Episode 2
· 13:03
In this episode, Allen takes us back to the time when fields were ploughed by horses. Industrialization of farming was beginning. Allen tells how a shire horse saved his life. You'll hear him talk about ricks, which are stacks of straw, thrashers, which separate the wheat from the chaff and straw, sheaves, a bundle of stalks, shafts, the wooden handles which hold the iron plough in place, rows of kale, the green vegetable, horse hoeing, which is like hoeing except with a plough, and shoulder stakes, which are wooden posts.
Allen Chalk:Allen Bircham Chalk.
Allen Chalk:That's my name. Allen is spelled a double l e n. And I live in Newtown Broad Chalke.
Estelle Phillips:And you've got a birthday coming up.
Allen Chalk:Yes. And it's 94. Because I was a Carter's lad when I started work for the first year. We had some one big massive horse he was. We had three at the time then.
Allen Chalk:It used to be, I think, about 20 horses on that farm, but got down to three because there was one or two old tractors there, you know. And I can remember this Warwick. I was horse hoeing with the carter, and the horse hoe was a metal frame with, with the the shafts going down and a blade on the bottom. And then the carter used to let that down in the ground and used to just lead the horse up and down the rows of kale, and you had to be in the right one. Else he cut the kale out.
Allen Chalk:We were we always made ricks in the middle in the corner of the field, always about four ricks in the corner of the field, so when thrasher came they would thrash the whole four, you know, without moving very far. And so we had to move the elevator, that's what took the sheaves from the cart up to the top of the rig. And they couldn't move it, you know, the tractor was way away. In those days there was no radios, telephone nothing like that. So if you had to go there you had to walk and get the tractor and they said, would the horse move it?
Allen Chalk:And this he was massive and and, oh, no. They wouldn't move that. He said that he wouldn't move that. So the old Carter said, let's try. And he put the horse, put the harness on, proper harness, hitched on the elevator, and he said, get up Warwick.
Allen Chalk:And that well, I can remember now that horse, his legs shook, shivered, and all of a sudden, it moved. Marvelous Horsepower. That was
Estelle Phillips:When you were working with the horses, did you feel that you had a close connection?
Allen Chalk:Yeah. Oh, yes. You didn't switch them off at night. You took them home, groomed them down, give them their food, made sure they had a good bed to lay on. Yeah.
Allen Chalk:It's much different. Yeah. They understood you, you understood them, and they understood you. You know, they knew if you sent them in the in or led them in the way you were going, they went there. They never, you know, they get in the track and they go to where you want to go.
Allen Chalk:They they knew. They seemed to know. There was one or two. We had one of his punches there. He was a lovely horse.
Allen Chalk:And when he had one, he had a as you put the wrist, you bank them in back them into the shafts, pick the shafts up, and then there's a wristie, they call it a wristie, and that was the chain that went over the saddle and you clipped it on, so it kept the shafts up. Well, that one was crafty because that one of the way you stood back to him, put the wire up , put the chain over and he'd nip your backside. Every Every time. Yes. Warwick, I can remember there's another story about Warwick.
Allen Chalk:I was Dunkirk, what we called Dunkirk then, you know, it's a manure, but Dunkirk then. And I was Dunkirk with him at the bull's pen, and the bull was right down the bottom of this paddock, big Friesian bull, massive he was. And I've been in two or three times, got loads with the little trailer I had a cart I had on the back of the horse. And one time I went in, we went in the gate. I got through the gate and shut the gate, and all of a sudden, the bull started coming up the field, bellowing like mad.
Allen Chalk:So I jumped up on the tractor upon the trailer, and he went round in front of the horse, down with his head, and picked the horse with his front legs off the ground. And I what the hell can I do? You know? Frightened my so I said I thought to myself, right. I got on the back of the horse, and I said, get going, Warwick.
Allen Chalk:And that horse pushed that bull backwards right up the field till he got within range of the yard, and that was frightening. But he was massive horse. He was he was big and it his feet his hooves were massive. They had a special huge, shoes made for him because he had such big feet, but lovely horse.
Allen Chalk:Isn't that amazing though, Allen, that you've just described? The horse understood the bull, but the horse also understood you.
Allen Chalk:He knew what he had to do. He just had to keep pushing that bull out the way so the bull let him go, dropped down, back back and back down the field, he never come back again. He just stayed there in the bottom field.
Estelle Phillips:Did the bull have horns?
Allen Chalk:No.
Estelle Phillips:Thank goodness.
Allen Chalk:Yeah. They dehorned all the cows on bulls over there because Friesian bows, very savage things, the Friesians.
Estelle Phillips:I didn't know that.
Allen Chalk:Yeah. I can remember one time, along then, I think it was, my father, he was the dairyman in there, and there was another chap with him. They got this bull in the pen, in a proper bullpen, and and there was steps to get out. If they got caught they had there's some steps ready for them to jump out. In this bull, he got my father up in the corner and he penned him in with his head.
Allen Chalk:If the other fellow hadn't been there with a fork and stuck the fork into the bull, he wouldn't have he wouldn't have lived. Good lord.
Estelle Phillips:So when you had this incident with the horse and the bull, you were aware of that?
Allen Chalk:Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Very frightening.
Allen Chalk:Very frightening. I was only perhaps 14, so I went very big. Not very big now. Yeah.
Allen Chalk:Yeah. You always came down from work. You went off in the morning, seven in the morning, and the old former lovely old fellow, John Harrington, his name was, and he used to say, come on, lads. If you want a few minutes get up in the field, get away, because the boss always come 07:00 in the morning and help give tell people what had to do and orders and things like that, you know. And he used to say, come here in the corner, he say, if you want a few minutes to get up in the field, have a few minutes up there.
Allen Chalk:And yeah. And we used to take the horses up. And sometimes we used to come down to lunch and take them into lunch and then go back again. And other times, we take their numat bag, what we call the numat bag, and take the oats and, you know, at lunchtime, sit with them and have your lunch and then come home always come home about half past three, and then you had time to groom them down and and make sure they had their food and a good bed to lie on. It was different, really.
Allen Chalk:I mean, then tractors came and you just sat on the tractor and and then when you got off and you just turned the key and and walked away and yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Would you prefer the tractors or the horses?
Allen Chalk:Well, for tractors, it was easier, I think, because you walked all day long with the horse. I think it had to be done because, farming got different altogether, didn't it, then?
Estelle Phillips:Did it? I don't know. Was that pivotal?
Allen Chalk:Yeah. Because it I mean, the wages were very, very low. And when I was working there, we had the two farms. I think it was 2,000 acres on the two farms. And when I started working there, there was 40 men, 40 men working on the two farms.
Allen Chalk:And I remember when I got married in '52, there was 32 working on on the farms then. They were slowly getting shorter and shorter because the wages are so low that the farmers, I suppose, could manage to pay then. You know, because I think my father, he was a dairyman, and I'm I'm sure he used to say that he got £3 a week with five boys that look after, you know. I mean, going back to things that they used to do years and years ago, people didn't know this and I would tell them and they can't believe it now, but the old the old carters they used to or or anyone that was with the horses used to work out in the fields. You come down in the evening, put the horses away and everything was done like that, and then you go and try to pick up a shoulder stake, take home, you take it home and you sawed it up, and that was all you had.
Allen Chalk:There was coal, but it's very expensive, and so that's all you had. It's fire during the evening, it was just a log fire.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah.
Allen Chalk:And all the heat was in there. That was it. All the heat in the house.
Estelle Phillips:The subject moved on to the wartime years, what it was like finding food and how hard it was just to live under the threat of bombs. Once he even came across a German warplane in a field. I recorded that conversation because it felt like gold dust. And to hear Allen talk about it in so vivid and heartfelt a way was very humbling. I'm going to release that conversation as a bonus between series one and series two.
Estelle Phillips:Subscribe to the newsletter and the podcast to know about that, And follow me on estelle underscore writer forty four on Instagram and estelle phillips on TikTok because I'll be making announcements there too. Thank you for listening. Bye.
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