"I think it was mother who first suggested that we bought Carneddi. The thread of out normal existence seemed to have been broken by the end of the war, which made my father’s work redundant, and by my sudden illness. A moment of pause and choice had come to us. (…) At first the idea of farming in the hills seemed quite impracticable. My father was fifty, I was seventeen and we had lived in the city all our lives. It was true that Carneddi was to be sold cheaply, but even so we had little money to cover any mistakes we might make. Yet somehow we were unwilling to settle back into a suburban routine once more. We talked, wondered, and at last decided. We bought the farm, and burned the boats of the life we had always known."
They move to the farm in 1946. With the farm they acquire sheep, cows and a sheepdog. Their neighbours (whose first language is Welsh) are very helpful. At first their policy was "to farm as it had been farmed in the past". Ruth reads all she can find on farming and is especially encouraged by The Farming Ladder by George Henderson.
They watch other people’s farming activities with an eager eye, and copy them.
The farm comes with a small mountain flock of sheep and they find a shepherd, Tom, to help them with it. They make improvements to the house and buy a cart horse.
To learn more. Ruth goes to work on a farm but returns when she realizes her family cannot manage without her. To make the business pay they need to farm more intensively. I wonder it Ruth had any idea what „ intensive farming” would come to mean a few decades later . . .
She starts by keeping more chickens and taking part in a government scheme that means she receives food coupons for chicken feed.
The few cows they keep provide them with enough milk for their own use. I presume they grew their own vegetables but no mention is made of this.
Ruth thinks women do not make good employers. "By nature they prefer to follow rather than to lead and the thought of employing a man can be a horrifying one.” Nevertheless she employs Paul, to help her with improvements, partly subsidized by the Hill Farming Act.
Paul is an experienced climber and together with friends he and Ruth make many trips into the hills. Although initially apprehensive, she later begins to relish climbing
After 5 years at Carneddi Fred leaves for Australia; Ruth gets the chance to work at George Henderson’s farm.
Back home again she builds a new shed for the chickens. With an asbestos roof!
Later she keeps turkeys. She also joins a successful scheme for growing strawberry plants in isolated place to keep them far away from aphides.
She manages to rent a cottage (Ty Mawr), does it up and rents it to tourists.
The book ends with the story of how Ruth spends summer months working for a film crew, filming The Inn of Sixth Happiness.
In the first chapter Ruth says: „We had little money to cover any mistakes we might make.”
This makes it even harder to understand what the family lived on, especially during the first few years, when sheep die and chickens are killed by foxes. During this time Ruth spends long periods away from the farm (studying and working on another farm) and her parents are not able to manage on their own.
And then there is „nanny” Fred, who, presumably, they pay. They also employ people to work on the farm.
The family start out as amateurs, but Ruth becomes a real farmer. It is interesting to read how you could apparently make a living from such small scale farming in the 40’s and 50’s.
To the 21st century reader, the enthusiastic use of insecticides and asbestos is startling.
I like this book because of the combination of the personal and the practical. It can be read as a handbook for hill farming, but it is also Ruth’s autobiography.
Ruth went on to write two more books, which I will cover in later posts.
I've read this a couple of times, most recently about 2 years ago. It sounded a very tough life, I have to say. Growing strawberries up there must have been quite a challenge!
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