Category: Farming

Jimper’s Jottings

At last a real summer, nature always has a habit of catching up. This year was no exception, a month late getting started then wallop! Sun and heat. The combines started to roar by the middle of August and clouds of dust followed in their wake. The quality of the corn is good and yields are average which is surprising after all the wind and rain the crops had to put up with. Continue reading Jimper’s Jottings

What’s in a Name

By Arthur Woodgate

At 6.30 am. off we went along Wish Street where we met up with a friend of my mother, a Mrs Milton. We then met up with mother’s sister, Aunt Martha (I wonder why they called me Arthur!) and a crowd of Ryers. At the bottom of Leasam Hill – we all went up the grassed hill – how they got me up there, I don’t Continue reading What’s in a Name

Jimper’s Jottings

By Jimper’s Jottings.

The editor asked readers to identify the mammal in the photograph. I have studied the picture and am sure it is a common rabbit. I believe I am more qualified than a lot of Council bureaucrats that know nothing unless it suits them. Continue reading Jimper’s Jottings

Hops – Part Two

By Arthur Woodgate

Having left school there was no more thought of hops (except one could not help seeing them everywhere), for some years, then in the thirties I was asked by the then foreman of the Stuart May hop and fruit estate, to build two brick coppers at crutches farm, Icklesham. Continue reading Hops – Part Two

Rye Cattle Market 1937

This remarkable account of Rye Cattle Market taken from a 1937 Handbook demonstrates how well Rye Cattle Market was doing in the period just before World War Two. This success was carried into the forties and fifties. From 1970 onwards support dwindled. The Market was closed as a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak at the beginning of the Millennium . Sadly it failed to re-open and is now a car park. Continue reading Rye Cattle Market 1937

Hop Picking with Arthur Woodgate

 by Arthur Woodgate

I have always argued that the villages of the old Rye union of parishes were once part of the Borough of Rye. When I visited the Peasmarsh Spar shop one fine morning at the beginning of September and said it was lovely ‘hopping’ weather, no one seemed to know what I was talking about I thought I had better write something about it and describe how the area was all as one during hop picking, whilst I still can, so that history does not loose it.

It must have been in 1920 or maybe a couple of years earlier when I was initiated into the seasonal ritual of hop picking. Records seem to think I was in the hop Continue reading Hop Picking with Arthur Woodgate

Jimper’s Jottings October 2005

Where is the Rain?

Where is the Rain? The grass of Romney marsh has not greened up like a lot of the sheep farmers had hoped this year, all the showers of rain seem to have missed this little part of England, the land is crying out for a good drink. From Hythe to Winchelsea the fields of grass look like hay stubble; the old sheep will have to survive on hand outs of fodder. Who knows maybe the next two months will be wet and warm but I would not hold my breath the way things look. The Continue reading Jimper’s Jottings October 2005

Hop Picking

By Eric Streeton

Hopping, why is it this one word conjures up so much nostalgia in so many people? I think the words unique atmosphere sums it up quite nicely. The feel of a damp chill in the air, the dew on the hop bines and bins. That shower of dew that fell on you when the first bines of the day were pulled. The smell of fires wafting across the gardens where pickers are brewing their mid-day tea. Have you ever tasted Tea brewed in a Billie Can? I have, there is nothing to compare with it, nectar of the gods. Continue reading Hop Picking