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Life on The Gables Farm was never dull for Jack Hill who was a young lad before the war.
A flock of sheep was invariably kept, Jack recalled, and as the number totalled a hundred there were more problems particularly when the lambing season was in full swing. I was not allowed to enter the pen in the barn where the sheep were quartered for fear of upsetting my timid soul. That was an instruction from mother.
With the sheep close to the house, Dad was able to keep an eye on them and help any ewes that were having difficulty giving birth. Usually the breed we kept were Border Leicesters, quite large and sturdy with white faces.
Summertime was often a difficult period for sheep as the dags on their backsides would encourage the deposit of eggs by the blowflies and these would develop into maggots, which would start to eat their way under the skin of the wool.
The only recourse to this problem was to confine the sheep in a pen and try with the little finger to scoop the maggots out and then douse the exposed flesh with a wash of Jeyes fluid. Hollick always
tried to be on hand to catch the maggots before they touched the ground, using a pudding bowl as a receptacle.
She was very partial to fried maggots, as they were 100 per cent mutton.
Bit akin to the aboriginals of Oz with their mealy grubs.
I think this problem arose with unshorn sheep, so can't call to mind the exact time of year but it must have been sunny and warm. All sheep had to be dipped in a water trough once a year, and this exercise involved driving the flock to a field on the Richardson farm where a brook was dammed. I never got involved with this as it always occurred during school time.
Shearing the sheep was a laborious task in the early days with the only tool available being a pair of open shears. In 1932, a Lister shearing kit was purchased and this speeded things quite a bit. The shears
were hand-held reciprocating cutters powered by a hand-wound mechanism with the shaft rotated by a handle on the tripod frame. The shaft had several universal joints with leather covers to avoid snagging one's clothes.
The barn was brought into use for this exercise as the sheep could be funnelled through and passed into another paddock where the lambs were milling around. The problem of pairing up mums and lambs was always a noisy affair, and so they were usually turned into the orchard where Dad could keep an eye on them. The fact of removing a warm coat without giving the creatures time to acclimatise before the cold night seemed quite barbarous. {Nowadays some farmers provide canvas jackets.}
Dad walked the farm every day to keep an eye on all the stock, but even so didn't attend immediately to sheep with foot rot, and I would get distressed to see them feeding on their knees. Sheep being sheep, they
were always trying, and often succeeding, in escaping into neighbours' fields.
This presented Dad & John with a real problem as there were no convenient gates in the boundary and somehow the idiots had to be coaxed back through the hole they had created. But a funnel always looks different from the other end. Tempers would rise but never would there be any swear words. Once sheep were on the correct side of a hedge the hole would be stuffed with dead hawthorn branches and the hedge could be earmarked for cutting and laying in the winter months.
This work was good fun for me as I was allowed to feed the bonfires with the old wood from the hedgerow bottom. The work required several
cutting tools: namely a slasher, a goshook, an axe, and a rough saw plus a very thick pair of leather gloves. Even so faces were badly scratched by the brambles and whippy branches.
There was invariably a ditch to be cleaned out and trimmed depending on who owned the hedge, and then a single strand of barbed wire would be strung out on posts to deter the larger animals. The posts were very often cut from a willow tree and they would quickly take root to become live posts.
I used willow shoots to make bows for target practice, but even though they were pliable, the springiness soon disappeared. Arrows were usually bamboo canes pinched from the garden.
Willow branches were often used to bind the tops of cut hedges by plaiting several across the tops of stakes driven down into the hedge.
Public footpaths and rights of way were the bane of Dad's life, and there was at one period, a running battle with him and a section of the community, mostly miners who held strong views on accessibility to farmland. I was too young to understand the legal implications but do recall stories of barbed wire being strung across openings and then being cut away by the opponents.
Dad was a parish councillor for many years and was a great fan of Mr Rippin of Rippins Books in Leicester, who was an enthusiastic walker and preserver of footways. He also had relatives who suffered bronchial illnesses and needed as much fresh air as possible. I believe that the sleeping quarters at Sunrise were very much exposed to the elements, but I never had the opportunity of seeing for myself.
Parish council meetings were a highlight of Dad's life but the decisions they made often annoyed the Labour Party supporters. A great saga ensued over the contamination of the village pump near to the Red Lion pub, especially when the handle was removed to prevent use of the impure wate
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