Farming in the Community

The 1911 census has now been released early for public reference. The 1921 census will not be released until 2021.  The 1931 census was destroyed by fire and none was taken in 1941. There is therefore going to be a long gap in the records.

I have written earlier about the tenants at Wallmead. In 1871 and 1881 Abdiel Combes senior and junior were the farmers here. They were non-conformists, unusual on the staunchy Catholic Wardour Estate, and were followed by James Street and his family in 1891 and 1901.  Now we know that in 1911 Hugh George Burt was the 35 year old farmer with his wife Katherine 30 and their children Katherine 3, Mark 2 and Monica 11 months. The Burts were and are still, mainly, RC. Catherine Martin 41, Hugh’s widowed sister also lived here. They had 9 rooms and no live-in servants. Agriculture had been through major upheavals during these 40 years and 3 tenancies.

This spring marks the Shallcross family’s 60 years here as owners. Tom Doggerell was the last tenant before the farm was sold to us by the Arundells.. Peter is the third generation of our family to be in charge. New blood is always needed or we get stuck in the past and try to make the old ways work. They usually don’t.

The TV series The Victorian Farm has been giving us all great pleasure. It would be good if basket making and many of the other crafts demonstrated could be kept going but the farming demonstrated in the Shropshire time-capsule has been almost totally relegated to history, although shepherding has not changed much.

Many of the figures we put into our forward budgets are based on informed guess-work. The milk-price has been rising steadily and last month was 28 pence a litre so we were coming out of a loss-making trough and back to the amount we were getting 8 years ago. Bang! The price is going down by 1.75p in February and may continue to slide. If we stay with dairying we have to increase the herd yet again up towards 200 cows. We started with 40 Shorthorns in 1949 and bought a seriously dangerous Dutch Friesian bull, called Swart Lodkees, to increase the milking potential of the heifer calves.

More cows mean a longer milking time so we have decided to increase the number of units in the parlour from 8 to 10 a side. We had allowed for this possibility in designing the length of the milking pit but the installation will cost about £12000.

The lack of price security has already led to a reduction of nearly 50% in the national pig herd. Sheep numbers are also on the way down and we have to import milk, mainly from the emerald isle.

It is gratifying that shoppers are now looking for local produce and the little red tractor logo. This seems to be the only guarantee that “British” means food produced in the UK rather than imported thousands of miles and processed here.

This is a development that the Combes, Streets and Burt could probably not have dreamt of although Woolworths had appeared in 1908. How many years is it since we were introduced to the fore-runner of the supermarket? The local example at Crockerton was the emporium called Normans where the trolleys went crab-wise and the goods were stacked on the floor. Packets often burst and overflowed into the narrow concrete aisles.  Ted Woods could proudly boast in the Crown that his ancient Ford Prefect had managed to return to Tisbury over Lords Hill, the little boot full of cheap food.

Martin Shallcross