Stocken Farm (R M West & Son) with John & Joan
From Lacey Green History
Continued from Stocken Farm with R M West & Son
THE FARM PARTNERSHIP LOSES HILDA & DICK
Sadly we had lost both Hilda and Dick from our farming partnership, Hilda in 1979 and Dick in 1983.
June 17th 1984. Stocken Farm Open Day.
June 15th 1986. Stocken Farm Open Day
Hallmark October 1984. Joan's Farm Diary
At suppertime, 29th September 1984, John and I opened a bottle of wine and talked of things I have written here. It was a very special day. 50 years since Dick and Hilda took Stocken Farm so bravely when things were so difficult. We lingered over the wine and remembered and wished they had been with us still to share the occasion.
Reluctantly we broke the spell and John went out to check the cows. He was quickly back “Get some old things on, there’s a cow down with milk fever.
She lay like a dead thing. So, I stood in the field holding high a flexi-pack of calcium boroglutenate and John knelt injecting the cow to save her life. One pack dripped straight into a vein, a second to be injected under the skin. Even before we could get the second pack connected up she revived. We brought her into a loose box to give her the second dose. John examined her. Her calf was not yet ready to be born. We gave her some hay and left her. The next morning, that cow, so near to death the night before, had running at her feet a lovely calf, safely born, licked clean, fed and ready to be presented to the world as if nothing had been wrong at all.
Milk fever could not have been cured like that in 1934, man was too ignorant. So much progress in 50 years. Progress? It is not a ‘dirty’ word. Our animals are more comfortable and better fed than they have ever been. We would like to think that went for people too.
It may seem obvious, but then it may not, that a cow has to have a calf before producing milk.
When the heifers are big enough they are put in the field with our Hereford bull and nature being what it is, in due course they produce a calf and join the milking herd. At least that is how it is supposed to work. Imagine the shock of finding on a routine pregnancy test that half the heifers were not in-calf. Our bull had been resting on his laurels! It was thought that he had got too fat, which may be worth thinking about, although he had been kept severely rationed. It must have been just contentment. With a couple of months already lost, a new bull was hastily purchased and not needing two bulls our lovely old Hereford had to go. Well you can hardly keep a bull just a pet, even though the men told me he was as docile as a lamb.
He was booked into a sale at Banbury Market, together with seven cows.
We took the trouble of travelling to Banbury because Banbury Market is famous and trade there is that much better and the bull was rather special. The cows normally go direct to the slaughterhouse at Thame, or else through the market at Aylesbury. The cows were sold for various reasons. Three were unable to breed, one was old, with her udder so low it was difficult, one had been operated on last year when her insides got twisted round, she was nursed back to health and thought to be in-calf, but she was not. The other was simply a low yielder. We are over our milk quota and some have to go. These were all home bred animals so it was not easy to send them off for slaughter.
Banbury Market advertises itself as ‘The Stockyard of Europe’, so a day there is quite an experience. The lorry was loaded at 6am which proved too late, or at least the cows came into the sale too late for our liking. Ours were number 1137 to 1140 in one ring and were not sold until 5.30 pm. They had started selling at 9.30am and ours were not the last by any means. The other ring in which the older cows and the bulls were sold, only finished a little earlier, and there were sheep being sold all day. There is a market held at Banbury nearly every weekday. What a lot of animals! I was impressed by the calm way in which the cattle were handled. The auctioneer took about ten seconds to sell each lot, as little as five seconds in some cases. It was all quite amazing.
Within this organisation a way of life lives on which once would have been found weekly in many local markets. Round the ring the tiered seats held some onlookers, but the bidders were standing, leaning on the ring, perhaps twenty men. They stood chatting, as if the cattle were quite irrelevant, at the same time making bids as if by remote control. The auctioneer’s eyes were everywhere, all-seeing. I tried to pick out those bidding. A curly headed young man raised a fist, then a couple of fingers, a man leaning on his elbows, hand to face, looked half asleep, but I suspect he too was bidding. A man in a trilby raised fingers, another straightened his hat. One rubbed his nose, another tweaked his ear. We had to keep still, but all that fidgeting was infectious. These men are part of a world almost disappeared. Both John’s father and mine went to markets. Beautifully starched white cotton coats (modern smocks) were worn and what a chore it was washing and ironing them. They are still worn by those selling at Banbury.
One thing that has changed, for better or for worse. John’s Grandfather West went to Wycombe market every week with his pony and trap. The farmers adjourned to the pub afterwards and later the pony took him and his trap home to Myze Farm at West Wycombe. No problem at all! No wonder he never took to “They new-fangled motor cars”.