Agriculture.
 
The use of bullocks died out in about the late 1880s in favour of horses and many types of machinery were use to help the farmer to produce more food for the country. The farmers used the horses for the plough and harrow, also to pull the binder. It was about this time that the clearing of extra ground was done with the help of tools and horses. One would notice the wavy edge of ploughed field where the ploughman had avoided the roots of trees lining the side of the field.
Fields were quite small in those days, with ditches and hedges around the majority, which were cut out each winter. The hedges were layered every few years which made a good fence against cattle. The size of fields were of the order of 4 to 8 acres. Ditches were generally on the grass side of the hedge, this would be for the supplying of water for the cattle. If the other side of the hedge was ploughed it would make it a safer situation for horses ploughing near the hedge.
 
In the parts of Heyshott the fields lying at the bottom of the Downs are of a heavy soil with much clay; which made it very hard going for horses at times. I have seen horses in trace, pulling a single furrow plough only 5 or 6 inches deep, and the ploughman encouraging them on, but only a mile to the north the land is of sand and easy to plough with one horse. This occurs at approximatley the cross-roads on the lower green and runs parallel to the Downs.
 
In the 1930s we kept 4 carthorses at Berrywood farm which took care of the work on a 200 acre farm consisting of about half grass and half arable.
The farm was worked by carters, 2 cowmen and 1 or 2 general workers , or a shepherd.
Having the hill side available, sheep were a paying concern but they are one mans full time occupation all year round and my father gave up most of his time to the sheep.
As a young boy I did a lot of sheep minding and would help drive to the sheep-dip which was at the barn at the top of Cocking Hill, a place built for the sheep to have a mustard bath to destroy ticks in the wool. This was a type of bath with the steps leading down into the water. The sheep would swim for some several yards and a person standing on the side with a long stick with a bar would place it on the animals neck and duck it under completely. The sheep would then walk up the steps at the other side and drain off, then return to Heyshott along the top of the Down. This took most of the day and the work of 4 people.
 
With the outbreak of the 1939 war and people leaving the farm, we could not keep the sheep any longer and so gave up sheep farming. The price of wool and the meat, with the problems of death due to illness, foot-rot, and lambing, and employing a man full time to look after them caused us to stop sheep farming in 1940.
The wattles, for the making of the sheep pens were made every few years in Hoe Woods. A woodman employed by Lord Cowdray cut the material and made thatching spikes, chestnut fencing stakes, etc. The woodman would make his own work place in the wood with the materials at hand and a rick-cloth placed over to shelter and keep the wood dry, under which he also worked. Among the tools would be a hand-bill, spokeshave, 1 or 2 axes, a trimming knife and a chopping block. A fire would be burning all the time for warmth and heating drinks and to burn the wood shavings and waste wood from his labours. A tilley lamp or hurricane lamp was often used to give more light on very dark days in winter; this would be hung from the apex of the shelter.

 
It is fascinating to watch a woodman splitting wood to make the above items and to see that accuracy with which the hand bill-hook strikes the centre of the 1" diameter stick and then into half again making four pieces approximately 3' long, which are used for thatching, and are not de-barked. The pieces for the wattles are stripped of the bark before being split into 2. This method is also used for chestnut fencing.
 
Hay time in Heyshott.
 
Haying could start at any time from the first week in June depending on the kind of spring weather. The method used in 1930 onward was to mow the field with mower and horse when the bottom of the grass was dry, if it was at all damp it would clog the cutting knives.
A lot of preparation was put into making sure the knives were very sharp and that individual blades were riveted tight into place. Cutting a field would start in a clockwise direction around the fields outside edge and work towards the centre and to complete the cutting the extreme outside edge would be in a anti-clockwise direction. The grass is then left to dry out in the sun.
If it rained it was then turned over again and again until it was dry, this would be done by hand in the old days, but in the 30's they had hay turners drawn by horses which were much quicker. When it was dry and ready to pick up it would be raked into lines then a horse and cart went between the lines and a man on either side would pitch the hay apon the cart using pitch-forks, a man on the cart then stacked it. The horse pulling the cart would move and stop on the word of command.
 
In the late 1930s the tractor did most of these jobs using machinery. In 1940 the hay sweep came into its own and would be pushed by the tractor down the lines of hay and down to the elevator, usually in the same field. The hay sweep was fixed to the front of the tractor with two long arms attached to the rear axles. The sweep was made of wood with fixtures of cast iron, the long fingers, about 12' in length with metal curved tips resting on the ground, and as the sweep moved along, the hay slid onto the sweep and piled up against a rest bar. The driver's vision could be impeded at times if the load was too large. When the load came to the elevator the tractor had to reverse and leave its load behind. The man then places the hay in the elevator, using a pitch fork from where another 1 or 2 men built a rick. The elevator was powered by a horse or driven by a Lister petrol engine. The last time I saw an elevator operated by a horse was at the Manor Farm at Cocking in 1939.
 
It was about this time that another method was used by some farmers in Heyshott. This was the hay loader which was attached to the back of the hay-wagon and pulled by a tractor. This machine was like an elevator and had a type of long pronged baton running from the top to bottom which grabbed at the rows of hay and with a motion like that of a skier walking, the hay worked itself up and on to the wagon, where a man loaded it.
This still needed 2 men to pick the hay up, and so the sweep had its advantage in using only 1 man, but one disadvantage was that on occasions a finger sometimes ran itself into the ground and broke. This however, did not make any difference to the efficiency and one could carry on working.
Today with the baler the method has completely changed. The silage system was very popular in the 1950s. The green grass was put in the silo where it generated its own heat and fermented. The cattle seemed to like it but of course could not be used for anything else.