My favourite time was haymaking or ‘bringing in the stooks’.
This was another place I loved to be. I sometimes helped Mrs Cawkwell to collect the eggs, but I used to pull back when the hen tried to peck me. Mrs Cawkwell would just stick her hand under and the hen would peck her arm, which was covered in blue marks from doing this. She seemed impervious to it.
My favourite time was haymaking, when we used to ‘bring the stooks’ (domed shaped small haystacks) from Mr Cawkwell’s bottom field. We did this using a low flat cart with a winch on the front. You tipped the back down right against the stook, put a rope around it and winched it onto the cart, then the bit I liked best was sitting alongside Mr Cawkwell driving right through the Village. I felt so proud of myself. We then went back to the farm and built a couple of huge haystacks in the yard.
During the war, two German prisoners of war worked the farm and although I was too young to know, they seemed to be accepted into the community. Everyone spoke to them as they wandered around the Village.