attitude towards cruelty to animals, indeed not the attitude of modern Animal Rights advocates. The butcher slit the pig’s throat with one masterly (if such a term is appropriate!) stroke,. The blood then gushed out and was collected into a bucket placed just beneath the gash. I believe modern slaughter houses are able to kill pigs in what they call a humane way. Well, there was nothing humane about the killing of a pig on a farm in those days. Sometimes, perhaps very rarely, the slit in the throat was not made exactly in the right spot, and the wind-pipe would be pierced. This would produce an awful gurgling noise, and the flow of blood would be restricted, giving a pig a slow and seemingly painful death.
After the final kicks of the throes of death, cans of boiling water from the cauldron outside were brought and poured over the corpse – no cruelty this time! The boiling water was poured over the corpse in order to loosen the bristles, which were then scraped off with instruments that looked flat-bottomed candlesticks. The final parts to be scraped clean were the legs. A pitcher or can, with a narrow top and a handle, was used for the operation. The can was filled with boiling water, and the leg was completely immersed inside it. The legs were the most difficult to clean, but this had to be done because no scrap of the pig was wasted.
When the pig had been scraped clean, it was hung up on a rafter with the head facing downwards It was enough to make your stomach turn to watch the slitting of the throat and the gushing forth of the torrent of blood, but an even more sickening sight was to see the butcher making a deep slit down from the head right through the belly part, and letting the gory mess of the innards pour out into buckets held underneath. The inside was then carefully washed and cleaned with dry rags. This completed the butcher’s work for the day, usually just in time for the midday meal, probably starting with ‘cawl cig moch’ (bacon broth). It was only after the pig’s carcass had been hanging for two or three days that the butcher returned to do what was called ‘the cutting up’.
The more fastidious farmers’ wives would throw away the ‘perfedd’ (intestines), but not so Mother. She did not believe in throwing away anything that could be made eatable. So after dinner, she would take the ‘perfedd’ near the well, and proceed to wash out every bit of faeces – a job that could be appropriately described as ’stinking’. But as a result, a very appetising meal of tripe and onions was enjoyed by all. You had, when eating, to put out of your mind the sight of the stinking mess.
After the lapse of two or three days, the butcher would return to carry out the very skilled job of cutting up. I do not think I can adequately describe the cutting up process but the result of it was that the head was cut off, and a chain of meat with a thick layer of fat was cut right down the back leaving two separated sides. Then the ribs were cut away from the sides and two hams were cut out of the rear part. (Having very little knowledge of the human anatomy, leave alone the anatomy of pigs, I cannot give the proper anatomical terms.) The two sides and the two hams were taken to the dairy and laid out on a stone slab for salting, a process renewed now and again for about three weeks.
The chain (the part that was cut right down the back, about two inches thick) and the spare rib were cut into portions, so that you had a piece of chain and a piece of spare-rib to be laid out separately ready to be delivered to the neighbouring farms. Of course, enough was kept by us, to be eaten as long as it kept fresh – this was not salted. The meat from the head was used to make brawn – a type of food that would be condemned today because of its excessive fatty content. The liver and some other parts were put into a mincing machine and made into faggots – much tastier than what you can buy in shops today.
There was a lot of fat from the inside of the pig. This was melted and poured into the pig’s bladder, which was then hung up in the dairy, and would be used for cooking, especially for frying bacon. My doctor, Dr. John Hughes, only the other day told me how his mother gave him bread and dripping when he was a child. But I cannot remember that we, as a family, were reduced to that.
After the sides and the hams had been sufficiently salted, they were wiped clean and then hung up from rafters in front of the living-room fire, in order to be cured. This was a sight to delight the eyes – a sure sign of plenty for the future. Mother always tried to finish using the sides before starting on the hams. On rare occasions she might make an exception to give us a treat of ham and eggs. She must have thought that once we had started eating ham, we would not relish the idea of returning to the less tasty sides. The sides too had a lot of fat – often more fat than lean. I wonder whether eating so much fat was the initial cause for the liver operation that I had to undergo when I was seventy four years of age.
In the very early Roman calendar January and February were omitted, and the New Year began in March. That meant that work on the land was at a complete standstill; it also meant that no battles were fought in these months. Work on our farms was by no means at a standstill in those winter months. If anything, there was more work to be done in the winter than in the summer.
The cows, calves, pigs and horse (or horses) had to be fed and watered regularly, and the cowshed, stable and pigsty had to be cleaned out every day. The cleaning out of the muck was one of my regular jobs, when at home from school and college. The implements used were a shovel, a cane brush and a wheelbarrow. There was no flushing out with water in those days. Wheeling out a barrow full of muck was no easy job for a young boy, but with increasing years and increasing strength the load was increased. It was taken over to make a heap or dump in the furthest part of the yard, as far away as possible from the house. Strangely enough, the small calves’ shed was not cleaned out until they were moved out into the open fields in late spring. This shed would not be approved today, either by the R.S.P.C.A. or by farmers themselves. It was a veritable black hole of Calcutta – hardly any light came through the tiny window. Instead of the floor being cleaned out an extra layer of straw was laid out, with the result that at the end of winter the floor was raised almost half-way up the wall. When the muck was eventually cleaned out, it had to be cut in manageable sections with the hay-knife that I have tried to describe previously. I suppose the theory behind this was that the heat generated by the muck, covered with straw, kept the calves warm.
From the dump in the yard the muck, or what was called farm-yard manure, was carted out to the hay-fields and corn fields. The best time for doing this was when the ground had been hardened by frost, in order not to break up the soil unduly. A load would be pulled down with a purpose-built fork into a number of heaps, with about twelve feet between each heap. Then, at odd periods, when the regular jobs had been finished, the heaps had to be scattered evenly over the ground. This was a hard and tiring job, unlike the method used today – just sitting on a tractor seat, with a muck-spreader trailing behind.
Another job requiring a lot of energy and strength was chaffing the corn sheaves. Two were required to do this – one to feed the sheaves along a trough to be chaffed by a knife attached to a wheel. Turning the wheel by a handle was the job of the other person. This method, however, was soon superseded, when a 2½h.p. oil engine (Lister make) was purchased. A pulley from the engine was attached to a special attachment on the wheel, and this did the work of the one who turned the handle.
Gradually other implements were added to the stock of machinery, such as a threshing machine and a winnowing machine. But these were very little used, as the corn grown on the farm was mainly oats, and the sheaves were fed to the cattle either whole or chaffed without being previously threshed. The green crop grown was mainly swedes, and a few mangolds. At first these were chopped up for the feeds by hand, or rather by hand and knife. This again was a laborious and tedious job, but eventually a pulper was bought.
Another of the daily jobs was cutting hay in the hay-shed to be carried into the ‘côr’ (already explained) and into the barn. There were no bales in those days. The hay had to be cut with a special knife. Then it was placed on a spread-out piece of hessian. This was made by cutting the sides of a hessian sack to make a single sheet. There was a Welsh term for this, something like ‘lliwanen’. This again is a term for which I cannot give an appropriate translation. Two sides of the hessian sheet were brought together and tied. The sheet containing the hay would be carried on one’s back.
My Uncle William used to carry hay in this fashion to the cattle he kept in rented fields at least a mile from Bryngwyn. He did this sometimes after returning from his cattle-dealing very late at night, often as late as midnight.
There were many other jobs to be done, really all-the-year jobs, such as cutting firewood and fetching water. But I have given a fairly good idea of the multifarious jobs that running a farm entailed.
Early Spring was a very busy time. The most important job was the ploughing of the fields, where the oats and green crop (potatoes, swedes and mangolds) were to be grown. The ploughing was always done by Uncle William, even after Father left the Waun to become a full-time farmer. There was no tractor, of course, to pull the plough As far as I can remember, our one and only horse, a mare rather advanced in age, was used in the first year to pull the plough. You can imagine what a long time was needed to plough even a small field, say of two or three acres.
In the following year Uncle William decided to have another horse to help poor old Doll. What he did every year from then on was to buy an unbroken two year old colt before the spring ploughing started and break it in himself. This was always an exciting and, to me, an interesting process. The first task was to catch the horse, achieved very often after several vain attempts. A halter was then placed round its neck. A long rope was attached to this and let out to its full length, so that the horse would be allowed to run round in a circle. When it began to tire, the rope was shortened bit by bit until the horse was brought near the trainer, i.e. my Uncle, holding the rope. This process was repeated several times, with the horse becoming tamer each time. The next step, after the horse seemed sufficiently tamed and docile, was to jump on its back, and to stay on as long as possible. Usually the job of hanging on was not as hair-raising as what you see on televised rodeos in America.
After this the horse had to be trained to tolerate harness to be put on it, then to be put between the shafts of a cart or gambo, and finally to pull a plough with a partner. Actually, our Doll was an ideal partner, because being old and docile a young and frisky partner would not be able to put her out of her stride.
After the ploughing came the sowing of the corn – almost all oats, sometimes mixed with barley, but no wheat. Sowing is done today by machinery, and indeed machinery had been introduced in the bigger farms in those days. But we had no machine, and so Uncle William had to do the sowing by hand, He tied a ‘lliwanen’ round his neck, held the seed in the fold with his left hand, and scattered the seed with his right hand. Before that was done, the field had to be marked out in strips, a few feet wide. This was a job I used to have to do. I had a bucket-full of powdered lime, from which I dropped a little every few yards along the whole length of a furrow, then measuring out a width to follow another furrow the length of the field. This process was repeated until the whole field was marked out. After the sowing was completed, the field was harrowed with a spiked harrow, covering the seed with finely cut-up soil. Sometimes the whole process was completed by a light rolling of the ground.
When this was done, a strip of land was ploughed and harrowed in preparation for the planting of potatoes and the sowing of the seeds of swedes and mangolds. After a fine tilth had been produced by harrowing, rows were opened. Most farms had a special plough, called ‘double-tom’, to do this. But Uncle William used an ordinary plough, a more laborious method. It was hardly worth undertaking the extra expense of buying a double-tom just to open rows on the comparatively small stretch of land that we used.
Cart-loads of dung were dumped in the rows and spread evenly. For the actual planting of the potatoes, all done by hand, we were generally helped by one or two neighbours – a help that had to be returned, of course. Most farms had a small machine for sowing the swede and mangold seeds, but again, this was laboriously done by hand.
In the early Spring too, the hay-fields had to be chain-harrowed and rolled. But before the rolling was done, all stones, however, small, had to be picked, and again this was one of my jobs – a back-breaking and tedious job. The stones were gathered into little heaps, which had then to be carted away.
One of the jobs that had to be done every week throughout the year was butter-making, a job that, thankfully, ceased with the coming of the Milk Marketing Board lorry and the monthly cheque for the milk sold. The amount of labour expended on butter-making varied greatly, according to the season of the year.
In the winter months of December, January and February, there was very little milk produced, as all the cows were expected to calve in the Spring, usually in April. Sometimes the quantity of milk was so small, and consequently the quantity of cream, that there was not enough to pour into a churn. Instead the cream was poured into a lidded can and then shaken before the living-room fire. It could take about two hours of shaking to turn the small quantity of cream into a pound or two of butter.
The greatest quantity of milk, and therefore the greatest quantity of cream, was produced after the calving in April, and after the cows had been turned out to summer pasture day and night. The churn had to be used then. Another laborious job. It had to be turned by hand. Mother and I would take turns at the turning. Fortunately in the summer the process did not last as long as the churning in a can – very often the initial quiet sound of the cream would suddenly change into the swishing and splashing sound of butter and butter-milk, and this after only about twenty minutes of fast turning. The churn lid was taken off, and the butter lifted out by hand into a bucket, and then the butter-milk was poured out into another bucket. The butter was taken to the dairy, and spread out in the stone trough, and then salted. It was later on taken up in smallish lumps on to a wooden platter with a handle underneath and then clapped until the surplus liquid was squeezed out. It was then weighed out into one pound pats, on which a wood-cut with a certain design was lightly pressed. The design used by us was a thistle. Some used a design depicting a cow.
Two uses were made of the butter-milk. One for cheese-making and the other for making pig-swill. The butter-milk kept for cheese had rennet added to it in order to make it curdled. The crumbly curds were then put in a container, which was placed under a cheese-press. I cannot give the reader a complete description of the process, but the result, after the lapse of a certain time, was a round cheese weighing several pounds. It was a white cheese, and tasted like a Caerphilly cheese. Most of the cheese produced was sold, and what was kept for home consumption was sparingly used. The more thrifty families maintained that two ‘enllyn’ (the nutritious element in a food) were not to be used together, i.e. it was either butter or cheese with bread. But we did use butter and cheese, although Mother would often quote the one ‘enllyn’ practice if we cut a chunk of cheese larger than usual.
Perhaps the most important task of the farming calendar was the hay-making. The weather played an extremely important part in the making and harvesting of hay. On our upland farms, hay-making started two or three weeks later than in the Towy Valley, only a few miles away. When I was in College, immediately after the annual examinations at the beginning of June, I used to return home to find that the haymaking was about to begin. I managed to keep very fit in the autumn and Winter terms by playing regularly in the Rugger teams (I say ‘teams’ because I played for both the First and Second teams, but mainly in the Second Team). However by the end of the summer term, spent mainly in swotting for the examinations, I had lost my winter fitness – muscles flabbier, and hands softer. So at the end of each day, in the first week or two of hay-making, I was utterly exhausted and my hands were covered with blisters. My pride would not allow me to be excused from any of the arduous jobs.
Hay-making in our part of the country was a communal job, four, five or six small farms combining to do the various jobs. The turning, shaking, and drying would probably be carried out by the members of the two or three nearest farms, but the carting was done by the full complement of the half a dozen farms, the number often as many as thirty or more.
After the hay was cut into swathes by what modern farmers would call a primitive mowing machine (I don’t remember seeing a field cut with scythes) it was left to dry in the sun. Then on the second day, if the weather was favourable, the swathes were turned, usually by a row of men and women numbering anything from five or six to a dozen.
The leader was usually the farmer who owned (or rented) the farm. On our farm, the leader was usually Uncle William. He would set up a fast, but even, pace, with those following trying to maintain the same pace. I would often find myself in the middle of the line sweating and puffing, but doing my best to hide the fact that I was finding it difficult to emulate the others. Moving my hands up and down the long rake would also cause them to be blistered. The next job was shaking the swathes with a pitch-fork in such a way that the hay would be scattered in a thin layer, covering every bit of ground. If the weather had been fine and sunny and no rain had fallen, the hay could be carted about three days after the cutting. But the different processes of drying and harvesting the hay would have to be repeated several times in inclement weather, with the quality of the hay deteriorating every day.
Because hay-making was a cooperative business, the various processes had to be repeated in several farms on the same day. For instance you could be turning the hay in one farm early in the day, that is after the dew had risen, and then moving on to the next farm to do the same or perhaps shake the hay, or even cart it into the hay-shed. You had to get up early in the morning to fetch the cows, milk them, have breakfast, perhaps get the vegetables ready for dinner etc., and then set out to cover as much hay-making as possible in several farms throughout the day. In really fine weather, the hay-making continued until nightfall, that is until about ten or eleven o’clock, and then the cows had to be milked before retiring to bed in a state of complete exhaustion.
Not only was this communal hay-making an arduous business, but it was also a time of pleasant and interesting socialising. It was a grand sight to see up to thirty people sitting down by the hedge, anticipating eagerly the sight of the women opening the gate, laden with basketfuls of food, with one of them carrying a large can of hot tea. Our neighbours must have been a teetotal lot, as I cannot remember any beer being drunk (a common practice it seems in many farming districts). Mother, however, did make a kind of ginger beer, made from nettles, which was drunk when called for by the sweating and thirsty haymakers. Women must have worked quite as hard as the men; preparing so much food must have meant not only a lot of hard work, but very careful organising.
The picnic was enjoyed by all – everyone eating ravenously, but at the same time exchanging all the local gossip. One reads of slate-quarry workers in North Wales, and colliers in south Wales during their meal-break discussing heatedly the politics of the day, and even religious topics, but I cannot remember the upland farmers of Panteg having any such discussions. I always used to think that farmers, as compared with colliers, were rather slow-witted and unfamiliar with the problems of the world outside their own farms. I am not sure that I hold such a view now.
A lot depended on the weather how much time was taken to partake of the food. If the weather appeared to be settled, and no other field was ready for carting, there was no hurry to resume work. But if there were threatening clouds of rain, the meal was hastily eaten, and the hay was carted in as quickly as possible, and then a dash was made to the next farm to bring in the hay before the onset of rain.
We youngsters used to think that it was great fun to hang on to the sides of the gambo, while the horse was made to gallop to its destination with all possible speed.
In those days the method of loading the hay on to the gambo was very different from what it is today. There were no bales. First of all, the hay was collected into big rows by a horse-driven rake. Then these rows were gathered into big piles or mounds, these piles were pitch-forked on to the gambo and received by one or even two, who laid it out evenly over the length and breadth of the gambo. In my first year or two in Bryngwyn, my job was very often to lead the horse from one pile to the next. Then I graduated into being one of the pitchers. Usually two would pitch a quantity of hay together; sometimes three, or even four, would pitch the hay. That was when two men were required to lay out the hay on the gambo. Eventually I was trusted with the job of standing on the gambo and laying out the hay in such a way that the eventual load would be upright, and would not lean to either side. The test was usually whether or not the load needed to be roped before it was taken on possibly an uneven ride to the hay-shed.
Another very hard job was receiving in the hay-shed the hay pitched up from the gambo and shaking it out evenly over the whole length of the shed. Whether you had shaken it out evenly would be known when the hay was cut during the winter. When the hay had reached nearly to the roof of the shed, you would be enclosed in a confined space, and if a hot sun was shining on the roof, the atmosphere was stifling, causing you to sweat gallons.
There was a period of less strenuous work after the hay-making was finished, provided that the weather had been favourable and that inclement weather had not prolonged the harvesting over many weeks. This was the period when the farmers of Carmarthenshire, especially those of the uplands, had a week’s holiday in their favourite resort, New Quay, Cardiganshire. The more affluent farmers of the lowlands would probably prefer to mingle with the elite in Aberystwyth. At this time the favourite place for a holiday for the colliers was Llanwrtyd Wells, while the more affluent residents of the colliery villages, such as colliery managers, doctor, and shop-keepers and so on, had their holiday sampling the medicinal waters of Llandrindod Wells.
The corn harvest followed about the end of August and the beginning of September. The farmers did not combine for this to the same extent as they did for the hay harvest. In the early part of this century reaping the corn was done with scythes, but at the time within my memory the scythe was used only to open a width all around the field, so that the reaping machine did not trample down any of the corn. For this work a cradle (cadair) was placed over the scythe. D. Parry-Jones, in his book ‘Welsh Country Upbringing’ gives this description of the cradle and its use. “It consisted of four light wooden arrows, curving with the blade and reaching to within six inches of the tip and held together by three cross-strips of wood. Reaping with the scythe was a very highly skilled work and when neatly done the sight of rows upon rows of well-laid corn had a most pleasing effect”.
The scythe was kept sharp by using what was called a rip, shaped like a small cricket bat. The flat surface to the rip was smeared with a lump of pig-fat and on this fat was spread some fine sand. Finally a bottle was used to roll the sand well into the fat.
The reaping machine used in my young days was the hay-mowing machine with the cradle attached over the cutting knife. The cradle was fixed to the knife at an angle of forty five degrees, but by means of a fixture controlled by the driver of the machine it could be moved to a flat position. So in the process of cutting, when enough corn had been gathered on the cradle, it was lowered down and pushed off by a specially shaped rake, again held by the driver. Just enough corn was gathered and pushed off to make a suitably sized sheaf. This operation required great skill on the part of the driver – he had to keep a tight grip on the reins, he had to watch the filling of the cradle, and he had to hold the rake that pushed down the cradle to release the corn, when there was sufficient for a sheaf. These sheaves had to be bound by several binders so that on the next time round the machine had an unobstructed passage for the cutting of the next row. I usually had to be one of the binders – a job I hated, especially if there were lots of prickly thistles in the corn.
The job of binding the corn into sheaves was really a skilled job. Two lengths of corn-stalks were tied together in a special kind of knot – a knot too difficult for me to describe – enabling you to have a sufficiently long corn-rope to tie around the sheaf. Again the final knot used for the sheaf cannot be easily described. If these knots were not made properly the sheaves would come apart when handled later on. Because of my lack of skill, I was often the one blamed if this happened.
If there was a sufficient number of people doing the work the sheaves would be set up in stooks of four, five, or even six. After these had dried out in a few day, they were taken apart and built into what we called a ‘helem’ (a small stack containing, I should think, thirty to forty sheaves). Once this stage was reached, the farmer’s main worry was over. Sometimes, or I should say quite often in our parts, there would be so much intermittent rain that the stooks were not dry enough to be built into a ‘helem’. Often they would be out on the fields for weeks and would become almost worthless as feed for the cattle.
In some parts the term ‘helem’ was used for the final stack in the ‘ydlan’ (the yard for stocking the hay and the corn). But we called the final stack a ‘dâs’. The building of sheaves into generally a round ‘dâs’ required a certain amount of skill. If it was not properly built it could lean more to one side than the other, and that would mean that several strong props had to be used.
The sheaves from the ‘dâs’ were taken into the barn in the winter ready for chaffing. There was very often much excitement when the sheaves at the bottom of the stack had been reached. At this stage we had various weapons in our hands as well as having the dog and the cat at the ready, in order to carry out the massacre of a large number of rats that had been feeding on the corn. It seemed to be a just retribution for all the damage and loss caused.
I believe that I have covered most of the more important work that had to be done in the farming year. Perhaps I should mention that Mother had many other jobs to be done every week. On Monday all the washing, and sometimes the ironing, had to be done – no automatic washing machines! All the boiling water had to be carried from a boiler fixed on the side of the open grate in the living room (this also served as the hob), and poured into a big tin pan. The clothes were washed with soap, usually carbolic. I don’t remember any kind of washing powder being used. Mother also used a scrubbing board for the dirtier clothes. The wet clothes were hung out, some on a short line in the hay and corn yard and some draped out on top of the hedges.
Thursday was usually the butter-making day, a busy day that has already been described. Then Friday was the day to which I looked forward the most, because this was baking day. The dough had been kneaded on the previous day. It was placed in a ‘crochan’ (a large earthenware vessel), covered with a blanket, and left overnight by the fire. Out of the dough, on the following morning, enough large oblong loaves were baked to last until the following Friday. They were baked in a wall-oven by the side of the fire. This had to be continually fed with firewood brought in a wicker basket. This was a pleasant enough job when the weather was cold.
We had a real treat for tea on that day – fresh white bread, and hot picks, the size of baps, with a good sprinkling of currants in them. These were made all the tastier by being liberally covered with fresh butter, made only on the previous day. In addition to the bread and picks, Mother often made a large yeast cake, full of currants and raisins.
I do not think that the Welsh cakes, which most Welsh mothers are still accustomed to make, were baked on the same day. These were baked on a big round cast-iron plank placed on the open fire. By the way, I have a clear recollection of having a good helping of Welsh cakes in Mrs Morgan’s house, next door to us in the Waun. David, my friend, would invite me in to see the huge pile of freshly-made Welsh cakes in a big earthenware cauldron, and not only to see them, but to have a generous share of them. Mrs Morgan had five hefty sons, David being the youngest, and so even such a big pile would not last long. Her Welsh cakes were not the small round thin ones that you see these days, but big, thick, oblong ones
It was on the Friday, in the evening, that the weekly produce was taken to my Uncle Dafydd’s farm, Llainbattis, usually butter and eggs, and occasionally a large cheese. It was then you would meet others who came to the Llain on the same errand, almost all bringing butter and eggs, sometimes a side of bacon, and sometimes in the early part of winter, a tub of butter. Uncle Dafydd would take all the produce on the Saturday to meet a grocer from Gorseinon. It was very rarely that he had to bring back any produce that might be considered unsatisfactory.
By now, you will probably have noticed that in describing the various farming jobs carried out in Bryngwyn, there has been very little mention of my Father. I have really described mainly the jobs done in the period 1918-21, when Father was still working in the East Pit, Gwaun Cae Gurwen. I wonder now whether this arrangement was really a bad move for my Father, even though the money he earned was a great help in establishing a viable farm. The reason for my doubt is that during those years Uncle William had really taken over the running of the farm, and that, of course, with Mother’s agreement. After Father settled down permanently in Bryngwyn, the farming priorities, the protocol as it were, had become firmly established, and Father had to bow to the arrangement because of his lack of farming experience. I feel sure that Father resented this, and was never able to take command – he was second, or even third in command.