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I was born in 1942 and lived the first 14 years of my life on a farm in the Cambridgeshire fens near the hamlet of Upware. I lived with my mother (Elsie), father (Harold), and brother Alfred who is three and a half years older than me. My paternal grandmother (Dora) also lived with us.
We had no mains electricity, gas, or piped water. The nearest proper road was almost a mile away. Our water was taken by bucket from the lode (man made drain) which passed by our wooden bungalow. The water had to be boiled before we could drink it. For cooking we used an oil oven and a coal fire. Lighting was by oil lamps. When I was about ten we had a calor gas oven.
We did not have a tractor on the farm until I was about six or seven. Instead we had two horses Tom and Ginny. These seemed huge to me and they were certainly strong. I can still remember clearly when I was allowed to take Tom with a cart behind the bridge for the first time. It was not until years later that I realised that Tom knew the way and that I was merely a helpless passenger.
My father had a couple of cows for our milk and also we kept some free range chickens and ducks and a few pigs with a small run and a sty. With apple trees, plum trees, gooseberry bushes, and a small garden, we were reasonably self sufficient. My mother used to preserve some of the plums in kilner jars for use in the winter months. We also ate pheasant, rabbit, hare and wild duck which my father shot on his land. The fens have a particularly rich peat soil which is particularly suited to root crops. We grew sugar beet. swedes, parsnips and celery which were rotated with wheat, barley, oats and rye grass. The whole family helped with the farmwork in busy seasons which in those days were nearly all year through.
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