Page 7 - The Farming Years proof

CHAPTER TWo Farming Ful llment
I went away to Wellingborough School when I was 10 and had no thoughts of farming until I was 14.
My parents had a friend in Rothwell, Bernard Brown, who now had a 200 acre farm – Sandy Hill Farm – on the road to Foxhall and Harrington Aerodrome which was home to American Libera- tor bombers in the Second World War.
Bernard had a varied career. Before the war he was a confectioner and baker with a retail shop in the centre of Rothwell. Hardly the sort of business that would have supplies and a future in the war so he became an agricultural contractor with a partner called Harold Wooley.
In the early part of the war we had what was called ‘Lease-Lend’ arrangements with the USA and advanced American farming equipment was shipped into the UK. Bernard managed to qualify himself to be an agricultural contractor with Harold who was a brilliant mechanic in support. They had American tractors and arable machinery and even MM combines which were very early combines and towed behind a tractor – unlike today’s self-pro-
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