Rural life

Is rural life and farming sentimentalised too much?, so I was Christmas shopping and came across two book about farming/rural life as I flicked through them I though my mother would have love those ( she is dead now ).

The book completable sentimentalise farming and rural life in the past. Before modern machinery and modern buildings, it was hard work often backbreaking and completely at the mercy of the weather and luck a lot of the time, even something as simple as cutting and drying hay and making cocks of hay took a huge amount of work.

Yet those books eulogise that sort of life and those sort of books are very popular.

Is the past in farming seen as somehow better and more noble that the modern notion of seeing your farm as a business.

djmc

I don't know how they did the work they did in the past they had to in order to survive.
I think that there was less stressful life any money went a lot further plenty help when needed and cheap labour.
Back before the free state it must have been very hard to survive and pay rent.
We have a easier life now but more stress and less community, we hardly know our neighbours with all the one off houses.

_Brian

If you take finances out of the equation there is little work as enjoyable or fulfilling as farm work and rural life..

I've worked in factories both on the floor and in management roles and its incredible how soul destroying work this is, often working 12/13 hour shifts of nights with 1-2 hour drives each way.

I'm not saying farming is easy going, its damn hard work with serious challenges to be faced... but if its what you enjoy there is nothing better to be done..

I think rather than the serious hard graft its the pace of life that people remember fondly, yes the likes of saving hay was hard sometimes unpredictable work, but it was also very social work and it really built a sense of community with people moving from farm to farm to ensure everyone's hay was saved, same with threshing, threshing (when it was going well) was nearly like a mini festival season in the area.

freedominacup

_Brian wrote: »

If you take finances out of the equation there is little work as enjoyable or fulfilling as farm work and rural life..

I've worked in factories both on the floor and in management roles and its incredible how soul destroying work this is, often working 12/13 hour shifts of nights with 1-2 hour drives each way.

I'm not saying farming is easy going, its damn hard work with serious challenges to be faced... but if its what you enjoy there is nothing better to be done..

I think rather than the serious hard graft its the pace of life that people remember fondly, yes the likes of saving hay was hard sometimes unpredictable work, but it was also very social work and it really built a sense of community with people moving from farm to farm to ensure everyone's hay was saved, same with threshing, threshing (when it was going well) was nearly like a mini festival season in the area.

As an elderly neighbour of my father's home place used to say "the meitheal, the fcn meitheal, let me tell you about the fcn meitheal" and then he'd let rip"big farmers riding the hole off ya, send a man he had idle around the yard down to you for an afternoon to do your few tonne of a treshing and expect you to give him a week. And then the snobbery, foreman standing at the door of the house tipping his cap at certain fellas who only turned up around 12 and directing them into the good dining room for the dinner and jerking his thumb at you to go to the kitchen. You could at least console yourself with the thought that at least you weren't being sent to the scullery." We used to rent a bit of land and quota from him and part of the ritual was he'd arrive every month on the Mon after the milk cheque for his cheque and the breakfast. Conversations used to be gas if it ever came around to times past. He had some real gems about working with horses too.

memorystick

It was a time when women knew there place and didn't question it.

patsy_mccabe

freedominacup wrote: »

As an elderly neighbour of my father's home place used to say "the meitheal, the fcn meitheal, let me tell you about the fcn meitheal" ......

I've heard stories like that too. :mad: Makes my blood boil. Some people just relished in belittling others.

memorystick

memorystick wrote: »

It was a time when women knew there place and didn't question it.

I dont know about that my mother though she had a great life on the farm and felt sorry for women who had to go out to work if they had children.

She also made a lot of money from raising turkeys this was in the 1960's. so she had her own money.

Kovu

memorystick wrote: »

It was a time when women knew there place and didn't question it.

Would you like a sandwich with your sexism? :rolleyes:

Sam Kade

There were plenty of characters around back then with some great sayings and stories, very few of them left and they are a dying breed. Modern people have lost the art of conversation and have become boring.

Genghis Cant

Kovu wrote: »

Would you like a sandwich with your sexism? :rolleyes:

Make a few sandwiches there.... Good woman. :-)

Genghis Cant

A neighbour of mine came up with tge land commission in the 60's. Reared a family on 40 odd acres. Him and the good woman worked like dogs. Rent was £70pa, at a time when he was getting £10-14 for a bullock. There wasn't anything easy. He worked two horses for the first few years, all hard labour with a young family.
I think people tend to look back with rose tinted glasses. Maybe I'll do the same when I get old and bet!

Kovu

Genghis Cant wrote: »

Maybe I'm doing the same as I'm old and bet!

FYP :P

memorystick

Kovu wrote: »

Would you like a sandwich with your sexism? :rolleyes:

It's not that far back that a wife had zero say in the estate. Indeed, a husband could legally rape his wife until the 80s if not the early 90s. I hate this scutter way of rose tinting the past. Half doors and single mothers being hidden away.




And I ain't being a sexist.

rangler1

djmc wrote: »

I don't know how they did the work they did in the past they had to in order to survive.
I think that there was less stressful life any money went a lot further plenty help when needed and cheap labour.
Back before the free state it must have been very hard to survive and pay rent.
We have a easier life now but more stress and less community, we hardly know our neighbours with all the one off houses.

We've a neighbour here that used to work for my father, he regularly tells me about a dealer buying cull ewes from my father and they fighting over whether it'd be £5 or £6 and then he'd add that his wages at the time was £3/wk.....my father was always paying for land so things were tight but that shows hoe he was able to do it both work wise and financially

memorystick

Going through a cheque book from the 70s and was amazed cheques for 2 and 3 £s. my father sold 17 store bullocks in the early 60s to pay the builder for his house.

djmc

I was looking at an old film about how hard things were during the famine before this thread came up its long but worth a watch if ya have nothing to do some evening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNMGzSL42U

_Brian

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

Some people just relished in belittling others.

Plenty round now still do... some things don't change

Melodeon

memorystick wrote: »

Going through a cheque book from the 70s and was amazed cheques for 2 and 3 £s. my father sold 17 store bullocks in the early 60s to pay the builder for his house.

My mother tells of the time in the early 1970's when a cheque for just over £100 arrived in the post for a month's supply of milk.
My father drove with it to his home place to show it to his own elderly mother, who was incredulous that such a thing could exist in reality.

£100?

For milk???

Unbelievable!

20silkcut

memorystick wrote: »

Going through a cheque book from the 70s and was amazed cheques for 2 and 3 £s. my father sold 17 store bullocks in the early 60s to pay the builder for his house.

17 store bullocks wouldn't build a garage these days.

Kovu

20silkcut wrote: »

17 store bullocks wouldn't build a garage these days.

My father often tells me that the first cow he had calved twin bulls. He sold those twin bulls @ £500 a piece and that money was the deposit for the house I'm sitting in right now- think it cost about £25k to build in the early 80s.
Want to be a quare set of twins to make a house downpayment nowadays!

I often wonder if I am imagining this but in the late 60's early 70's when my mother was raising and killing turkeys for the Christmas market, she often got 15 or 20 pounds for a turkey, but surly that was a lot of money then?

A funny story because of some mix up she never got paid for a turkey by someone she considered a 'big shot' and ever after if we passed his house even 30 years latter she would say that fizzer never paid me for the turkey.

popa smurf

Love listening to those stories from my father who worked out for farmers when he was young he was the oldest and handed over his wages to his parents to pay the fair for his younger sibling to America he started working for a farmer when he was 12 it wasn't all work they was plenty of play as well these old guys wasn't as inacint. as we might think back then from some of the story's I have heard

Muckit

20silkcut wrote: »

17 store bullocks wouldn't build a garage these days.

Sure some of the garages now are the size of houses built in those days! Stick in a chimney and you'd nearly live in them!

patsy_mccabe

djmc wrote: »

I was looking at an old film about how hard things were during the famine before this thread came up its long but worth a watch if ya have nothing to do some evening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNMGzSL42U

Just watched it there. Powerful stuff. Thanks for posting.

djmc

I thought it was very accurate and unbiased when it was made for British viewing by the BBC
Have come across some old house ruins around where l live probably from around that time and its amazing that such small house's kept such big families.
Basically 2 10x10 rooms one with an open fireplace and the other for sleeping
I suppose they had to be small to keep them warm.

patsy_mccabe

We've the ruins of a soup kitchen right beside us and an old relative says there was a graveyard on his land during the famine.

Melodeon

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

We've the ruins of a soup kitchen right beside us and an old relative says there was a graveyard on his land during the famine.

djmc wrote: »

I thought it was very accurate and unbiased when it was made for British viewing by the BBC
Have come across some old house ruins around where l live probably from around that time and its amazing that such small house's kept such big families.
Basically 2 10x10 rooms one with an open fireplace and the other for sleeping
I suppose they had to be small to keep them warm.

Go to the OSI GeoHive map viewer:
http://map.geohive.ie/mapviewer.html
...and have a look at your own place in the Historic 6" (1837-1842) mapping.
See how many houses/buildings there were on the area at the time that today constitutes a single farm.

Miname

Melodeon wrote: »

Go to the OSI GeoHive map viewer:
http://map.geohive.ie/mapviewer.html
...and have a look at your own place in the Historic 6" (1837-1842) mapping.
See how many houses/buildings there were on the area at the time that today constitutes a single farm.

brilliant site, ive just spent the last couple of hours checking out fields with previous layouts, with a few drains being moved and ditches taken out its great to see the way its changed, it also explains a few spots i could not work outwhy they ran the way they did. also sorts out a neighbour whos being arguing over a couple of square yards.

Kovu

Melodeon wrote: »

Go to the OSI GeoHive map viewer:
http://map.geohive.ie/mapviewer.html
...and have a look at your own place in the Historic 6" (1837-1842) mapping.
See how many houses/buildings there were on the area at the time that today constitutes a single farm.

That. Is. Awesome.
The farmhouse here is on that map (1837-1842), we've never been able to date it.

farawaygrass

Was there a few golden years in the late 60's-early 70's, maybe around the time Ireland joined the European Union, where farming was really booming, like the stories kovu said about the twin calves putting a deposit on a house or the story or 16 bullocks paying a builder? Maybe a so called "Celtic tigerish" era. I have heard similar stories myself at home like these but then a lot more stories of the hard times. Is it kind of wrong to compare sale prices and the power of the money then to now and how bad they seem? Why I say this is from listening to stories at home, the 40's, 50's and early 60's were very hard times, you get to the golden era then and by the time the 80's come around its back to hard times again. So maybe that golden era was just that, a golden era where everything fell into place for the farmer and he was riding high, until inflation caught up and levelled everything out again.

Kovu

This house was built in '83 so was definitely not in a golden era. I was actually wrong, the house only cost about 20k to build, on the other hand the interest rate was extortionate. :pac:

Grueller

Melodeon wrote: »

Go to the OSI GeoHive map viewer:
http://map.geohive.ie/mapviewer.html
...and have a look at your own place in the Historic 6" (1837-1842) mapping.
See how many houses/buildings there were on the area at the time that today constitutes a single farm.

Just traced the outlines here. One 16 acre field was in nine divisions. Great site thanks Melodeon.

davidk1394

Kovu wrote: »

This house was built in '83 so was definitely not in a golden era. I was actually wrong, the house only cost about 20k to build, on the other hand the interest rate was extortionate. :pac:

The house the parents built was payed for with a david brown 1390 and a claas rollant 62. Its amazing how times have changed