Michaelmas Day

[Clunkshift]

Today 29th September is Michaelmas day. On this day or the following weekend was the traditional time for country fairs (Goose fairs in some counties).
For farm workers up to WW2 it was a time of uncertainty as farm labour contracts were generally renewed annually and ran from Michaelmas or Martinmas (11th November).
If a worker thought that his boss would not be renewing his contract, then the Michaelmas Fair was the place to approach other farmers.

In most places the harvest was all gathered in by this time and workers could celebrate while farmers decided who they wanted in their tied cottages for the coming year. Before combine harvesters, threshing was a winter activity.

In the days before National Health and Social Security, my grandfather was a shepherd who was one of the first to join the National Union of Agricultural Workers in Norfolk. As a result, some farmers wouldn’t employ him and when times were tough in the 1920’s, the only work he could get was in the stone pits and I have mixed feelings when I see the flint stone houses and walls of Norfolk.
Times were very hard and two of the children had hare lip and cleft palette; almost certainly because my grandmother was undernourished when she was pregnant.

But modern times haven’t changed everything, the harvest is over, we have beautiful autumn days and the fields are resting ready for next year, animals are eating hungrily to put on fat for winter and it is literally the last time for “making hay while the sun shines.

If your home and family are secure, enjoy the beauty of the season.

[keepersdaughter]

That's fascinating Clunk, you really know a lot about traditions and history. Are the Michealmas daisies out?.

[Clunkshift]

Yes the Michaelmas daisies are out and have been for a while (but not in my flower- free garden). They should continue until the first good frost I think.

[Rustic Pumpkin]

Fascinating, Clunk. And, yes, somethings don't change!

No Michaelmas Daisies in my garden this year, the slugs had them!:(

[Katelb]

Clunk,thank you so much for putting this on,it is most interesting,I had forgotten all about today being Michaelmas but now you remind me,I have read in historical novels that the farm workers were 'traded'at this time of year.

Your poor grandfather,what a rude awakening for him to have to come to terms with,being a shepherd I always feel is a gentle caring way of life,many times hard due to the elements and the environment they tended their flock in,but to have to get used to working with stone must ,quite literally,have been hard for him.

[souter girl]

It reminds me of when I visited the Victorian workhouse at Southwell near Nottingham. Workhouses have always had a bad press - largely because of Oliver Twist etc, but life outside the workhouse especially if you had had a tied cottage was frequently very much worse if you were unemployed or unfit for work. Not such golden days as we like to believe. Talking of which, anybody watching Tess of the D'Urbervilles? It's on the bleak side, but even there the cottage she lived in with her parents is depicted with a cosy fire and so on, whereas in reality there would often have been a dirt floor, damp pouring down the walls and as Clunk has reminded us, often very very little to eat - people were known to starve to death in a hard winter.

[keepersdaughter]

It really makes you wonder how any of us got to be here at all!.

[Sarahc]

And my Michaelmas daisys are in full glorious bloom!

[sheddie]

I have some lovely shepherds crooks Clunk. X

[Crocus]

Hi SG, I saw Tess twice and also have the DVD. The general feeling of this movie to me is of harship and struggle.

[TIGGYWINKLE]

Very interesting post. There is something magical about a shepherd. I like my image of God being the Good Shepherd, watching out for all of us, and giving a helping hand when we are sick, or loose our way. It must have been a heartbreak for you grandfather having to work in the stone pits, having been a shepherd out on the pastures and hills all day watching over his flock.

[eleanor2]

so glad i just found this thread how interesting to read this history.clunk if you come back on here what date ws your grandfather a shepherd.

[Clunkshift]

My grandfather was an agricultural worker in East Anglia from around 1905 to the mid 1960’s. He was a general worker at first, a kind of apprentice to the skilled men like ploughmen, and he was a shepherd from about 1915 through to the 1940’s; except during hard times when he took whatever work was offered. So while steam traction engines were in use, he really lived through the last generation of horse power on the land.
As a young boy, my father used to take the heavy horses to the blacksmith for shoeing before school and like my grandfather; he finished school at 14 and went into agricultural work too.
In a strange paradox, the two wars were beneficial to a lot of people in the country areas and in agriculture, the fist war took large estates of land out of the hands of the aristocracy and tenant farmers were able to buy their farms and become the new gentry (often without any of the historic obligations of nobility). The second war with the drive to maximise land use, brought in a new generation of tenant farmers and enriched the existing land owners. Both wars also brought a way of escape for country lads who would otherwise have been stuck in agriculture as labourers. My father and his brother were glad to join the army in 1939 and escape to the wide world and learn a new trade.
In my father’s case it was simply swapping driving cattle floats for driving army lorries and from repairing agricultural machinery to repairing army vehicles. His poaching friends became snipers, commandos or chindits and none of them wanted to go back to the land.

Everything changed in post war Aldershot when my parents met; presumably after mum had no more Poles and Canadians to dance with and turned her attention back to English lads.
In the new industrial prosperity and mechanisation of the 1950’s the national herd and national flock numbers went down as the cheaper imports form the colonies came in and shepherds all but disappeared from lowland areas so grandfather then switched to hedging and ditching.
Although this sounds like unskilled labour, farm hedges in those days were short, thickly laid, dense at the bottom and nothing like the rough machine cut horrors lining fields today. Similarly, ditches were clean and drained all the water off the roads and tracks and verges were scythed short. Laying a hedge is a subtle craft and the benefits are only really seen in mid-winter when the leaves have gone but the branches and twigs are still a dense windbreak or snow fence. My grandfather was kept on by local farmers to do this until he finally retired in his 80’s.
Like most country folk my grandfather kept a full vegetable garden with no unproductive flowers or shrubs allowed, except in front of the house where indigenous flowers were nurtured by my grandmother.
My father still has his shepherd’s crook (which has been used by most of the grandchildren in various nativity plays) and between myself and my brother we still have an array of blacksmith made scythes and various hedging blades with which we inexpertly batter our own hedges – thank goodness that Granddad never lived to see our poor efforts.
They lived long enough to see all their grandchildren attending grammar schools and were very proud of any educational achievement, so I guess that they didn’t want us to work on the land like they did. Some things never change.

[eleanor2]

that is all so interesting clunk.the difference between living way in the country and in the countryside near a town.thinking of my hubbys great grandad and there small holding.they kept a few animals for eggs and meat.grew their own veggies,great grandsd did a coal round ,great granma in service and as far as i can tell they had a decent time of it.no wealth but no hunger.

[Crocus]

Hi Clunk, I just started to read a book written by David Kennard ~ "A Shephard's Watch ~ Through the Seasons With One Man and His Dogs. It reminded me of what you have written about your father. This is what's written on the back of the book:

"At Borough Farm, on the rugged, spectacularly beautiful North Devon coast, David Kennard and his dogs are embarking on a new shepdherding year. The twelve months ahead will present David and his working sheepdogs Greg, Swift, Gail, Fern and Ernie, with a never-ending series of challenges: from rescuing ewes stranded on the Atlantic cliffs to running the gauntlet of psychopathic rams and officious farm inspectors; from spring lambing and summertime shearing to fending off the ever-present threats nature has in store for the 850-strong flock. All this, in the midst of a harsh economic climate for farming and a landscape that is among the most picturesque, yet wildly unpredictable, in the British Isles. How will David and his young family survive another year? The next 365 days will tel ...."

xx

[Shelli]

as a total aside i rescued a lamb last year - it had got separated from it's mother . They crossed the river together but the mother went back and it rained through the night so the lamb couldn't follow next morning - it was very thin and must have been there for about 2 days when OH and i found it laying on the bank bleating pathetically - It was very weak - it didn't even protest much when I picked it up tucked it under arm and carried it over the river to it's mum - - it was hallway across when I began to doubt the wisdom of this move because the water was flowing pretty fast with a strong undercurrent, the rocks were fairly slippy and the water was bladdy cold - it was May I think.

- but when they were reunited I felt very good in a nature girl kind of way. (NB terrible photo quality - from old mobile phone - but you can see how deep the water was)

Am reading an old book at the moment called Wanderings in Lakeland - it was written in 1945 by a man then aged 60 who was recalling the lakes of his childhood at the turn of the century - there are some good photos of shepherds - if I get time I will scan and post up -one is particularly poignant of a shepherd with a lamb over his shoulder striding through the daffodils -= such an archetypically Lakeland image

Shepherdess Shelli XX

[Clunkshift]

I used to have a book of cartoons by Brockbank and one of my favourites was the following scene:
Two men are standing outside a heavily snowed up farmhouse and one has a lamb round his neck.
In the doorway, the farmer's wife wearing dressing gown and slippers is holding out another lamb and saying "here take this one, otherwise you'll catch your death of cold out there" :)