Snow, Spring and 300 Chicks – Life on a British Farm in 1952-My Mothers Diaries

Spring is trying very hard to arrive — but winter has not finished with the family just yet.March brings rain, mud, thunderstorms and even heavy snow, while Father struggles with poor health and repeated visits to the doctor and clinic. But farm life continues regardless, with oats being drilled, calves being born and preparations beginning for the busy spring planting season.Mother enjoys a very different glimpse of the future when she travels to London for the Ideal Home Exhibition. Surrounded by new kitchens, furniture and modern electrical appliances, she can only look and wonder — because Hiltonbury Farm still has no electricity.There are happier moments too. Mother celebrates her birthday, the children race across the snowy fields behind Smokey and the sledge, and Sapphire produces a welcome heifer calf.Then April brings Easter, warmer weather and Andrew home from school for his birthday — complete with a brand-new bicycle.Soon Hiltonbury seems full of new life.One hundred chicks arrive and are housed in the old railway carriage, Sooty produces five kittens, potatoes are planted by the whole family, peas are drilled and an electric fence appears in the front field.There is also one wonderfully unexplained entry in Mother’s diary:“The pig came back.”Where it had been, she never tells us.By the end of April, the bluebells are flowering, the children are returning to school and spring has finally arrived at Hiltonbury.Join me, Andy Vining, for March and April 1952 — another two months of farming, family and everyday life in My Mother’s Diaries.