Date/Time
Date(s) - 21 November 2024
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Price
£0.00
Location
The Leconfield Hall
Categories
CHANGES TO LOCAL FARMING OVER THE LAST 80 YEARS
THURSDAY 21st NOVEMBER – LECONFIELD HAL 7.00 p.m – Doors open 6.30
Admission Charge £5 for members £7 for non members. Prior booking not required Refreshments available
This illustrated talk will be given by Petworth resident, John Riddell. Having been in a family partnership, but now retired, John has been farming 600 acres of land at Keyfox Farm since 1967 and his father before him from 1944. They have been dairying with the Petworth pedigree herd of British Friesians, rearing beef from a Simmental herd, but mainly growing arable crops, which latterly became the sole agricultural involvement, alongside diversification projects.
John will take us on a journey through 80 years of change in how the land is worked and changes in life on a family farm and his connection with the land as a tenant farmer and with the local community.
On hearing a similar talk some 10 years ago, a primary school teacher commented:
‘Although working in a rural school, the children I teach rarely walk, play, or have any connection with the countryside in their day to day lives. I’ve seen a growing hardness, anger and perhaps frustration amongst them, something that I’ve seen developing over perhaps the past fifteen years. It seems the more a community becomes disconnected from the surrounding countryside, the more the habits of “urbanisation” creep into the rural community.
On a lighter note… as a young child John absolutely loved getting up early to feed the calves, and again as soon as he got home from school. He remembers always wanting to help the herdsman, Wally Elcombe (probably getting in his way). One day John fell into a barrow load of slurry! He was picked up at arms length and promptly dropped inside the back door of the farmhouse. Wally promptly beat an exit… not wanting to encounter the wrath of his mother!
