When he left school, aged 15, my elder brother, Ross, had one ambition and that was to work the farm Clydesdales. We had 2 pairs and 1 single "orra" horse on the farm at that time. His first attempt at ploughing was caught on camera, a Kodak Brownie, by me but unfortunately I took some other photo, completely unrelated, on top of him and the horses. It was easy to do that with those old cameras, which had no safeguard to prevent an amateur like me from doing so. To say he was furious was an understatement, especially in view of the fact that that was the last time he ploughed with the horses. My father invested in a tractor and the rest, as they say, is history.
Since he retired, and I use the term loosely, he has rekindled his interest in the great beasts. and has now acquired 2, both of whom are still young and still under training in many of the old farm skills. His aim is, after completing their training, to compete with them at ploughing matches in various parts of the country. I remember these in my youth with our young ploughman,Bob, setting out at the crack of dawn with his pair, with the harness gleaming and adorned with white, blue and red pompoms. It was a truly impressive sight. This was a very popular hobby among all the ploughmen and farm folk from far and wide would congregate at the field to watch the competition.
There still are ploughing matches, but mainly with tractors, which personally, I find rather boring. However, some of the older "boys" are making a comeback with the horses and I may be persuaded to visit a match..........if I can find a weekend without a dog show!
4 comments:
A weekend without at least one day at a dog show??????
Youv'e got to be kidding, you couldn't stand the withdrawal symptoms. LOL
As a "country quine" I have many memories of the Clydesdales in the farms around my home and one abiding memory of two at the nearest farm named Princey and Donal. Donal had a great sense of humour and would wait patiently until the second the last of his harness or whatever was removed and then take off out of the farmyard. Immediately opposite the yard was the TOP (note that word) gate to a field. Donal went through it like a bat out of hell, with Jim, the farmer's son hot on his heels. Donal then took off down the field, out of the BOTTOM gate and up the road to the top gate again, ad infinitum, until Jim was a scarlet,cursing wreck, then Donal suddenly, meekly trotted off, into the stable and his stall. I think probably a blind should be drawn over what then took place. This was such a regular occurrence that even as a child I remember thinking "Why doesn't he close the gate?"
Nicky and I passed a ploughing match last week (after our Roseisle walk and on the way to a farm shop for a latte and very large piece of cake in their coffee shop....we'd earned it), it seemed to involve only tractors and, we both agreed, looked pretty boring. Horses would have been more interesting.
Mind you, however boring it may have appeared to us, we did not scoff at their hobby because we can well imagine what they might think of how we like to spend our weekends!
My great grandfather was a Perthshire ploughman. Still have a photo of him with the show horses at Culzean after he moved to Ayrshire
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