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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1961-04-13, Page 7Wheelwrights Are A Vanlishin..g Race The small singing river Itloon runs through some of the most beautiful country in Hampshire to join the sea in a quiet creek between Spithead, where Eng- land's fleets have assembled for centuries, and the deep channel 'which takes the ocean liners out -ofSouthampton, Old cottages and barns all up the lovely Meon valley have ancient ships tim- bers in their construction. Oak, which centuries ago grew as stripling trees in the New Forest close by, and in its prime went into the making of the high -pooped vessels of Tudor times, the little ships that car- ried the early settlers to Ameri- ca, and the old wooden nzen o' war that sailed under Nelson, After anything up to 50 years at sea, they would limp back to a breaker's yard at Fareham or Portsmouth, then the best pieces would be loaded on a wagon to be drawn up the road and start life again, as part of a new - built inn, a manor house, or a snag cottage, At the head of the valley, the lytch gate of, the church has been. made of them, and beyond it, the thatched !tome of the Ayling brothers hasfor all its stout uprights; wood which has sailed the seven seas. Wood -oak and box, hazel and ash -has also been the life-long occupation of William and Alfred, now in their seventies. They are still carrying on the job that has been in their family for six generations, work- ing on the same spot for over 200 years, for they are two of the very few wheelwrights still left in this•part,of England. When I came down the lane, past. the long timbers stacked against an ancient tree beside the cottage, and scattering the gamecock hens pecking in the yard, I stepped into another world. A world which, almost everywhere else, disappeared quite a century ago. Logs burned in. the big open hearth in the cot- tage kitchen, a black chain hung to suspend the cooking pot, an old iron pump delivered the water to the sink, and oil lamps gave the lighting, The two brothers • were busy making a ladder. Alfred was smoothing the' treads in swift, sure strokes, with the box -wood plane he had made when he was a young man, Beyond the work - ship door were two other lad- ders they had just completed, painted bright blue by William. "Not much call for cartwheels these days," they told me sadly. "We mostlydo wheels now when we're making wheelbarrows. "Small wheel like that is the trickiest to make," said William, "harder than a big chap to get to run true. I started helping my father to make wheels when I was eight, but ,I was 20 'before I made a cartwheel on my own - you've got to have had experi- ence, so you can judge things to a fraction. "We had to help with other things, , of course," remembered Alfred. "There were carts -them- selves - the whole thing used to take about a fortnight and cost around ten pounds. And sheep cages, and chicken coops, and hay rakes, There was always a job waiting . when you came home feom school - and if by chance there wasn't - well; we'd have to go and pull the weeds out of a widow's garden, No playing - or birds -nesting." In the lofty barns, where the great rafters reared •tip to' be lost in dusty dimness, they show- ed me the oldest wheel on the premises, one that for a century and a half had been worked manually by a handle fixed in Upstdeduwn to Prevent Peeking ['ii O©€ CE Mils WW EMM ©N e EMEW ri ©©coo PM FEMME ©©© ERNE MEM 1 19I1U ©MInEN 'DOW NM EMOM 0E510 EMEMn ®©OIEo© LOMB EIVC]' amEnm1"•1 omomm r1�nn ©©LT©f o - n grim el©o©o do O 4 the contra, to revolve the lathe fee wood -turning. There too, with shafts pointing pathetical- ly to the roof, stood the different types of carts they had made in earlier years, The brothers sur- veyed them nostalgically. The demand today was for smaller things 'as cold frames, pick and shovel handles, rakes, .end the ladders, writes Marjorie Nisbett in The Christian Science Moni- tor; In the coiner stood the draw shaves they had used for lighten- ing spokes and wagon timbers, the axes for cutting the wood they bought standing, the iron beetles they used as wedges for splitting trunks, the great five- foot -long saws with their wicked teeth that they used to cut out planks in the saw -pit, There, under the shade of great oak, Alfred was always "bottom -saw- yer" among the rain of falling saw -dust; William working above at the exacting job of "top -sawyer", as his father and grandfather before hien, "You:. always work together- do you never disagree as to how a job is to be done?" I asked them. William al -wok his head. "No, we never have once-" "We worked together'. now for 60 years" nodded Alfred. "We just consult each other before we start =- and we always come to terms, • "And we've still got almost more jobs on hand than we can tackle." ' In thelong, light evenings too, there was the garden. It was cultivated to the last inch, Honey from the white bee skips that edged the flower border, eggs from the scratching hens, butter and milk from the four grazing cows, apples from the gnarled trees almost: touching the lower edge of the long sweeping roof of. their centuries- old cottage- there was scarcely a necessity for which they need- ed to step. outside the small- holding. Even the roof they re - thatched themselves, at inter- vals. "The straw's hard to get, though,. today, Costs £40 a ton - and it takes two tons to do that over properly!" said Wil- liam. They may live in another world. Quiet, serene, and almost self-supporting. But the world which rushes down the main road bordering the village sees them by no means as back num- bers, for far beyond it the Ayl- ing brothers are known as crafts- men. That is why, not long ago, they had to catch the train to Reading, where they replaced with seasoned oak, treads in a valuable and ancient staircase. Why, recently, they harnessed their gray pony each morning, to jog down in the trap to West Meon, to do a woodwork job in the church. And, from half across the country, a pair of trap shafts - had just arrived for mending, "I'll like doing them,"' said William wistfully, "I'd ' always rather be working on something that, has to do with a horse." Disc Jockey Helped Catch Himself • Death came suddenly to a twelve -year-old boy in Medway, Massachusetts, recently. He had just' started to cross the road when a large car sped round the corner. The youngster had no time to jump cleat•:, The vehicle smashed into him, and he was killed in- stantly. Without slackening speed, the driver raced on, Police immediately alerted the local radio station, who arranged to broadcast messages appealing for the driver or anyone who saw the accident to come fors ward. A little later, Ronald Greene, .one of the station's disc jockeys, went on the air as usual with his record programme. At frequent intervals he asked listeners to contact the police if they knew anything at all about the hit- and-run driver. Then, his programme over, Greene prepared to leave the studio -to find the police wait- ing for him. They had identified him' as the wanted motorist by an ornament missing from his car -found at the scene of the accident, ANNIVERSARY -• This ie the first of five stamps marking the Civil War centennial which the U,S. Post Office will issue. This Ina, recalling the shelling of Fort Sumter, the opening of hos- tilities, will be released in April in Charleston, S.C., site of the rant, WHALE OF A BUCKET - A worker in Danville looks as though he is about to be gobbled down by a huge drag bucket - the world's largest. It is destined for service in an open pit 'coal mine in Brazil, where it will take 50 -ton gulps. TIEFAEMq FRONT Entomologists know her ' as - Hippodamia Convergens, H e r admirers know her affectionate- ly as the "Little Cow of :God," And everybody else knows her simply as a ladybug. By what- ever name, she stands today 'in high and rising favour with far- mers. • A ladybug, it seems, can do no wrong and a great 'deal of good. She is the angel of the insect world. She eats such harmful bugs as mites, scale, inealybugs, bollworms, 1-e a f - worms, and the eggs orf all such insects known to be harmful. to man's crops. Her delicacy is the despised ar:his. * a • She is exclusively caxnivosous and won't touch vegetation. She has almost no enemies. But she will 'attack any insect pest that is not too hard -shelled, too fast- moving, or too, large, And with admtiralble discrimination, she re- frains from attacking other "good" insects. * * 4, As if this were not enough, she is 'also inexpensive, easy to care for, and quite undemand- ing: just hose her down once in a while when she's travelling or pop her into the refrigerator when she isn't working. More and more she is being "harvested" and made •avelilable for duty in gardenia orchards, and fields as a substitute for sprays and poisons. One o3 the leading harvesters of'ladybugs the world, the Lady Bug Sales Company, of Gridley, 'Calif., bails her as the "farmers' private army on duty 24 hours a day" * 4' * There exist about 600 known varieties of ladybugs, pinhead size to thumbnail size. But only Hippodalnnia Convergens, the species with bright orange body and black spots, is found in large enough numbers to be harvest- ed commercially, An' estimated 90 per cent of all ladybugs supplied in the United States are harvested on the western slopes of the, Sierra Nevada Mountain range over- looking the great Sacramento Valley in California. * * * At Lady Bug Sales Company in Gridley, in the heart of the valley, Mrs. M. E. Nelson pre, sides over the packing, shipping, and 'closely guarded processing of swarms of Hippodamia •Co.n- vergens, Her company ships out at least 10,000 gallons of ladybugs (135,- 000 bugs per gallon) a year to all the' 50 states, mostly to the wheat, corn, cotton, and alfalfa belts. • • * Ladybugs from there have watched over peanut plants in Peru, cotton fields in Blythe, Calif., birch trees in Anchorage, Alaska, and maple trees in Tole- do, Ohio. They have even been shipped as far as Egypt. Lady Bug . Sales Company ships its ladybugs through regu- lar United States mail in sr,all packages. of 5,000 (for small gar- dens); medium packages of 30,- 000 (for lot -sized gardens); and in large packages of 100,000 (for 10 -acre fields and orchards). The bugs cost about 71/2 cents per thousand, 4, * ,: After they have had their fill. of aphis and such, Hippodamia C.onvergens swarm into nests in the mountains and hibernate like bears, That is where they are "harvested." And it takes a canny sense of ladybug ways to locate their nests. Margaret Waugh; who laugh- ingly bills herself as' "the only lady ladybug packer in the world," says that "a layman wouldn't know/haw to find lady- bug nests or even what to Ionic for.' Prvfe' 'lead pickers go up in- to the mountains each harvest season - usually around Christ- mas and again in June - and raid the nests. * * * Atoned with plastic dish pans, they creep up on the hibernating ' ladybugs, pounce on their nests, scoop up ladybugs, leaves, pine cones, dirt, and all, and cram them into the pans and finally into special bags. "They are so wiggly -squiggly," explains Mrs. Waugh, "that while you are picking a gallon of them, a quart is taking off in another direction and up your pant legs and everywhere," * * * Good pickers generally know there whereabouts of from 2,000 to 3,000 beds along the western slopes of the mountains. The ladybugs pest at altitudes rang • - ing from 2,000 to 6,000 feet. They like it cool. At Lady Bug Sales •Company, Mrs. Waugh, 'the lady ladybug packer, and her husband, Mau- rice, package the Hippodamia Convergens and prepare them for shipment. , * v * Nobody has yet devised a sub- stitute food_ that ladybugs will eat. And nobody has ever sue cessfully raised them In captiv- ity. They have got to be harvest- ' ed out in the mountains in their beds, writes John C. Waugh in the Christian Science Monitor. t 4 * A generation of ladybugs only lasts for one season. They lay their eggs, perish, and their off- spring swarm to the motintains to make up the next season's harvest. As Mrs. Nelson puts it, "Lady- bugs sometimes traipse away." So each year, to keep the insect pests cleared out, several appli- needed, But 75 cents worth of •ceded. But 75 cents worth of ladybugs' have repeatedly done the work on an acre of field or orchard that $6 worth of spray couldn't. And in some areas, particular- ly where crops are easily dam- aged by spray, there has been a decided flocking to Hippodamia Convergens. At any rate, Mrs. Nelson says her business grows busier every year. A laboratory covering 20 square miles under the crisp Wyoming sky will be operated by the University of Wyoming. It will be a typical family - sized ranch of Great Plains pro- portions -a "spread" -on which .teams of university -research see- cialists from variotis departments will put together all their knowl- edge to show how a ranch should be run to achieve the utmost in profit. * * The university, a Land Grant college, has heretofore conducted many investigations into better farming and ranch practices, as well as fundamental research Into problems and possibilities of soil, water, and vegetation. These have been available singly to farmers and ranchers, Now all such advanced knowl- edge will be put to work In this good-sized, commercial live stock operation to see how the com- bination may pay out. The ranch, near Douglas, in eastern Wyoming, will also be used as a gigantic classroom to. which university students and extension service classes will be taken, And the lessons learned will be made available to ` all Wyoming ranchers, and else- where on request. Both sheep and cattle will be raised on this ranch, a herd of about 100 and a flock of about 1,000, thus discounting the tradi- tion that sheep and cattle do not get along together any better than sheepmen and cattlemen,. * * * Movable fences will eliminate sheep -herding, and will also di- vide up the range for carefully controlled rotation of grazing on pasture made as lush as possible by fertilization and reseeding, sagebush elimination, and new types of grasses and herbage. • • •. Everything will be carefully recorded for future study and use -from the response of the range to various types of treat- ment, through that of the ani- mals to rates of stocking and grazing, dual use of range by sheep and cattle, livestock gains under various `conditions, etc. N * * The "Northern Plains Pilot Ranch" is on land made avail- able by Jack Morton, veteran Wyoming rancher, The informa- tion gained will be generally useful throughout the northern Great Plains, It will take up to two years to prepare, and the first experi- mental period will be of 10 years. The academicians are as- suming that they not only can make a profit on a commercial - sized ranch operation, but that they can 'show the way to pri- vate operators. Use Radio To Locate Lost Sheep Farmers in Australia no longer worry about lost sheep. Little Bo Bleeps are helping the far- mers to find them. The farmers are using the bleeps' of radio transmitters to locate quickly those among Aus- tralia's 100,00,0,000 sheep that tend to wander. Several of the sturdiest ani- mals in each flock - those that tend to lead the rest - have a radio transmitter strapped to their backs. • Am aerial protrudes from the top of each -transmitter and every now and then a bleep is sent out. The farmer has a re- ceiver that acts as a direction finder. Keeping the flocks together in Australia was a colossal task be- fore someone thought up this radio idea, UNDAY SCII001 JJSSON By Rev. 11. Barclay Warren B;A., B.D, The Source of True Wisdom Proverbs 'li3-7; Job 28: 20-28 Memory Selection: If any or you lack wisdom, let him ask of •. God, that giveth to all men li- berally, and mpbraideth not; and it shall be given unto him. James 1:15. If ever wisdom was needed In the world, it is today; As I write the Congo crisis deepens and the withdrawal' of South Africa from the British Commonwealth em- phasizes the tensions that exist ;' in Africa. A letter from mission41\ - ary friends in the Congo area tell of the missionary refugees who have come to their home and of two who were slain, The turtnbil and unrest as reported in the newspapers are not exaggerated. John Kennedy's flashing smile, so attractive during the presi- dential campaign, has given way to a sombre serious contenance as he has the responsibility of making important decisions re- garding Cuba, other Latin American countries, and econo- mic and other problems. We should pray for our leaders. Where can we find wisdom? In the eloquent passage in Job 28:12-28 the speaker points out that it cannot be gotten for gold, but "God understandeth the -way' thereof, and • He lcnoweth the place thereof," and says to man, "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." It isn't sense new philosophy we need. We must act on the prin- ciples cfrighteousness that we understand right now. We must turn away from sin, confess to God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. If multitudes of people around the world would do that, it would be reflected in the les- sening of world tensions every- where.We who have the light of the Gospel should lead the way. I'm tired of hearing people say, a. "Oh, I'm not really living as 'I should, but I'm really notso bad. I think I'm as good as the aver- age." This is not enough. "To him that knoweth. to do good, and death it not,. to him it is sin." James 4:17. Vire must walk ` in • all the light at shines upon God's path from Word. Je- sus said of lukewarm Christians, "I will spue thee out of my mouth." Revelation 3:16. We must awaken from the lethargy that has befallen upon us be- fore judgment comes. ISSUE 14 -1961 CROSSWORD PUZZLE s. Censure 29. German river 9. Daughter of Tantalus 10. Peacock butterflies 11. Payable 10 Hall (Ger.) ACROSS 1. Dude 4,Lagar 9. Brood of pheasants 12. One of David's rulers s.Inoenseaa It. Acknowledge• meet of a debt 16, Fortifications 17. Put side br side 19. lilxcavated 20. Bush 81. Theatrical 24. Mountain nymph 57. Olive genus 25. A thing found 50. show Me (ab.) it Cover 0t Lead 93,.T main en t 34. Business getter 96. Hasse, actress 56. Confront 97. Allude 59, Lubricated 41. Bared se 44. Humor 44. Decanter 46. Cat 40. Disclosed 30. Thighbone 62. Constellation 22. Firmament 54. Happy oleos 06 76ven (contr.l 82. Large ncuda•- animal ss. Small fol•trca, 35. Bristle 1 . Chaete 36. Default 1. Cone -bearing I. Wiry 96. Age of man tree 221, Qf the sun 40. Pitchers s. Dabbled eta! 2 • pyr iiouncing 4E stemse grass 4, Tarlton 20. Baby!. sun 44. Lettuce (humorous) god 5. Diving bird 0. ltter vetch 26. Prieafa 46. sport 0. Father vestment 47. By birth 7. Greenland 26. was. foolishly 8. Blternity Battlementfond of 51. Myself Answer elsewhree on this page OVERSEAS' -- A PENNY PER MILE - This is the model for a proposed 300 -seat, a'll-wino supersonic air liner. Its British designers say it could cut transatlantic fares to '$31•