Page 30 - Life in Langham 1914-1919

Life on a Small Farm

The poultry had to wait until the following day, and when we did cut a path through to

the poultry house, the snow trench was higher than I was tall. Following the snow, the

weather became very mild, and a quick thaw set in, causing the greatest flood that I

ever witnessed in the village.

More problems:

The war situation worsened, and my father was out three or four nights each week on

special Guard duties. During a particularly cold night in the winter of 1916, whilst he

was on guard duty, the sow died giving birth to a litter of twelve piglets, which would

certainly not have happened had he been at home. This was a big loss to a struggling

family. The piglets would have been worth £3. each at least when eight weeks old, and

the sow (a good breeder) certainly £20.

Threshing:

In the village, the Nourish family possessed

five sets of threshing tackle (traction engine,

threshing drum, and straw elevator)…

Each son would set off, after harvest, with his

set and work a number of villages, so that

between them, they covered all the threshing

of corn over a wide area of Rutland and

adjacent villages in Leicestershire. Nourish Threshing Tackle

The Windmill:

The old windmill [possibly Whissendine] was kept very busy in those days, and each

‘customer’ had to wait his turn to have his corn ground. Sometimes the Miller had to

wait for the wind for several days, and then when it did start to blow, he often had to

get up in the night and carry on for hours on end to make the most of it!

On receiving the wheat flour back at home, my mother made her own bread. I will

never forget the taste of home grown wheat flour, made into home-made bread.

We boys preferred it to cake!

Trees & Timber:

Another wartime operation was the felling of trees. Thousands of mature ash and oak

trees were felled during the war years. Ash, of course, is a very resilient wood when

seasoned, and was used for the making of gun carriages, and wheels and gun limbers etc.

The countryside looked quite bare in places after the war, as the country around

Langham had been well stocked with mature ash trees. Steam Traction engines and

timber wagons were much in evidence as timber was carted away to

the various saw mills that had been set up, usually at railway station

yards to deal with them.