Jim Sanders

Born in 1921 at Thornworthy farm on the Ilkerton ridge between Barbrook and the Chains, Jim Sanders moved to nearby South Stock farm in 1945 when he married Alice Crocombe. He and brother Arthur farmed South Stock together until 1960 when Arthur took over neighbouring Sparhanger farm.

Jim is widely known on Exmoor as a singer, with a formidable repertoire of material, all committed to memory. His signature songs are probably ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Poor, Poor Farmer’, and so associated is he with the latter, that ‘PPF’ – poor, poor farmer – is how he is commonly referred to over a wide area. Less well known is the fact that he has kept a diary with a single sentence describing every day since 1947, and these diaries provide a continuous record of the details of living on and running a remote hill-farm over six decades. Jim’s chapter begins with extracts from one of these diaries where it speaks for itself.

Jim Sanders’ chapter includes the following topics and many more:

• playing outside with the dogs as kids
• getting the horses ready before school
• running down to school with a hoop
• father gassed in the first war
• never talking very much at home
• making straw ropes and spar gads by lamplight
• thatching hay ricks with reed
• superstitions
• wedding ring found after more than twenty years in a field
• Beggar’s Roost motor trials
• Cobbam’s Air Display at Coombe Park farm
• catching trout with a net in Farley Water
• cow following her calf to Blackmoor Gate market
• ploughing with heavy horses
• riding a mad pony which charged down gates
• Westaway, Folly, Rushie Splat and the other ancient field names
• writing a diary for over sixty years
• delivering the churns and milking
• trapping rabbits and pig killing
• a sow choking to death on a loaf of bread
• collecting peat from the common with a horse and sleigh
• tying four foot long faggots with withy
• storing the faggots on the tops of hedges
• collecting fern (bracken) from the common for bedding
• a mowing machine and the horse both overturn
• hand threshing, grinding and cutting mangolds
• ferrets and rabbit trapping
• badger and fox digging with terriers
• trapping moles and sending the skins to Swimbridge
• poachers and their dogs coming up from Lynton
• milking and bedding down with Tilly and Aladdin lamps
• calor gas lights replace candles on the farm
• blowing up a stump with gun-powder
• being cut off after the Lynmouth flood
• removing docks, horse- and sheep-thistles
• ten shillings for anyone finding a single weed on the farm
• Coronation bonfires on Dunkery and on the hills over the channel in Wales
• singing in the Rockford pub
• carol choirs and the Blackbird song
• Hearts of Oak collecting traditional songs and music
• the vegetable garden