A Norfolk farmer who died at the age of 94 has left behind not only a thriving farm business but diaries recording changes in farming in the last century.
Eric Cook kept a yearly diary from 1954, which outlined the activities on his farm and provide first-hand evidence of significant events in Norfolk.
Mr Cook was born in Smallburgh in 1927 where his father George farmed at Broad Farm adjacent to the River Ant. His earliest memory was that of the UK’s strongest ever recorded earthquake in 1931.
He attended the village school, once releasing mice into the classrooms which he had caught as they ran from the threshing machine working in the field outside. Later, he cycled to Stalham school and would often ride with no hands while practising his catapult as he rode along.
The farm hosted several evacuees during the Second World War and Mr Cook became good friends with one of them.
Together they set up a business venture of breeding and selling rabbits for sale, which were a popular supplement to meat rations. By bunking off school one day to help clear up the debris from the only bomb which was dropped on Stalham, his efforts were rewarded with a prized tin of Nestle milk.
Mr Cook left school at the age of 14 and began learning the physically demanding task of working with heavy horses. On his first attempt at ploughing, the team-man came behind to take the wriggles out of his furrow.
He attended chapel and met his future wife, Nancy Yaxley, through a chapel fellowship group. In 1948, a large number of oranges washed up on Sea Palling beach, cast overboard from a ship which had run aground. On Christmas Eve, he finished carol singing at midnight and cycled to Sea Palling where he collected oranges through the night. He took a bag to Nancy as a Christmas gift but before he handed it over, he insisted on a kiss – their first kiss.
The couple married in 1952 and that year bought a farm near Sea Palling, which they renamed Barton Farm in honour of Nancy’s birthplace. It had 64 acres, an outdoor privy and no water or electricity.
They farmed wheat, barley, oats, beans, sugar beet and potatoes and kept cattle, pigs and chickens. Mr Cook began working the land with horses but soon bought a little grey Fergie tractor.
The farm suffered two severe crises. On the morning of February 1, 1953, Mr Cook woke and thought it had snowed. In fact, the white blanket covering the fields was the frothy sea, which had flooded all along the east coast. The floods tainted the farm’s drinking water and damaged the land which took time to recover.
The second disaster came in 1960 when Mr Cook purchased store cattle from Ireland at Norwich Cattle Market. Within a few days it was confirmed that these cattle had foot-and-mouth disease, leading to the slaughter of all 33 cattle and 55 pigs on the farm. The entries in his diaries about this are written in Nancy’s handwriting, perhaps indicating his shock at dealing with this experience.
The couple picked themselves from this by buying the property next door, Boundary Farm in Ingham, and moving there in 1965.
Here they began selling potatoes from the roadside in the 1960s and their son, Robert, took the farm into market gardening in the 1970s. A farm shop began which gradually expanded and still operates today by the coast road from Stalham to Sea Palling, selling fruit, vegetables, plants and local produce. Further land was purchased until the farm encompassed a few hundred acres.
Mr Cook retired at the age of 85, having passed on stewardship to Robert, but he remained interested in the farm’s progress until his death.
He liked to report the fact that when he began farming it took 12 weeks to harvest 12 acres of sugar beet by hand whereas nowadays that amount can be lifted in a few hours. When asked what farming task he had enjoyed the most, he replied that he liked it all, but enjoyed ploughing best, even though the only protection from the elements he had was a hessian sack tied with string and often he could hardly walk when he got off the tractor.
He felt he was good at adapting to new farm equipment and recognised that mechanisation had the biggest impact on farming in his lifetime, although he was also conscious of the effect this had on the environment, noting a visible decline in his lifetime in insects and birds.
Mr Cook’s family said: “He was a man of the soil, down to earth, tough, resilient and resourceful.
“His motto was ‘if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’ That he built up a farm business from so little is testament to long hours of hard work.
“He was also hospitable and loved sharing the farm and the natural environment with guests and hosted an annual visit for local children.
“Naturally he spoke in a broad Norfolk dialect and his diaries speak a language of Norfolk farming jargon which has now passed into the history books.”
Mr Cook’s last journey was an appropriate one. His coffin travelled on a trailer behind the little Fergie tractor he had restored late in his career. The tractor was driven by his daughter Ruth, herself a farmer.
Mr Cook leaves behind three children, Robert, Ruth and Sara, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
- To pay tribute to a loved one email norfolktributes@archant.co.uk
- To read more obituaries and tributes join the Facebook group Norfolk's Loved & Lost.
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