YORK FILMS OF ENGLAND

Young Farmers, 50 years on.

Kirkley Hall Farm Institute 1957/58
By David Taylor

It was a golden year – 31 students corralled in a lovely old hall to study general agriculture for nine intensive months. Most of us were teenagers. Some, just out of school, were the sons and daughters of farmers. Others, fresh from a year of farm work, were townies intent on careers in the countryside

All of us were young farmers with a future. And why not? A new age was at hand. Farming was burgeoning. Full employment and youthful optimism were replacing post-war austerity. Parlour milking was superseding the byre. Buddy Holly was drowning out the big bands. And here we were at Kirkley Hall where staff numbers were so generous we had almost one-to-one tuition.

More than half a century on, through the vicissitudes of agriculture, what became of those eager students – eight girls and 23 boys? How did that tight regime of farm work, lectures and communal living influence our lives? Were ambitions realised? Who became farmers, farmers’ wives, managers or farm workers? Indeed, how many remained in the industry? Who quit - and why? And what did they do?

Well now we know. Over a memorable weekend (July 12 and 13, 2009), 25 of us gathered for a grand reunion at Kirkley Hall – our first reunion and almost 51 years to the day since most of us last met. Guest of honour was the sole surviving member of the teaching staff, Alan Higginson, hail and hearty at 77 and still farming in Scotland.

Of the 31 original students, all have been accounted for save one – Jenny Dodds. Alas, another passed away in 2008 – Margaret Snook. Of the rest, three live overseas and couldn’t make it – Rosemary Collins, Csaba Balassa and Csaba Süle. Another, nearer home, had other plans.

So how have we all turned out? Pretty well is the answer. By and large, we’ve made a good fist of the past half century. We’ve been a practical and self-reliant bunch. Yes, there’ve been frustrations and disappointments, but great successes and solid achievement, too. To a man and to a woman, we’ve worked our passage – and without doubt our time at Kirkley served us well.

In the words of Alan Higginson, there was a special chemistry about our year. At the reunion that chemistry kicked in again. We gelled as though we’d only seen one another a couple of months before.

We were a good year and lucky to be young farmers in the late 50s. In the harsh commercial realities of today, the model that was Kirkley Hall Farm Institute is unsustainable. We were a privileged crowd, although few realised it at the time.

Plans are afoot for a film documentary about our year and the lives we’ve carved out since – how a group of bright-eyed students, living and learning together as an extended family, took off from Kirkley in July, 1958, like a clutch of rockets on 31 trajectories. Watch this space.