[2004] FAMILY HOLIDAYS

0004 A Welsh Hill Farm  

The farms we used to visit in the 1950s, high on the hills of Wales, depended upon precariously working fields which barely clung on to the mountains.  It is true that, sometimes, their better fields did run down into the valleys, where there was more shelter and better soil, but this was a rarity.  The one we knew best, that run - as a tenant - by Blanche Davies, was perched high on a just such a foothill and was typical of many such farms at the time.

The fields, such as they were, were stony with little real soil for anything to grow on.  Accordingly they were usually only suitable for cropping hay, and occasionally for corn.  The small fields were surrounded by dry stone walls that probably had been first built hundreds of years before.  But, in keeping with many similar farms across the world, the locals were forced to use the resources they found to hand, and these were mainly the stones that they dug up while clearing the fields. These were used to create the dry stone walls.  Even though they had no mortar to hold them together, the skills of the craftsmen from those earlier times meant that they had lasted well and still efficiently served the function of containing the livestock; though, latterly, the growing gaps were being patched with the ubiquitous barbed wire of our own times.

The fields were not just small but irregular, and even within them there were outcrops of rock covered with gorse. Each posed a very different challenge for the hill farmer, around which he had to work.

Some of the fields were relatively flat, otherwise the farmer would have had difficulty in using the mechanical equipment needed to cut the hay -- which was about the only element of mechanical work undertaken.  Others, though, were quite steep and could only be used for dairy cows or beef herds. The moorland, which covered the highest ground, was only fit for sheep. Thus the, subsistence, farmer had to make his living how and where he best could. 

Consequently, most of the area was allowed to run wild.  In the lower areas this was where sheep lambed in the spring and the cows foraged during the summer, and even then was often being taken over by bracken.  At the other extreme the farm depended upon its rights, shared with other farms, to run sheep on the moorlands which covered the upper part.  These were covered in heather, with some small amounts of grass in between the clumps of heather. While this looked beautiful for tourists, the hills were a blaze of purple in late summer, it provided very little sustenance for the hill sheep which had to be very tough indeed to survive the vicious winters.

Most of the farmer’s day was therefore spent walking around - herding  animals . In our case it was Blanche's brother, Roger, who did most of this work -- with the dogs he depended upon running with him.  These working dogs were black and white collies, and they certainly earned their living. They were not pets, even though they were very friendly, and in fact were treated pretty badly. Even so they responded loyally to the farmer's every command. 

After the early morning milking, the farmer’s first task of the day was letting the cows out into the fields. The last was bringing them back again to be milked for the evening milking. This was not as difficult as it sounds, because the cows were well used to this routine; and were usually waiting at the gate, to be allowed to make their own way back to the farm. The paths they followed, back to the farm, covered the whole hillside and had been carved out by the feet of the cattle for hundreds of years. The sheep were a different matter.  They always wanted the better grass, away from the moorland where they were supposed to be, and were regularly to be seen jumping over the walls; only to be dealt with by the farmer who chased them back again, a never ending to task.

We were never there at times of shearing sheep, but we were often there when they were dipped.  This was not the modern form of dipping, in insecticide to protect them from insects, but was a rather cynical process of dipping them in the water before the wool was sold.  As a result the wool weighed rather more, though the excuse given was that it was washed to obtain a slightly higher price.

The dipping, though, was accomplished simply by plugging the stream that ran from the lake until the dipping pond filled up; then chasing the sheep through it and pushing them under the water to make certain that all their body was ‘washed’.  Even at the time it did not seem a very productive process. 

But then, as I have said, these were marginal farms and every little extra bit of income counted.

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