I am lucky enough to have three daughters all of whom are 50 years old and still talking to their old dad. Yesterday I was doubly blessed as two of them, Susan from Earby and Janet who is visiting from Australia, were in my kitchen with time for a long conversation. They both said that as they get older happy memories of the past become more important to them and they realise things that hadn't been obvious before. One such change made me laugh as they both agreed that their Dad was quite a handsome looking bloke 40 years ago! Another topic that cropped up was Ted Waite, a good friend of mine who, for years, lived in a caravan in the orchard at Hey Farm and they started talking about him triggered by the fact that Susan had recently met his brother John who worked on the bins in Barlick for years. I don't think I have ever told the Ted story so I'll rectify that.
Ted was born into an old West Craven farming family. I find traces of them in the history going back hundreds of years. John Waite a short stout man with very definite views on the world was Ted's father. I know that at one time he farmed at Little Stainton and when he moved out of there, I think to Higher Clough (Ted always called it Hilly Clough), the new tenant refused to pay for the concrete sheep dipping trough that John had installed on the grounds that John couldn't do anything about it because it was poured in situ. John's answer to that was to get one of his mates from the quarry to come down and pop a 'pill' under the trough and blow it up! Ted also told me that when John lived up Esp Lane he fought the council and forced them to maintain the road.
I can't remember when I first met Ted or how it came about but it was around 1959 when I bought Hey Farm. We hit it off immediately and he became a frequent visitor for Vera's farmhouse teas. He helped me to castrate pigs and bullocks and was a big help. One day we were having a smoke and a conversation leaning on the gate into the field and Ted mentioned that he fancied living on his own instead of lodging with his brother John. A confirmed bachelor, he was going to buy a caravan and find a nook somewhere handy to the town where he could set it up.
I told him to consider a sheltered corner of the orchard behind the farm. There was a manhole into the foul sewer, water in the wash house and we could run a wire over from the house for his lighting. He jumped at it and in no time we had Chez Edward tucked into the orchard. I have no doubt it was all totally illegal even then but there was a problem, an easy solution, and we took it. That's the way things worked 55 years ago in Barlick...
Hey Farm in 1969. On the far left is Ted's caravan in the orchard.
