The war may have been over, but it was still a battle for our farmers
IN SEPTEMBER 1919, the rail strike meant that Ormskirk was isolated from the rest of the network and the farm produce waiting in the goods yard was rotting away.
Wagons were brought in to cart potatoes and cabbages to Liverpool market by road.
The Royal Mail and non-perishable goods awaiting transport via rail were held at the station as a deputation of rail workers had protested to the chief constable that the picket lines should not be crossed unless to remove perishable goods or to feed the railway horses.
The wheat harvest had been particularly poor over the season and at the cattle market there were just a few lots for sale.
In January 1919, despite fresh beef being herded into town for the weekly meat market, the butchers were prevented from bidding on the stock, as the local government representative for food distribution turned up with 20 frozen beef carcasses and 20 frozen sheep carcasses and insisted that the butchers took the frozen meat, of no specified origin, first.
Most likely this will have been surplus provisions for a local military camp.
From May 1919, children were barred by law from asking for a temporary exemption from school to work on farms and this brought a lot of protest from local farm workers and farmers.
There was already a great shortage of farmworkers in the district because many local farmer’s sons and labourers who had already served in the war had been recalled for the Army of Occupation.
Irish labourers had migrated into the district and were taking advantage of the labour shortage and demanding higher daily pay.
As early as January 1919, Lord Lathom had already given his tenants on 60 farms notice that he intended to sell the farms and the occupants had a year to either vacate or purchase their farm.
These farms covered 4,000 acres and had a huge impact on Lathom district.
Another large sale of
local farms took place in October of the same year, when the Rufford estate sold by auction eight farms and 17 smallholdings, again the tenants were given the option to buy their farms.
The struggles of the local breweries and pubs to survive the cut backs of the war years continued, there had been the lowest acreage of malting barley for generations and this meant the local maltsters, such as Ellis Warde Ltd of Bath Springs Brewery were paying 2/- more a bushel (1.25cu ft) for malt barley.
This drove production costs up and beer pump prices rose too.
Milk production had also been hit by the hardships dairy herds faced during the war years and post war in 1919, distribution and delivery of fresh milk was restricted to hospitals, the sick, elderly and infants.
Milk producers were asking for a fairer price to be set by the Ministry of Food. One positive outcome from the Food Production Department of the Ministry of Food was the large sale of surplus farm implements and machinery post war.
Local auctioneer EC Stretch and Sons held a large sale at the rear of the Troqueer Building in Moorgate and among the lots were 10 Titan Tractors; nine three-furrow tractor ploughs and a four-furrow Ransome tractor plough.
Tractor disc harrows and cultivators were also brought to the auction.
A tractor drawn selfbinder also went under the hammer.
These were farm implements more modern than local farmers would have previously had the opportunity to buy as they were mass produced for the intense food production needed during the war.
While local farmers undoubtedly found it hard to raise funds to purchase this machinery, it would pay for itself in the saving of manual labour in the field and the care of horses.
Many farmers did buy back some working horses sold at auction in Ormskirk after being released by the Army Remount Depot at Lathom Park as horse power continued to be used in the district into the late 1940s.
The Ministry of Food also sold off a number of Ford motor vans at that auction, quite possibly one was purchased by local bread maker and bread delivery man Thomas Coulton, who had his bakery in Windmill Avenue.
There was also in 1919 the loss of prime agricultural land on Tank Lane, (Tower Hill) when the local authority paid Lord Derby £1,800 for the land to build 50 local authority houses (Thompson Avenue).
Recovery from the hardship of war for the whole country must have been hard, but there were some positive actions put in place that looked to a future for the men returned home or still to return home.