The Farmer and the Farm
Mr. William Hope owned the caravan field and the surrounding farmland. In fact we were eventually to find out that he also owned much of Millisle and large swathes of Donaghadee too! Of which town much more later. But without meaning to be disrespectful, even at the tender age of eight or nine, this would have seemed to be a fairly tall story to me. "Wully" Hope was the complete essence of the Ulster country man. Rough farm clothes, strong and almost unfathomable County Down accent, and add to that a ripe vocabulary, introducing me to expressions that I had never heard of in my safe narrow life. What an education for a good city child! But a man of property? Ah no, I didn't think so...then. How often are the definites of our lives and beliefs turned upside down for better or worse.
Anyway the farm was run by Wully and his two sons, young Will the older son and Neil the younger. the farmhouse itself was kept in order by a housekeeper, Miss Gilchrist, who also ran the dairy. Mr Hope was a widower. To be allowed to enter the house required a lot of feet wiping on the sacking provided at the back door, watched over the whole time by a scowling Miss Gilchrist. Now, I understand her feelings with mud walked in from the hidden garden beyond the house here and clay dust creeping in under even closed doors from Alan's ceramic studio next door.
Very early in this history mum and Miss Gilchrist became friends and so we were allowed the amazing treat of sitting on the living room floor in the farm on rainy days to watch television. But for me the best thing about the farm, was going to the dairy room to collect milk, cream, butter and eggs from Miss Gilchrist. this aways entailed being extra polite as there was the possibility she was busy preparing family food, cleaning or some other part of her busy life. I didn't wish to receive a sharp slice of her tongue. The whitewashed walls, the scrubbed slabs, the gleaming buckets full of steaming fresh milk....what joy. Spotlessly clean cloths covered the jugs and buckets and she would uncover one, plunge in a ladle and fill our container for the caravan.
The back of the farm was reached by turning right off the lane...then the farmyard.To the left a large open barn used for storing hay and straw. Woe betide you if you were caught on the top of the bales at harvest. Either the farmer or young Will would "gulder" at you...(shout)... with many expletives .... . "get the f... off the f...ing bales before I f...ing come and drag you off the f...ing things mesel".
Clear enough!
However if Neil, the younger son was home from boarding school - Campbell College- it was often a different matter. Any young farmer's son knows that the best place to do a bit of courting is in the hayloft, and with the daughters of the caravanners around the choice was increased.
Campbell...there's a thing I could never understand, Ian and the Hendersons...Douglas, Jackie and Robin...all attended the Methodist College Belfast, and Rosie and I both followed in our time. Campbell was Methody's sworn enemy..rugby you know...and not only was it a boys school but apparently more cultured...oh yes and snobby!Yet there was Neil, his untranslatable country accent with a plethera of expletives, encouraging girls up into the hay with many expressions that were new to me... why even the men where aunt Helen worked in Belfast may have wondered at them!
The Farmyard was a dangerous place to cross at times. Mr Hope kept geese. Geese could peck a chunk out of your leg if they took a mind to and no amount of reassurance could persuade me to put them to the test.So when it was my turn to fetch water from the farm pump I always hoped and prayed that the geese had wandered off somewhere. There were also two sheepdogs. Prince the old one and Rex the puppy. I was and still am a dog lover but I realised that they were working dogs and had to be respected and avoided. So to get to the pump was often quite an adventure. Dad had invented a trolley which could hold a large milk can, the type you used to see waiting on stone steps outside a farmhouse waiting to be collected by the milk companies.This we trundled up the grassy field along the lane and into the farmyard. The pump was on the far side of the yard and to get any water out you first had to prime it with a little more water if you wanted an easy flow from the spout. Then it was just a matter of pumping with the handle as hard as you could until the water came gurgling out and filled the can. Of course then you had to get the heavy can hauled on to the trolley and safely back to the caravan with most of the water still inside.
A cottage was attached to the side of the farmhouse. Every year it was rented out to a well known Belfast family. I thought of them as extremely exotic with their red curly hair and the rumour that not only did they have a pub but they were catholic. I regularly walked past the back door of the cottage hoping against hope that I might see the children or even be invited inside to play. It never happened. Perhaps I was too exotic for them as well.
Close by the cottage was a byre where the cows were milked. If Will Hope was feeling friendly and if you waited outside the entrace without being annoying there was always the possibility that he would invite you in to watch him milk. I think I was allowed to have a go at milking once, but then that may be another of my imaginings which has grown into a happening. Possibly my family will say so though I shall go on remembering it as a fact! I do know that if Will or Neil were milking in the byre you were more than likely going to get milk squirted at you. There were no modern machines used, everything done by hand and the milk swooshed into the galvanised tin buckets previously sanitised by miss Gilchrist with boiling water.Then the foaming bucket full of milk was carefully carried back to the dairy room and left to settle before the cream was skimmed from the top.
On past the byre through a gateway and you were in the pig yard. I remember this as a smelly place with a pig house by a far wall. So far...so good. However from easter on the pig or pigs lived in a walled garden at the front of the farmhouse on the corner of the lane. Then the pig house was swilled out and dried, whitewashed inside and out and pronounced fit for a poor family to use as a holiday home. What!..I hear you say. This was the 1950s and not so long after the second world war, only just after the end of rationing. Money was tight and to have a holiday at all was a luxury. Of course as usual I thought it amazing. To make a space out of such a place seemed to me very creative. I'm sure that all of these unusual environments at Ballyferris have gone towards my joy in later life when taking properties others have rejected and turning them into something useful and beautiful.
By the way the sow was called Susie, whether the original pig or not, and family history says that it was Rosies first word as she ran away from the caravan towards the walled garden.
Dogs, pigs, geese, ducks, hens, cockerels, and farmers sons made for an adventure to be remembered for ever as you walked through the old farmyard.
