Hay Days

by Fred Archer

Once more, Archer integrates his knowledge of farming with the story of his own life. Characters such as Fred Chandler, the cowman who loved his cows as David loved Jonathan, are found amongst the descriptions of a society that survived the Great Depression on 30s a week. Here we find men, back from the trenches, toiling the sodden fields in puttees and army coats, here are their wives and girlfriends doing piece-work, here is the workhouse, the school, the church, here are the year-long farming tasks of Bredon Hill. Here is the ordinary rural life as only Fred Archer can paint it.

150 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right at the beginning of this book, the eighteen pages of eulogies to Fred and his generation, almost succeeded in completely putting me off reading it. However, I’m glad now that I persisted, for the 141 following pages of memories written by Fred are thoughtful, well-constructed, and of great interest in both the general and in the particular, to those who know the English counties of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.

It’s a relatively quick book to read, slim, and typeset in good, clear 12/17 pt. Photina®; as if the publisher has identified the older generations as the target market; notwithstanding the idiocy of printing small b/w photographs directly onto cream-tinted pages.

Rural farming life in the 1920s was a hard life. Fred Archer tells it pure and straight how it was. This is no revisionist account. It’s a sobering thought to consider that in 2015 the vast majority of the population is so divorced from the land and from knowledge of how their food is grown, let alone how to cook it, that any serious shortages of staple foods would likely spark crime and vicious riots.

The years of Depression following the First World War were brutal; but Fred finds pride in his work on the land; and in simple pleasures such as the fragrance of cutting hay grass mixed with scented meadow flowers (Sainfoin has a particularly striking red flower, and is adored by both sheep and cattle. Linseed, now once again grown as a commercial crop, has the most gorgeous striking blue flowers). However Fred finds nothing but worry implicit in the imports of Canadian wheat that depressed the price of English corn. It all feels very painfully similar to today’s horribly failing market for fresh British cows’ milk. It may look like the garden of Eden, but it is not.

There is a warm and realistic humility within Fred’s writing; of knowledge born of experience that a community thrives through working together, using their different skills to the benefit of all. Yet this book also harks of pain, reminding just how limited opportunities were in a rural community; to the point of a young mother handing over her illegitimate baby son to its father, in the churchyard, on that father’s wedding day to another woman!

I liked the ‘old name of ‘gillyflower’ (for wallflower); and the notice above the pub door stating “As a bird is known by his note so is a man known by his conversation. Swearing strictly prohibited.”. Very direct and to the point! I liked too, the list of hedgerow wines made: beetroot, parsnip, and damson, along with marrow and blackberry jam. Was it considered wasteful to use brambles alone to make jam or jelly, as compared to stretching the precious hedgerow fruit out with apple? Pigeon meat was in ready supply; the pesky birds being irresistibly tempted by the planted acreages of Brussel sprouts. Skylarks were more interested in the spring cabbage. So children were tasked to behave as live scarecrows; a practice that if reintroduced today would likely (wrongly) be condemned as cruelty rather than character-building work experience!

Today, much money is spent on Christmas presents for children fortunate to have been born to affluent parents resident in First World countries. On the other hand this book shows how very much richer Life’s experiences can be within a lower-consumerist lifestyle. The question is how to best give the growing child both?

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read and enjoyed a fair few Fred Archer books many years ago, but I found this, his last book rather poor really, and, as an agricultural trade unionist, I found the casual way his father’s workers had their wages dropped to bare subsistence level because of agricultural depression, whilst the book is adorned with photographs of family seaside holidays at the same time unpalatable…