If you have an interest in using the farming tools and implements of immediate post war period and taking part in this unique project, would like to take part in a once in a lifetime opportunity, turn tour back on modern life to indulge a passion for something more rewarding please contact Brian.
The Concept
To bring to life what we have lost in one generation. To bring back to life a farm from the immediate post war period and the aspects of rural life connected to it. To create a convincing working farm, with all the main enterprises that you would have expected to find, cows, sheep, pigs, hens, and of course crops such as oats, wheat, potatoes, even mangles. We will use the machines of the day to produce that food, especially the ‘Little Grey Fergie’. The tractor, which took so much of the drudgery out of agriculture and in the end, changed our rural lives forever. We would install one of the first milking machines to demonstrate the massive advance this made compared with hand milking. We will use original dairy equipment churns, cooler etc. The same philosophy would be followed with all the other enterprises on the farm.
I would hope the farm would also have as part of the enterprise, a farmhouse kitchen and all the equipment therein, which could be used to demonstrate the culinary and preserving arts of the day. There will also be an orchard and vegetable garden, not forgetting a well with a hand pump (piped water reached these parts in 1964).
Why This Period?
It was the best of times, a large amount of the drudgery had been eliminated from farm work yet the community was still intact. Make no mistake the 1950s were full of achievement and hope in the countryside as an agriculturist one felt important and needed not an irrelevance and a drain on the public purse as we do today.
The Importance Of The TE20 To The Project
This machine was produced locally it had a massive influence on many lives it stands alongside the icons of 20th Century engineering an importance second to none. The Fergie is unique as being part of both our industrial and rural heritage. It is a seminal piece of equipment that should be celebrated and seen working in its natural environment helping produce the nations’ food.
Because it is a time of change it is a chance to show practices before the development of modern mechanical devices and after e.g. harvesting with a binder, stocking sheaves and utilising a trashing drum, contrasting with the use of an early combine harvester. Thus demonstrating in one saving the massive labour saving created by this one advance. The farm would be authentic and true to the time it represents, so people young and old would be transported back in time to when life had more structure and perhaps made more sense.
