'All officers,' growled George from behind a cow , who had no love of the War Ag .sx , and proceeded to tell me a story far removed from this present ( as most of his stories were ) of how in India , where he had been a private in 1916 , the cow was brought to the householder's door each morning , and while it was milked consumed the contents of the dustbin .sx Actually this wartime farming of ours on Road Farm was a mixture of ancient and modern .sx I had a modern rib-roller ; but there was also one made out of a trunk of a crab-apple tree , one hundred and fifty years old , I should think , I found lying at the back of the cart-lodge .sx And we used that one too , on some tender young beet .sx It was also a mixed , cosmopolitan , ideological farming .sx Land girls , Germans , Italians , succeeded one another in our fields as the war went on .sx I had also a young Quaker , a pacifist who contradicted everything I said , but he meant well .sx And George Goforth plodded on , who had once had all this farm to himself , knowledgeable in the handling of tackle , stoical ; getting on best , characteristically , with the least fortunate ; the prisoners , the enemy , lost to their own kindred , far from their own homes .sx There was a shortage of implements at first on account of the war .sx Scenes come to mind .sx There was the day when we missed being able to borrow a neighbour's swath-turner by one minute .sx It had just been lent to somebody else .sx It was a day on which hay demanded to be turned .sx So the tractor which had returned without it was switched off .sx Larks sang :sx we could hear them suddenly , when the tractor stopped , as we bared our arms for hard work .sx Six acres of swaths to be turned before dewfall , and at four o'clock milking would deplete our team .sx But it was the longest day .sx Bumblebees disturbed from the swaths by our rakes zigzagged into the air before us .sx I glanced at the roses in the hedge , at the buds that were more red than pink .sx Someone was saying , 'There's one thing , every round gets shorter as we move towards the middle .sx ' Round and round that field we walked all day .sx I came to know that hay intimately , every ingredient of it ; clover , rye-grass , cocksfoot , and the occasional pallid corpse of a plant of chicory .sx I was soon in that state belonging to my former unmechanized farming , of mental stupefaction induced by repetitive manual movements .sx The jumping teeth of my rake had a life of their own to my eyes , as they snatched at the swath again and again , rolling it over like a small wave , and the hay whispered like surf .sx There was still plenty of the physical exhaustion of that former farming , owing to the exigencies of the time .sx I walked behind a pair of horses again , ploughing , before I got delivery of a tractor .sx But the plough here in East Suffolk was an iron plough , having wheels .sx It was known as the 'improved two-horse plough' , which reminded me of the name of my old-type of kitchen range at Creams :sx the 'New Leader' .sx I doubt if I enjoyed any part of my wartime farming so much as ploughing the stubble with Kitty and Boxer , days whose peace was only broken by the sudden roar of an express train going by in the cutting beside the field , which startled me , not the horses ; they had been used to trains since they were foaled here .sx I , too , got to know the trains :sx I told the time by them .sx I also had contract ploughing done for me by the War Ag .sx A young man came with a crawler tractor and multiple-furrow plough .sx He told me that his father was a small farmer , and that on Saturday afternoons , having been ploughing with his crawler tractor all the week , he took a pair of horses and ploughed for his father on his small-holding .sx He enjoyed that :sx it was his recreation , he said .sx The field which I ploughed so carefully with the horses , I drilled with wheat by tractor .sx It was one of the first jobs my new tractor did .sx And it was a horrible day .sx Fine when we started , drizzle when we had done about two acres , downpour for the rest .sx The tractor floundered , the drill kept gumming up with mud :sx it took one man all his time to keep the spouts clear .sx We ended soaked to the skin , in a field that was churned to a morass .sx And the wheat- oh those beautiful straight drill-rows of our 1922 Cherry Tree Farm !sx How unlike them when the corn showed were those of this first field I drilled of my new farm .sx But it turned out to be the best crop of wheat I ever grew .sx I remembered then an old country saying I had heard about wheat :sx 'sow in the slop , and reap a good crop' .sx There was also sugar beet , a crop which I had not grown before .sx A gang of prisoners of war came to hoe them .sx They hoed up weeds industriously all morning .sx At midday a pelting shower soaked the ground :sx the thirty men moved off across the field to their dinner , and as they went , every foot , treading on a hoed-up weed , planted it again in the receiving earth .sx And the cows .sx There was the blind cow whose name was Christmas , because she was born on Christmas Day .sx She was not discovered to be blind until one day heaps of manure were placed at intervals for spreading on a pasture that the herd crossed , and Christmas tripped over them .sx Ever since then Christmas preferred to walk beside the hedge , making a detour from gate to gate .sx How did she know that she was walking beside the hedge ?sx Was it that a hedge has a peculiar quality of scent ?sx Or was there a sixth sense which told her that something was there beside her ?sx She walked holding her head up and a little sideways , in a listening attitude .sx In former days it might have been thought that Christmas , being born in an august hour , had met with a blinding light .sx But the vet said , ~'Probably a phosphorous deficiency,' and one had to accept that .sx On the journey home to milking , along the green lane to the farmstead , Christmas walked last .sx The other cows were purposeful ; knowing dairy cake awaited them .sx Let nothing get in their way :sx they trotted .sx But Christmas dawdled in the lane , last , alone , safe from hustling , and enjoyed a feast of her choice .sx All was safe here ; there were no ditches to fall into , but close on either side tall hedges grew with shoots of many flavours .sx There were tips of bramble and brier whose thorns were still tender :sx a wild rose was licked off its stem by that muscular tongue , which encompassed in the same sweep a dozen crab-apple leaves .sx There was hogweed , ground-ash , sallow .sx She dragged at a spray of hawthorn , which embushed her head while she tore at it .sx Had there been time enough , there could have been nothing pleasanter than to watch Christmas browsing , while one bore gently on her rump in the act of coaxing her forward .sx But the milking waited .sx Yet this pushing and this calling her by name seemed only to sweeten her dalliance .sx She knew that she had nothing to fear from the human presence , by these unhurtful urgings .sx Some movement forward was required of her , and in time she would comply .sx In the meantime it was like conversation to her , while she enjoyed her banquet of leaves in the grassy lane .sx She could not have known that there was any such phenomenon as light in the world .sx Therefore , of course , there was no such thing to her as darkness , only hours of a warmth beating down , and then hours of stillness and a cool moisture .sx The hoot of the owl and the voice of the blackbird perhaps indicated to her what was 'night' and what was 'day' .sx Her chief privation was that she could not follow a patch of shade as it moved with the sun .sx To her it was an arbitrary and elusive area of coolness .sx Christmas spent the night in a loose box by herself .sx She used to walk straight to it from the milking shed , and waited before it , to be steered into it .sx Once inside , she stood chewing the cud and gazing ( you would think ) over the low wall like any other cow .sx Approached from one side , she would turn her head and face you .sx If you put out your hand she would put up her head to meet it , scenting its approach .sx Sometimes she went into the meadow pond to drink , and having drunk forgot that she had not turned round , and walked on into deeper water .sx When it was up to her flank she realized that something was wrong , and turned herself about .sx The other cows did not molest her unless she was in a confined space with them .sx This situation she learned to avoid .sx Christmas was a lady of pedigree and a good milker .sx Her calvings she managed for herself , although , of course , she had never seen her calves .sx On the first occasion there was anxiety and sitting up at night for her .sx But she calved by herself after all , in an interval between the vigils .sx There she stood , her calf lying in the straw behind her .sx She turned to it , lifted her front feet and placed them accurately between its outstretched legs , and lowered her head and licked it dry all over .sx In her world of darkness she never injured any of her calves :sx she seemed to have an unerring instinct where to tread .sx Year by year the ploughing and the sowing and the hoeing .sx The two Italian prisoners lived in an opera act of their own , grand or comic according to their mood of the day .sx And the Quaker , who fancied he had an ear for music , hoed at the farthest possible distance from the Italians in the field , because he couldn't stand their caterwauling , he said .sx And George Goforth ( whose children were also growing up ) resolutely maintaining of every new machine I bought that it would not work , and proceeding to work it , even as Bill Mould many years back used to do .sx The type does not change much .sx And the harvesting , and the Italians building waggon-loads of sheaves , movable stages for their perpetual recitative .sx And the difficult regulations about land girls not to be set to work beside Italians , when all hands were needed round the threshing machine .sx The threshing machine beat out the rhythm of the autumn day .sx Straw bales in a long spasmodic caterpillar were pushed from the baler up a slanted ladder and built like blocks of masonry .sx Similarly there had been hay bales .sx Similarly now there were for us school trunks .sx Three times a year I loaded school trunks on to the car and took them to the station , and three times a year loaded them on the car and brought them home from the station .sx Essentially bales of hay are trunks , in shape and weight , packed trunks .sx In one small field I counted one hundred and ninety-six bales .sx At six o'clock I said to Marjorie , 'I've loaded and unloaded more school trunks this afternoon than in ten years of school terms , school trunks without handles .sx ' Bales are obstinate things , ungrippable , liable suddenly to slip one string and then the thing turns into an enormous dissolving accordion in your arms .sx . There was the thatching of the new corn stacks , and the Quaker showing up suddenly as a better thatcher than George , and not letting the fact be overlooked .sx Master's tactful handling needed there , in between bouts of getting up steam in the dairy boiler .sx There was the pleasant solitary task in September of taking a second cut for hay .sx The days grew shorter , but given fine weather , another crop could still be gathered .sx