Norman Creaser has been a farming man all of his life. Born and bred in Harton, near Malton, where he still lives, Norman remembers an era before the Second World War that fewer and fewer people can recall.

To preserve those years in print, he has written his memoirs for his grandchildren and also penned well over 70 poems about his life as a young farming man. Norman told the story of those days to reporter JAMES KILNER.

NORMAN Creaser leans back in his armchair, crosses his legs, and raises a harmonica to his lips. The tune he plays is Morning Has Broken. It is heartbreaking.

Watching and hearing him play, it is easy to picture Norman as a young farm worker, teaching himself to play the instrument, while lying back amongst hay in a stable.

The rising and falling of the tune brings colour to his stories of country life in the 1920s and 1930s. It is as though several decades have crumbled away and you have been given a brief glimpse of something lost to time.

There is the same sensation as, in broad Yorkshire dialect, he reads poems he has written about the old days or sings ditties young farm hands used to murmur 70 years ago. It is difficult to escape the feeling that you are privileged to be witnessing something that is inexorably drifting away - there are fewer and fewer people who can accurately recall those years.

"Although times were tough and rough," smiles Norman, "we were much more content than today. We made our own fun and helped each other. It was all we knew."

Norman Simpson Creaser was born in the house in which he still lives in Harton on January 26, 1919, the eighth of nine children.

His father, Thomas Albert Creaser, was a mole-catcher for a time during the 1920s, selling moleskins at a penny each to a firm in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

Norman attended the village school at Harton - some of the children walked there from as far afield as Barton Hill. It was during this time that a "terrible slump" began, which ran from the General Strike in 1926 right up to the Second World War.

The Creasers had a smallholding of five acres at Harton and kept two cows for milk and over 100 head of poultry. It was very rare to see money change hands at that time - business was mostly conducted by bartering. Norman's family traded butter and eggs for groceries.

Butter was priced at eight old pence per pound and eggs were eight old pence per dozen. "It was hard work, but at the end of the day we were self-sufficient," said Norman.

He went on: "Our parents often wondered where the next meal was coming from. Father would often kill a hen, 'boiling fowl' as we called it, to make a Sunday dinner. I was a good shot with a catapult and often brought a dinner home.

"Almost all village cottagers fed and killed a bacon pig. In winter time, our local butcher would have a full day every Monday pig-killing around the villages. As a lad, my job was to catch the blood and stir it until it was cold so that it would not clot. We made our own black puddings."

A Mr Milburn, from Leavening, would come through the village on the way to York every Saturday in a cart drawn by two horses. He would arrive at 8am and would return at 4pm. Villagers would give him a shopping list and he would bring back whatever bits and pieces they required. In 1927, Mr Milburn acquired a bus. "What an event - a bus through our village!" remembered Norman.

In 1933, when Norman was 14, his father managed to get him a job as a "horse lad" on a farm about two miles away and he was paid £13 a year.

"I had helped to pick potatoes and pull sugar beet on that farm," said Norman, "and I found out later that I had got the job because I was a hard worker and that was what mattered in those days."

At the end of Norman's first year, he was asked to stay another year. "When I asked for a small rise, I was told that times were bad and there were plenty of tramps on the road who would be glad of my job. So I stayed on another year for 13 quid. But after that year, I was paid monthly. When I left that farm after five years, I was paid at the weekly rate of 12 shillings."

In those days, Norman and his fellow workers lived at the farm. During the winter, his room was so cold that Norman would often settle down for the night amongst the hay in a stable to get some warmth.

"When the horses were sleeping in the stable in winter, we had to be in the stable every morning before six o'clock," said Norman. "They had to be mucked out, watered and fed. We had breakfast at half past six and any horses wanted for work had to be harnessed ready to turn out to plough or whatever at seven o'clock.

"365 days of the year we had bacon and apple pie for both breakfast and tea, a hot dinner at 12 o'clock, generally beef and veg. If you happened to be having a pudding, you had to clean up your plate with your knife, otherwise you ate it amongst the gravy. You never got a clean plate."

However, it was not all work and no play. Norman and some friends would cycle for miles through all sorts of weather to attend sixpenny hops at village halls on Saturday nights. Despite arriving back at the farm at about 3am, Norman would still be up before 6am working in the stable.

At Martinmas, November 23, all farm men were paid their yearly wage. They then had a week's holiday and had to be back at work on December 1, on whatever day it fell.

"The only other holiday we had was Christmas Day," said Norman. "But if that happened to fall on a Sunday (a vitally important day on the farm), it was hard luck. We did not get a day in lieu.

"Work was so scarce, we had very little choice. We were lucky to have a job at all. There was no dole for farm men until 1937 when war was beginning to loom."

In the years that followed, he would three times fail his conscription medical and, thus, spend the war years at the home front.

He would continue his employment on farms in the area, and later, among other things, would take positions as a grave-digger and a groundsman at the Rowntrees chocolate factory in York.

But it is the days Norman spent growing up in Harton and as a young farm worker that seem to dominate his memories. And it is these that he continues to recall, be it through poems, songs or even tunes on his harmonica.

The Gobstopper

When I was a lad living at Lobster House

'Twas a great big cord ord spot,

T'kitchen floor was just bare bricks,

T'fireside bars wor't only things that got hot.

When I finished feeding mi hosses about seven at neet,

Flat out on t'corn bin I wad lay,

Wiv' a corn sack for a pillow under mi head,

I thou't a mouth organ I wad learn to play.

At Woolworth's, a shilling bandmaster I bou't,

And what a row at fost I made,

I blew and I drew to play God Save The King,

Even tord hosses wor shaking their heads.

If it wor cord, I wad bed doon in t'straw,

Still striving to hit the right chord,

But now and again, I felt sumat run ower my face,

That's how I found out that rats' feet wor cord.

As time went on, half a dozen mouth organ wrecked,

I began to mak sense out of t'thing,

I wad play a tune as I rode t'hosses to work,

I bet many a time it made their ord lugs ring.

In ower young days, when we made ower own fun,

Even gramophone and wireless wor new,

Many farm lads played the melodeon or mouth organ,

We had some good singalongs too.

This story originally appeared in the Gazette & Herald in October 2002.

Updated: 15:17 Thursday, February 26, 2004