Christine Broom on Hay

And we grew a lot of hay here but if we needed extra, we would perhaps buy some in. We would buy all our straw in.

We used to get it from Cridmore Farms. We used to buy two thousand bales, and from Robert Morgan at Sheepwash Farm. We would have two thousand bales. Small bales.

And I would … my husband would pitch every one so four thousand bales by hand, and I would be on the trailer loading them all up, so yes, you had to work quite physically hard then and we sometimes wouldn’t come in until one o’clock in the morning, especially if it was going to rain, and you had to get the crop in so it didn’t … so hay or straw.

Just … everybody did it. It wasn’t just me. That’s what farmers did. Of course now it’s all mechanised, and the farmers aren’t about.