Gerry Pummell

I was born in Melton Constable, my father was cow man for Lord Hastings then and my god farther was the man who play the organ in the church there, that what I heard my mother say. I don’t know how long I lived there but not very long I don’t think. Then we moved to Lyng which was our home as my fathers parents and grand parents lived there, “that’s where we got married” the Reverend Wedall married us in about 1947. At this time I was working at Fred Birds farm, which was Manor farm Lyng, I was cowman there along with my father, things were different then as we didn’t have to wear white aprons or nothing, then just a piece of sack cloth with a bit of tape to tie round, your hat on back to front and a pale between your legs, at the night we would have had an old hurricane lanton. They had about 40 cows with only my dad and me doing the milking. Then they got one of the first milking machines around here and there were more people in there watching us than there were cows being milked, and the cows dint like that they dint, especially when the shop keeper kept on coming in, in his white apron, they dint like that, J D Cook that was, they had the shop in Lyng then, he carted the stuff in horse un trolleys, these milkun machines were what they called bucket machines, you would milk the cow and took it off old cow, tip it up on end into a pale then carry it up across the yard and into the dairy and cooled it, those days it would go into churns and they would dip you a pint and a half pint measure, well there wont any bottles in those days. They would go round with pony and cart. That old pony would know every where to go, that pony was a New forest pony, he was a little sod to get out, he could undo a gate he would I’ve been there hours looking for him, I found him in Hockering wood one morning, he could undo a chain and get out, he lived till he was what 20 I should think. See there won’t no tractor on the farm then, with 30acres there were about 6 of us working there then, there was Reggie Bunton he was team man, Fred Johnson, Billy Butfield work there, in all there was about six of us there. With my dad and me there were more about 6 or 7 there at times 7 o’clock start in the mornings, we would do the ploughing with a 1 furrow plough or a 2 furrow plough, 2 horse on a 1 furrow and 3 horses on a 2 furrow. Fred Daniels would turn out with the thrashing machinery to do the thrashing at harvest time, all the Masons were the engine drivers. One man would be there sacking up all the chaff to feed the cows with, ”they don’t bother with that now”. Well Fred Johnson who I used to work with, he got only 2 thirds of a mans pay to keep his job, as he couldn’t milk or nothing but he would do the feeding and things but you would have to tell him what to do every time. He was a good old chap though. He would go carting mangols and chuck them out to the cow sometimes with tumble other times with a four wheel trolley, that trolley is what we used to cart the straw with. One old mere would lay down all the time when you were getting a load, well with four wheels one it didn’t matter, she would lay there and go to sleep while you loaded up. That trolley was the shopkeeper’s trolley what he would take groceries round on, the man who used to take them round is still alive, he is now 86, George Mythe his name was, he’s still alive in Dereham he is. He would drive that horse and cart round on a Saturday morning and take the meal and that by the hundredweight, when he done it would go on Cranrose medder. “Cor he would ride that cob bear back and that would go”. Old Fred Johnson would help me grind up all the feed, as in those days everything would have to be ground by hand. They used to plough all the beet out and the mangols the same. The beet would be spaced out one hoe width and the mangols two 9 inch hoe widths as they were a bigger crop then. You would have to top them then throw them up into the tumble, they would then store them up and cover them up with old trimmings, then they would plough three furrows round them with a horse so you could get your shovel in and throw the soil up over the heap to keep the frost out. When the men drilled the mangols they would go up the shop and get a tupenny packet of Swede seeds and put that in the drill with the mangols. When you getting a load of mangle in the winter time you would come across a Swede or two, they were a lovely Swede to eat, bright yellow, you would tie them on a bit of binder twin and hang them on your bike and bike home with Swedes for dinner tomorrow. Proper Swedes then not like them you get rapped up in a bit of plastic now.
Then Christmas time you used to do the plucking you see, when you got home you would have to take all your clothes off cause they would be full a fleas and red mite. If you got a lot of red mite on you as soon as you sweat that would kill them all. The turn-ups in your trousers would fill up with fleas as you sat in the feathers plucking, it was a good day to have a day plucking. Old Cranmire used to come, he used to swear I derent tell you what he would say, he would whistle through his teeth as well, he used to be just about drunk when he got home at night. They used to get the bottles of wine out, well that home made wine, he would lick that and he would be half drunk when he went home. That would be a big day then, there an’t nothing like that now.
When we had the setting hens, we would have about sixty setting hens in Orange boxes set along the hedge with a bit of long rope stretched along and get a bit of string with a loop on it. You would put it on the hen’s leg so they could get to the water trough. That’s the way we would hatch all the turkeys, ducks and geese everything. A couple of days before they hatch we would dunk them in a pail of luke warm water so they would hatch. When those little turkeys hatched they used to get that old sticky weed what grow in the hedge, chop it all up and onion tops as well as biscuit meal, that’s what they were brought up on, they were put up on the hay field with sacks propped up with four poles and a lanton hanging on to keep the fox away, the fox won’t come near where light was. If you didn’t he would kill the lot. When I worked for Jack Thomson he had about sixty cockerels in a hut, one morning there was only six left and they were up the bushes, they had killed all others. Those foxes would just bite the heads off if they didn’t wont them to eat just for the sake of it.
Another thing years ago when they were going to cut a field, you used to have to go round the side and mow, my dad and I used to go back after tea and do that, my dad would work ahead with me behind if it was wheat or oats, I would tie them and lay them on the bank. When they carted the oats up they had to hear the church bells ring twice before they carted them up, they wont keep if the church bells didn’t ring twice before they carted them up. The wheat if there had been a shower of rain you didn’t use to stop, that didn’t do no harm, they use to like there being a shower of rain on that.
When you done muck carting, if you were lucky when you done twenty loads you could leave off a couple of hours early, that would be about 2 o’clock so you could do a bit of gardening. Some of them would have three horses on to pull it right over the heap and put right on the top, that was a slippery job when they went right over the top, that was done with hard tyred tumbles. With those tumbles we would have loads of sugar beet top or mangles to throw out to the cows, you would set that down and put two props at the front and two props at the back, undo the horse harness, take the trap stick out and then take the back chain off, then let the shafts down on the ground. You would have to back them in there on a Sunday morning, some of them if their feet itched they would click them into them shafts. When I was cowman at Birds we would have to walk the cows through the village to get their milk and Kerstin’s cows would have to walk the other way to Lyng lakes to get there milk If they met they would get a scrapping, then one day a chap called Ivan Skipper came to work for Kerstin, Ivan use to say don’t you worry about them, he would ride his bike up beside them talking to them as he go, keeping his one side and mine the other, you could pass them as easy as any thing, they never fought or nothing. If them cows got fighting they wont leave off you know, you would have to soul into them to stop them, you would have to look out because you would get topped as well, they would fight like tigers they would.
Kerstin made a living on that little farm, they done building houses and use to make coffins, horse tumbles. My uncle was carpenter there, he couldn’t read or write. There weren’t better carpenter in England nowhere though he couldn’t read or write, he could make anything. He done one thing wrong one day, he went up a tree to saw a bow off and set his back to the tree and sawed the bow off in front of his legs dint he, cause we he couldn’t turn round to get down, he had to stop there till I went and put a ladder up there.
There were an old man who’s out our way called Hooky, well there was his brother and him living in his house done Lynn, down Bucks Look. Now some twit has called it something else. Skipper Bales and him were half brothers, well some woman went and lived there and Skipper Bales turn Hooky out because Hooky didn’t like living in a house. The rest of his life he lived under a cart. He use to go round with so many ponies and carts all tied behind one and another. He died up the Wyrle’s at Tuddenham. He use to go round the lanes with his tow or three Lurcher dogs there, they caught rabbits and that was what he lived on. He would go down to the pits at Lyng and get his water out of there and go down into Lyng and get some milk to make his tea with, he recon it was the best water for miles.
We use to have a man come round and collect the rabbit skins, horsehair, soft mane hair and tail hair. They use to make chairs with that tail hair, them old things when you were kids they would make the back of your legs itch, they were ruff wont they. That was the hair out of the tail they used for that job, they use to pull that with a stick by twisting it round and pulling on the stick on a Saturday after noon.
Some of them team men could do a thing with them, one team man got the sack from a Ryburgh farm when they were carting corn up to Ryburgh station, he got up there and up something in the road and them horses dearn’t go passed it. I once see old Sands from Stalham when I was at Palmers, he borrowed a couple of horses off them and they use to have a job catching them. When old sand came and got them they said you wont catch them, he said I catch them my man, he just held a white handkerchief up and they walked straight up to him, there were something on that handkerchief they liked. Them old team men could do something to them old mares to stop them breeding, one team man use to do that then one year he retired and the next year him old mare had a foul, so they knew he had done something. The team men use to thatch the stacks as well.
Larks were the blacksmiths at Lyng in those days, they use to have a place where they would do the wheels in, you know put the irons on the wheels, they use to make wall ovens, you would build into the wall with lovely brass handles on. My mum had one of them and do the baking on a Saturday then when you had a bath in front of the fire she would put your clothes in to warm them up for when you got out.
Old tiger who lived next to us when we were kids had a little dog Rose, if he was a shallot or potato short he would say nip up the garden Rose and get me a shallot. That would go up the garden to the shed and get a shallot and bring it back, that always went shopping, it would go across the yard with a shopping bag in its mouth. He use to get home from work and say go and get the paper Rose and that dog would go across to Skippers and get the paper, once he read what he wanted it would take it back again.
My cousin use to be a drover up to the last war, a field in Wendling is called pound piece, it had a pit in the corner where they use to pound the bullocks for the night. Then in the morning they drove them up to Lynn or Norwich markets. All the cattle in them day were move by the drovers. The drovers in them days could move about fifty or sixty at a time cause their dogs wont let the cattle get away.
I remember the first cattle float in Lyng, that belonged to Austin Speakman. Him and Tom Duffield built this float and it had three irons over the top, that never had a top on. He got a bullock in there to take it down the slaughterhouse at Lenwade, that jumped out there and they found it in Reepham.
We use to have to load the lorries by hand, we would have to lift the sacks onto the workbench in the barn then turn round and put the bag on our shoulder to carry it to the lorry. Then they got a thing that lifted the bags onto the lorry for you, that is all old fashioned now, I first remember when they were going to dress the corn they would put it through a machine called a booby, you would put it in the top with a wooden hod and then turn a wheel, the corn would come out one end and the muck would come out the other.