Tower and Town, June 2026 (view the full edition)Farming Then And NowsBorn in 1953, I have lived in Minal Parish for most of my life. I have very vivid and happy memories of growing up on the farm that my father and his partner, Alec Gale, followed by his son John, farmed in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Farms were very diverse then, with most having a dairy herd. Some also kept beef, sheep and pigs. They all grew cereals, some of which would be kept for feeding their livestock. There was a stud farm at Kennet Cottage Yard, and I recall as a child seeing the stallion being walked on a daily basis from there to his paddock, where the village hall now stands. Machinery was comparatively small and quite rudimentary, but none the less effective, although farming required a lot of manual labour. Today there are probably just a handful of employees working on the same acreage of land. All the dairy units have disappeared, together with the pig units and sheep flocks. A couple of farms still keep beef. Most of the farmers now rely on contractors to carry out their arable operations, using large and sophisticated machinery, which they can only justify because of the economies of scale. Whilst the farmers in the parish oversee the management of their arable enterprises, many have focused their attention more on diversification out of agriculture. Now within it, there are buildings and land set-aside for livery and training three-day eventers. Many former livestock buildings have been converted into light industrial units and a couple into a children's daycare nursery. One farm now has a butchery/farm shop selling its own high quality organic beef and other produce. Cottages that were once lived in by farm employees are now let out to predominantly younger families at an affordable rent. Whilst the population working on the farms has dropped dramatically, numbers being employed in the Minal area have increased significantly through diversification. Andrew Ainslie |
