LITMIR.BIZ

      Amongst the chattels that came with Tair-Ffynnon (which included two mossy Opel Kadetts, a collapsed Marina van, numerous bathtubs and an assortment of broken and rusting bedsteads, trailers, ploughs, cultivators, rollers and diesel tanks) was an iron saw-bench. A farm saw-bench is a heavy cast-iron table with, protruding through a slit in the top, a big circular blade with scarily large teeth. They date from the time when farmers cut their own planks, gateposts and firewood. Many old farms have one somewhere, superannuated, rusting away in a corner. The moment I saw ours, I wanted that saw-bench back in action. It spoke of self-sufficiency and self-reliance, of replenished wood stores and cold winter months. It was, to an almost baleful degree, a renegade of the pre-health and safety era. Like most of the older ones, ours was worked by a pulley belt, which connected the bench to a parked tractor. Modern tractors ditched pulley wheels decades ago, but a couple of the older makes, Fordsons and Fergies, still had them. All I needed to get the saw-bench into action was one of those.

      The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that an old tractor was just what Tair-Ffynnon was missing. Now the requirement for firewood spelt it out. Jonny’s remark came back to me: ‘Looks as if you’d better get yourself a tractor.’

      ‘Why?’ said Vez.

      It was one of those typically female questions that, on the spot, it’s surprisingly difficult to answer. Arguments that a tractor was self-evidently a Good Thing to have, that it would lend tone to the place, in our straitened financial circumstances, lacked weight. ‘For towing and mowing and pulling stuff. For cutting logs…everything.’ My answer was necessarily vague, as I wasn’t absolutely sure myself of all the myriad uses to which an old tractor might be put.

      ‘You can buy a lot of logs for the price of a tractor,’ said Vez. ‘How much does a tractor cost?’

      ‘Well, you could probably get an old Fergie or a Fordson for about £1,000, but I should think…’

      ‘A grand! A grand! Are you out of your mind? When we haven’t even got a dry place to store anything. And Maya needs shoes.’

      There’s no arguing such a case. Even I could appreciate that an inclination to see an old saw-bench back in harness, coupled with the knowledge that we could cut our own logs, sounded a little thin when ready-cut firewood was available for £40 a load.

      All this I had only half worked through in my mind when I arrived on a Saturday in mid-July at the annual East Wales and Borders Vintage Auction, held, conveniently, in a field at the bottom of our hill. Over the last few days the field had been cut for silage and a tented village had sprung up so that now, although it was windless and grey, the white canvas and bunting presented a cheerful scene. Vintage auctions being the sole recreation my brother and I shared, he and my nephew Thomas had come over for the day, taking the opportunity to see us all, as had my father from Somerset. Jonny had arrived early for his usual forensic examination of the lots and announced that, amongst the collections of old railway sleepers, feed bins, mangles, chaff-cutters and nameless implements and agricultural bits and bobs, there was ‘a very nice Fergie’. And sure enough, there amongst the junkyard tractors, Lot 571, was a peach of a machine.

      The finer (and indeed the broader) points of tractor mechanics meant nothing to me, but I could see this was something special. For a start, unlike the other tractors on sale, it was complete. It had four wheels, two matching mudguards, and so on. no one had attempted to spruce it up; it had a couple of dents, a buckled number plate, but still a fair amount of original grey paint. Headlamps either side of its radiator grille gave it a friendly, if slightly melancholic air. Here was one of those gems, it was clear, one might never forgive oneself for missing. Befitting its exalted status, it was one of the final lots, but the auctioneer and his throng were already working their way steadily down the rows towards it. Jonny, who knew about old Fergie prices, said not to go a penny over £1,200. By the time the brown-coated auctioneer approached, he had established himself as a waggish figure whose skilful manipulations of his bidders was drawing a larger-than-average crowd. The auctioneer hoiked his foot onto the front wheel and, as his sidekick clambered into the seat, made a whirling motion with his hand. ‘Start ’er up, Jack.’ The sidekick pressed a button and the Fergie clattered cheerfully into life with a cloud of black smoke and diesel fumes, settling down to a homely chugging rattle.