My farming experience started with milk
It was the same for George Ewart Evans
When I was 14 my dad helped me get a weekend job on a farm at Friston, a few miles from our home. There I helped Fred the cowman with a herd of Jersey cows, which then were milked in a long cowshed. After washing the udder with warm water and a cloth, the milking machine would be connected to an airline that ran above the feeding trough, with the four cups pulsing cups attached to the cows teats
The milk was collected in the stainless steel body of the milking machine, and after each cow had been milked, this was emptied through a filter, into a ten gallon milk churn. When full, the churns would be rolled out to the dairy, where they were placed first on a cooler, with a rotating paddle that went inside the churn.
When cooled the churns were lifted into a stand outside the dairy door, from where the it would be collected each morning and taken to the dairy for pasteurising and bottling. I would take home a lemonade bottle filled with unpasteurised milk home with me.
Later, when I got as motor bike, I’d carry the glass bottle of milk tucked into the waistband of my jeans. Looking back, that was probably not the wisest way to carry a bottle on a motor bike, but in my teens danger was not something I ever thought about.
Researching the life of writer George Ewart Evans, I learned that he was milking Daisy, the family cow, at an even younger age than me, taking over the task from his brother when he was called up to fight in the First World War. He will have milked her by hand, rather than use a milking machine, and so inevitably a bond was formed between boy and beast.
Consequently he was upset when Daisy broke out one day from where she was grazing, feasted on the cabbages on a neighbour’s allotment, became bloated and had to be put down. I suspect that throughout his life, he had a soft spot for dairy cattle, as indeed so do I.
I’m sure I’ll be talking more about this at the launch of the paperback edition of my book Where are the Fellows who Cut the Hay, on 29th March in Framlingham. Why not come along and listen? Tickets here.