FIFTY YEARS OF FARMING as told by Michael Toms to Bob Harvey

FIFTY YEARS OF FARMING
as told by Michael Toms to Bob Harvey
NOTE: This article is extracted from a BASH booklet published in 2002. We still have a few copies available at £2.00 + p&p 50 pence.
Contact Anne Harvey on 01803 712662. Other articles include: Sheplegh Court, Lower Collaton Farm, Strete Church, Strete School and the Dartmouth Inn. The booklet contains eight photographs.

North Millcombe Farm - Christmas 1954

In 1954 North Millcombe Farm was up for auction. But before the public sale could take place it was bought by Michael Toms, a young farmer with just six years’ experience. North Millcombe became Michaels’ life, and he and the farm only parted company when he retired.

During that near half century of farming, agriculture saw immense and rapid change from cutting corn by self-binder and a strong arm to computer controlled combines. It took manufacturing industry two centuries - from the industrial revolution to the present day - to achieve the level of automation that farming introduced in a mere fifty year span. And this whole process of change was encapsulated in the development of North Millcombe under a single owner.

Although Michael had early experience of farming in his family, his father was a chartered civil engineer who had made a successful career with Torquay Water Department. By the age of seventeen Michael had set his sights on a career in farming, but at that time the agricultural colleges would only accept students if they had worked for at least a year on the land. So, the aspiring farmer had to work for eighteen months at a farm in Marldon - without pay! The farmer there provided a good lunch each day, but the hours were unspecified and long, and the work was hard. Hoeing by hand for a whole day was particularly exhausting and tedious. Quite unacceptable by today’s standards, this “baptism by toil” was the only way to qualify for the two-year course at Seale Hayne College.

Michael completed the course in General Agriculture in 1951. At the final Speech Day the Principal, Dr Ian Moore, urged the students to “..go out and practice all you’ve learned, but never forget the community you live in”. The newly qualified young farmer took this advice to heart, and made a considerable contribution to the parish of Blackawton for many years thereafter.

He started work at Kellaton farm, and then made his reputation as manager at Gitcombe. By December 1954 he had saved enough, together with a bit of financial help from his father, to buy his own farm, North Millcombe, from Sir Roger Twisden of Kingsbridge.

The farm was then nearly eighty acres, and at that time the value of a farm lay in its acreage; the value of the farmhouse was incidental. However, he had no stock so had to borrow a further £2000 from his father to buy six Ayrshires, some sheep, a tractor and other basic equipment. His mother and father left their house in Paignton and moved in with him to help. But his mother died in October 1955, within a year of the move, and his father only survived long enough to see his son marry Fay in April 1956.

The farm probably in 1963

At this time, most farmers had a telephone and some form of transport, but mains electricity, which had arrived in the villages, generally did not extend out to the farms. Water for the house was hand pumped up to the roof tank - a daily task that took twenty minutes - and a small Petter petrol engine provided power for milking and pumping farm water. Lighting was by Tilley lamps and candles until 1958, when Calor gas lamps became available, and radios were inevitably battery powered.

The following year the South Western Electricity Board arrived to wire up the house, and the luxuries of electric light, cooking and storage heaters were welcomed. In 1960 they even had television! The electricity supply first arrived through Seawardstone, which was owned by an electrical engineer from London who campaigned hard for it to be extended to the rest of the parish. At first many farms were apprehensive about using electricity - and there is still one which has no mains electricity to this day!

At this time most fields were between five and seven acres, but in the 1960s the government wanted greater production, so subsidised the removal of hedgerows. A local contractor used a bulldozer to sweep away miles of hedgebanks in the parish. One field at North Millcombe today used to be six fields in 1954.

1955 saw the purchase of the first self-binder. This cut and tied the corn sheaves, and until the 1960s they were stooked to dry before being built into ricks. The base of the rick was made from hand-cut ‘parings’ from the face of the hedges. It was important to ‘keep the middle up’ when building the ricks, which were well spaced out to allow the thresher to move between them.

The local threshing contractor would give notice of the timing of his arrival, and a gang of casual workers had to be hired quickly from Blackawton village. They were needed for the very hard work of manhandling the one and a half hundredweight West of England sacks of barley, and for many other manual tasks required by the thresher such as cleaning out the douse (chaff) and tying the wire for the straw baler. The men were therefore more than ready for the huge lunch, which was provided as part of their payment.

The thresher itself had to be set up dead level, otherwise the riddles would not work properly. It was brought in across the fields by a green Marshall single cylinder tractor which had an exhaust like an early American railway engine steam stack. In these early days of mechanisation, the cornfields were full of corncrakes, and the birds were vulnerable to injury from the unfamiliar machinery.

There was no permanent tractor on the farm until 1955 when a second-hand grey Ferguson was purchased. This vehicle eventually met an untimely end when one day a hired hand let it crash down the hill, and it was a write-off. It was replaced by another Ferguson, a 35X, and then by a David Brown in 1970, which was still in use when the farm was sold 29 years later.

Milking in the early days was done in the old shippen where each cow knew its own stall. They walked in to be chained up and were milked into stainless steel buckets which were carried outside to be cooled. One bucket was darker than the others and was later found out to be made of solid brass. In 1970 the new milking parlour was built, and from 1972 onwards the milk was collected by the Milk Marketing Board refrigerated tanker. By the time milk production ended in 1982 there were 55 cows. Although starting with Ayrshires, these were changed to Friesians in the mid 1960s and a beef suckler herd eventually replaced the dairy cows in 1982.

Ever open to new ideas, North Millcombe was the first farm in the parish to try silage. The field was cut with a finger mower, and the grass swept down the field into a triangular heap with a buckrake. This was banked around and covered with lime, and it was hard work cutting it out in the winter. In the early days mangolds were grown and tipped into a barn from a high hatch to be used from below during the winter.

Rearing of pigs in the open, rather than in sties, was another innovation. To start with, their shelters - pig arcs - had to be made out of wood on the farm, as it was 1970 before pre-fabricated semi-cylindrical pig arcs were generally available. 30 sows were kept on the steeper fields, being moved each year. They farrowed twice a year and the piglets were sold as 8-9 week weaners.

Modern farmers may wear boiler suits and travel in 4x4s today, but 50 years ago most simply wore old clothes for work. One well-known local tenant farmer wore two old jackets in the hopes that the holes in each would not line up, and he draped a sack over his shoulders in wet weather. But however short of money they may have been, all farmers dressed smartly when they went off the farm.

Some form of transport was essential for a relatively isolated farm, so most farmers had an old car which was only replaced when it was beyond repair. It was only in more recent years that farmers could afford to buy the latest four wheel drive vehicles.

Reprinted from Blackawton & Strete History Group booklet no 2.

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