Dear Sar,
Thank-ye kindly for printing my email last month and I will try an have a wud along with-ya agin when I can.
The month (October) started suffin wet & it were a job on the garden with it bein so dawby. The Missus she get suffin savige if I start a dragen mud indoors so now I ha’a leave my old boots in the shud.
The rain ha made it wet for them a getten the old sugar beet orf but they tell me they arnt in no hurry as them old beet are a still a’growin & with them big machines on them floatin tyres they can clear 30 to 40 acres a day what ever the weather. Thas different from when I started a werkin on the land. three on us with 2 trailers and a single row harvester ha a scrap about to clear an acre a day.; When I went to a Farmin College in 1960 they were still a teachin us how to knock & top beet by hand & we ha’a take a test a doing it. You were given a bit’o beet 4 rows acrors by 2 chain(44yds) long. You ha’a pull em ood beet out’a the ground, knock the soil orf & lay em in rows, then come along with yar beet hook,cut the tops orf & hull the beet inta little heaps ready to be forked onto a cart. I remember I got 20 out’a 20 for style. I reckon that was cos I was left handed & the master who was a markin us was right handed &he dint know if I was a doin the job right or not.
The other day I drawed up to the malenium green with my Grandson, my hart han’t them old trees & bushes shot up, some on em look as if they want trimmen out abit , I hope there are some youngans in the village who can do this as it int any good a leavin nature to itself, yer got to give her a hand how an agin. Thas like when a new vica who found his new chuch yard with roses a growin round the chuch door & the grass all mown short said to the verger “what beauty God can create in his acre”. Huh said the verger, yew oughter seen what that were like afore I come, and th’Almighty had it on his own.
Well I must close now cos jack frost a left his calling card this week an I want to get some ‘o my tender plants in’t the greenhouse afor he call agin.
Fare ye well & do you keep a troshin.
The Boy Tom
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