GLORIOUS DEVON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 156, 30 December 1944, Page 9

GLORIOUS DEVON

. . . ... ■-1» WHERE OLD MEN WORK LONG

MND GIRLS MAKE HISTORY

% (By James Lansdale HodsoA.) fC '' '-■'{- ■ . • . " - ■■ _* . ■ The first sight of Devon was dark and forbidding: the sky silveri SSf y ian stormy and the smi ? half-hidden, was not yellow, but white |. Ihe lanes were heavy with mud, gulls flew far inland, and thatHnfcclmatmg countryside of hills and valleys was touched with the | mystery and brooding of Hardy's Wessex. There was nothino- to be »seen as yet of the red soil that wartime ploughing makes even more |, vivid against the green pasture land, no close acquaintance with | those earth banks which divide small field from field

I<§ iEf --ass s a™si'"*ss 3£3£s&s£E SlSssswwe leisurely as heavy bombers, and to turn This is not the only remarkiM* 332*25*?? d^t foreground to far crop. Luppftt cLn^haspfodS^d lidge, caught in bngnt sunlight under 90 tons of barley on 80 acres arid otheibl^inT^S^^S, 10* °f Pal? F°- Und that «ey ve o?gre aw eSpo?a?oes £ ErSaS h,,FHt S £ «Otf th? $? ntre Of l}vms memory (and not much else, I England, but it is part of the very, daresay)-, has grown 15 tons to the ™f* lW ffid i3ust the same- Jam acre > ™he^as «» average Devon ou? » i^nS st Cou T nti'yman nor am I. yet put is only five tons an acre. fi^J^^r. SJ? I« am ?, ot either nsi" r was told many a time in Devon S^J roud wh| n the words "slow that it is-only the work of women wh^ fif Ivf 6?, °* DeV« n *men £ r helPe«i- fey school children and f&Sfct hJ J. \i ithat f, Set?- t ' who evacuees, that has made this, potato *- w ™s£& w£ d \Z°* w^l^ qe Sowing possible .in this dimension. SfJP ? n Mb* tt? r than e, st Country T The - acreage -.under potatoes, or S:f ™Si +w +^ U? T£ delZ' ,or^ vht n "teddies," as Devon calls them, has cJHL ■■pthaj th- e Luftwaffe's bombs grown five-fold to 32,000 acres' and t.SSS.T dJ?.S CeS: I 1 minutes 130,000 tons yearly are produced more of street widening and the than before the war. "No men" I ■XL ' had waited a solution for was told by officials of the War Agri'f°rty/ears a nd would doubtless have cultural Committee, "would have iS^J hVku SO la€S.ardly are minds stuck that bleak, cold, monotonous v m.ade-up. They say in Devon, as they work as Land Girls have and some

1 say i^ n s°ut£ Yorkshire and many have worked on potatoes ten months - another English place, too, that you out of twelve." monuis .- can be looked on as a foreigner for m . . ten years or more if your birthplace . Thls very morning, although full of was^in another country. There is kin- st^ly, .wintry sunshine, was bitterly 1 shj^between-the West Hiding in other cold-wlth- a wmd from the north. In * things too-in nonconfSty ii? the ,a sunless corner of a field with its - elation of characters and "eccentrics" r?** ,of. caves" where potatoes had |t Jo^iwng good purse-minders in achiev- been ■«.&? some months, was a I ingKie Tfiiumph of old age (each yIL f rouP, of girls at work. They wore fc almost another battle honour) breeches; and gumboots, and shawls or I- The farm bailiff who conducted me handkerchiefs; around their heads. The I, down those winding, narrow lanes wu? d was; whipping their faces . into * along .which a drunken man could }» te ,P* Pink, and r^(and here-and cannonfrom one side to another and S^ir l Oudl *of blue)/ ■ Girls-were I Istiltkeep going, said his uncle, at 84, shovelling; on to a riddle. Two of tides bareback every day- goin° about then}were turning handles which kept Risfam, and toat he seeded a field by B? tatoes dancing so that they sorted fcand two years back. His father is" themselves out ..;■ in?^!ll^"^ toothers began life Other girls filled hundredweight SS-f^fi 1 wav;, hls ™cle with one calf sacks and a brawny gipsy girl lay on fnr'iS^S?! I f h*r fr2 m working ,close bywascTMrtoMorrywhicßhad S & Weekly t0 owiun« hls 90 acres brought them—men and women in this OIC^ yon- mobile Land Army are sometimes LABOUR IS SHORT.' driven fifteen miles -to work—and a ;If you-ask why old men work so _canteen on wheels where they eat long,,the answer is that they often live lunch and brew their tea- "* lovrL <a i entlf man of 94 and his LONDON GIRL EXPERT i ,> son were both drawing the old age "PLOUGHMAN." t pension near Honiton not long since), A . . , • . W and if "you have been brought tro to -■-Agipsy "girl,-so strong that she can ■ work, why then . . . besides labour manhandle a hundredweight sack 1 these past years has been short T*>- alone,,.was;-the. only; girl of a group fctween World Wars I and II 10 000 w«o was a country girl. She goes P workers out of 30,000 left the land in ho:me at the weekends' to live in a I Devon, and besides,- again, farms are canvas-.tent-with her mother, but the t mostly small—l2,ooo holdings are rest, were hairdressers, shop girls, ■ •under 100 acres, and only 11 farms are machmists, and what you will. There T .over 500 acres if you exclude moorland JS-one-London girl, who worked in an L:' grazing. 'office, who today drives what is called I . "Men won't be drove today" That a hi-s prawler Caterpillar which pulls lis why mv farm bamfl?«aßl We were a, s™'*o* thrasher on a four-furrow lon the' road: t^vMt ia ?artv of tSd ough' The 6ther week she heard a I'Girl? working^ Jif^otafoes ' "He ™ Ploughing: match was on. She took F disc6ur??ng SS change? "No StehSe alonS a tour-lurrow plough and beat L hay by "Ibu3 sfSfi v art of cidef S^st of the men at their own job. t now" he said '5b carrvini com In 7*** were two farmers who spoke Wtte a bit o' supper. No, 'Pay and be v-°i£ ' : , ~ , PpaidMs the motto now and the fashion, ,-we drove on and watched a buzzard \ »too; and I like it better." It brought lazi}y across a field on the ■tto'-mind what was said to me on a north wmd, saw rooks among stubble jßevon farm some years back. Old and.watehed.thtei, too, which led the rVrmiam had rooted out his firkin to -bailiff to say, 'Them rooks be busy R-show me a small two-quart miniature f nd what they find there Ye don't |*c'ask,'hooped and bunged and all. "We know. Tliey; spend days and days j I 6 used to get that filled every day by there and rooks mean pests. It is r the farmer up to the time of the war" they^re after—not crops. They L~idneaning W6rld War I). "It has put may sometimes damage crops to get Wsn end to many good things. Many^s pests and damage be over-estimated— ■the time I've walked up this hill in anyhow so far as : ; r6oks go. Now KTjwinter suppin* from my firkin and bits crows, why,, crows; will.carry off eggs I vcf ice running down my throttle, yea, or. a chicken,, but; they are always in ■ frozen cider." pairs—never m a»-crowd. The- crow ■'/--Yes, the first World War put an end takes.a mate and is ;married for life, M~ts many things, good and bad, and this while other birds do have.a fresh wife Kgreater war is changing many things, every year. , »t66. I used to wonder whether it was From that we talked of how moprKthe strong red soil, or the luscious land 'and commons were cleared,' how Ptsrass, or the red short-horned cattle, bulldozers pushed over banks of »or- the farmer's wife who was mainly earth, and how caterpillars and chains •-jbfchind the cream of Devon which was were used to drag down trees and ■OtHe cream of England. But there's not shrubs, and how fires that burned what I "much Devonshire cream today, though was to be burned had to be out By |' .country milk yield is up by 12,000,000 sunset lest the Luftwaffe's bombs were ■Vgallons yearly. Milk is too precious, to drawn down on them. Thirty men fctiirn in any large degree into the and girls could—and did—clear four ■clumpy, fat. golden cream that took acres in a week and plough it, too. X 'three days 'to make. They told of a Land Girl, wife of a I - REMARKABLE CROPS. soldier serving in Italy, who said she w^zx^%%pj™^« -g^ss a turne<l out ttat ■not grow enough to feed rabbits. But backache was twins. Fthis Common like some 10,000 other There are over 1800 Land-Girls m 1 Devon areas akin to it that was moor-. Devon, and they are one of the mam-I:-land or common and as rough as a festations of a minor I j Bifarmer's tongue on a wet day, has shall speak more of this in another] w itself been turned upside down, tilled article. ;