My father kept a detailed diary of his daily life for all of 50 years. He wrote anywhere between 200 and 400 words a day, depending on time availability or how much had happened.

Glancing through it, the most striking feature is the variation in handwriting; after a busy day, it is obvious that he must have been tired, compared with the much neater style at a more relaxed time of year.

Also, it is clear that his recollections are more than a day-by-day account of pure agriculture, because he often included his thoughts and opinions on whatever subject towards which his pen was pointed.

Heatwave

A recent weather forecast mentioned June 1976 as a comparison for our 30°C heatwave, so I decided to browse his diary from that period. I reckoned it would be fascinating to compare the two eras, and to draw broader comparisons between farming life back then and how we exist today.

The biggest difference was undoubtedly labour and labour availability. My father and uncle worked in partnership, and there were two full-time employees. In addition, there was at least one part-time tractor driver, who appeared to have another job, but often had to take time off “on the sick”.

Isn’t it strange that his mystery illness seemed to recur on a regular basis and usually coincided with spring crops being planted, or baling straw at harvest time?

On top of these three workers, there were three more young fellas during the school holidays (myself included) and it sounds like we spent the entire summer being gainfully employed on the farm.

Those diary days, when he recounted what eight people were doing, makes for interesting reading, but also highlights just how far farming has moved away from the need for manual work.

Dipping sheep, thinning turnips (grown for stock feed) and stooking small bales of hay behind the baler were a necessary and integral part of the farming calendar, although I have left them behind without a trace of nostalgia or yearning.

Perhaps I spent too many years at the top of tar-painted hayshed roofs, building bays of heavy, green hay bales, because I haven’t the slightest desire for a return to that form of mild slavery.

Even the distant thump, thump, thump of a small baler still makes me think of uncontrollable sweating, cleg bites and incessant itching, rather than anything more wistful.

Larger, precision machinery has alleviated the labour shortage to some extent, along with an ever-increasing reliance on agricultural contractors, but some jobs have had to stop altogether.

Apart from recording the detail of a farm in the 1970s, the diary also reflects a bit about the actual person too

I had forgotten how often this farm moved livestock along roads, and not just narrow byways with grass growing up the middle. Back then some fairly busy roads were used too and the attitude to motorists was gung-ho to say the least.

Dear help the poor townie that wasn’t fully qualified in animal handling and knowing where to place a shiny car among 30 galloping, loose-dunged suckler cows.

One of my farming neighbours ended up in court after hammering his shillelagh (blackthorn stick) off a car roof when the ignoramus driving it dared to sound his horn. I cannot imagine moving beef cattle along those same roads nowadays.

Sheep demo

Apart from recording the detail of a farm in the 1970s, the diary also reflects a bit about the actual person too.

After attending a progressive sheep demonstration afternoon, my father wrote down the facts and figures concerning 2,500 store lambs that were being fattened on slats.

The plan was to buy a poor body conditioned lamb, then feed it silage and concentrates before selling it at Easter with a profit of more than £5/head.

Of far more interest to me was his comment afterwards, when he pondered that “every big enterprise that concentrates stock into small areas might be bad and may only force a smaller man out of business”.

Reluctant

Given that he was part of a farming operation that had a Californian-style house of laying hens, four houses for rearing pullets, was growing 180 acres of spring barley and with sizeable numbers of sheep and cattle, you might arrive at the conclusion that he was a reluctant embracer of a fast-changing farming landscape.