By Liz Stewart-Liberty
Mrs Piddington from Church Farm sold lenten lilies (small wild daffodils which grew everywhere as did wild orchids), 12 for a penny. Her immaculate cool dairy shelves bore shallow dishes of milk, cream, buttermilk, butter and cream cheese.
Mrs Brignall churned our butter at Home Farm twice a week and sometimes she had to apologise – “Sorry, Mrs Arthur, thunder got in the butter and it’s split!” Back it went for another churn. Our children used to say “Why can’t we have Lurpak like everyone else…?”
Her splendid husband Ted milked the house cow twice a day and this unadulterated unpasteurised milk and wonderful yellow cream was brought up to Pipers by Arthur Furmston. Straight from cow to breakfast table.
Turkeys, chickens and ducks were nurtured from egg to roasting pan. The Christmas plucking period was reminiscent of the most hectic pillow fight while those on night duty surveillance armed with shotguns, knobkerries and good old Bucks verbal threats were bleary-eyed.
I remember ‘Aunt’ Rose Lacey of Oxford Street making jam from wild raspberries. It took her weeks to collect the frugal fruit. She was famous for her outrageous, magnificent hats, which she offered for Ascot and the Derby to anyone in need.
Wonderful wine was made from dandelions, elder, cowslip. rosehips, turnips, crab-apples and blackberries; worth waiting the three years it took to mature and braving the explosions, which shook many a larder. And gooseberry champagne could make or break your day depending on intake.
Mrs Hobbs, Phyllis Monk, the Brignalls and our cousins Jane and Faith were competitive, authoritative and generous wine nabobs. However, it must be said, their secrets remained secret. They weren’t silly.
Mushrooming was secretive, too. You kept the best sites to yourself. I found places in meadows under the power lines were ultra productive.
My late husband knew where truffles could be found but he never told, as he didn’t relish his woodland being turned over. One chap on the farm made his own tobacco from beech leaves; it drove off the horse flies very effectively.
We kept pigs, which were fed on something called Tottenham pudding and I once saw an old bowler hat and a pair of trousers in the mix. When one was slaughtered everyone was given some on a plate, which had to be returned unwashed – tradition.
Black pudding and blood sausages were popular – nothing was wasted – brawn, trotters, fried ears and all the bits from within (and the recipe is set out below). My beloved cook cured the hams, which were hung in a shed away from the house as the salt could ‘escape’ and get into the house timbers.
Rook pie was on the menu in some houses. You only eat the legs, with onion, bacon, allspice and hard-boiled eggs under a suet crust.
At harvest time we used a steam-driven threshing machine, a roaring monster from which streams of rats and mice fled. Once I was watching with Frank Hobbs who said “That dog of yours has swallowed 27 live mice. Take her home, shut her up and give her plenty of water!”
Many other characters spring to mind but the memories are too painful to recall. Gone, gone, gone with the wind…
Recipe for Fried Ear... or how to make a pig’s ear of it:
Boil the ears till tender. Remove the hairs with pliers and eyebrow tweezers. Stuff with forcemeat, roll up, egg and crumb, fry and serve with mustard and parsley sauce.
I’ve never tried it and am inclined to say, “PASS”!