Pig potatoes. The small potatoes would be scooped up and taken to the fold yard. Every farm had a yardman who looked after the cows, pigs, chickens and other livestock In the farm building where the pig potatoes were stored would be a large copper where the potatoes would be boiled before being fed to the pigs. Boiled in their jackets they were lovely flowery, […]

Dietary Supplements. All the lads were at it. I firstly with my cockerels and two year old hens. We all were after rabbits and woodpigeons, which the farmers regarded as pests. Rabbits at first without much success trying to use snares. Then my father bought me a Webley air rifle for a birthday present. My rabbit total suddenly shot up. At eight years old I […]

Preserving. One could use the sugar ration and occasionally get extra sugar for preserving. My father’s orchard contained a Conference pear and another type of pear tree, Victoria and Damson plums. Green gage plums could be bought from the Ramsdens who owned the Tetley Hall Estate. Every autumn my parents put up about a hundred bottles of fruit in the old Kilner Jars. Damsons were […]

My father started to salt his own pig, the shoulder, ham and sides of bacon. I would be sent to Wrights the grocers with a wheelbarrow and return with a block of salt 2 & ½ feet long and a foot wide and high. The cold slab would be deeply covered in salt and the hams etc. rubbed in salt every day and covered in […]