WHEN we started farming in 1951, Westmorland County Council was the Highway Authority. While it had its faults, it did realise that one of the priorities in catering for wintry conditions was to keep water off the roads.

As I have said before, in the days when we had "lengthmen" on the roads - each with their own particular area - they always knew where the drains were and did their best to keep them clear. They were not always successful, but they usually succeeded.

As we tend to get a period of rain before the frost sets in, if you can keep water off the road you have a much better chance to make a good job of gritting. Before the days of mechanical gritters and salters, they used to come along with a five ton wagon and, while the driver moved on at a steady pace, a couple of chaps would spread the grit or salt with shovels while standing in the back of the truck. If the wheels started to spin, they simply spread some grit over the side in front of the wheels and so they would keep going.

You would think today, with all the mechanical equipment, there would not be any problems; but if that is the case why do we hear so many people saying: "It's like an ice rink and the road's never been gritted".

A good thing today is where farm contractors are contacted to help - by gritting side roads and so helping the county to cope. But these chaps know when and where they are needed so a bit more leeway in leaving them to get on with it instead of bureaucracy stepping in would I'm sure be appreciated. Remember two things, firstly the old saying penny wise and pound foolish' and secondly bureaucracy does not come without a cost'.

There is also another old saying that fits a lot of bills and that is: A stitch in times saves nine'.

When it came to snow, it wasn't usually too bad if it just fell quietly without any wind behind it because, as everyone knows, it is the wind that causes snow to drift. But more often than not we would find the snow accompanied by wind. This meant the wind blew the snow both as it was falling and when it lay, sending it swirling over the wall and depositing it in the road to the height of the wall. When you have a lane bounded by a wall on one side and either a wall or a banking on the other you finish up with a wall of snow four feet high, eight or nine feet wide and perhaps a mile or even two miles long on the approach to your farm.

With the lane being bounded on each side there is nowhere to push the snow, so the big powerful snow ploughs and the bulldozers are of no use. In any case, four feet of snow is far too much for a snow plough under those circumstances. You need to be ploughing the snow before it gets too deep.

In the early days there was nothing else for it but to cut the snow into blocks using shovels and then throw it over the wall. So you started digging from home and, when they got to you in turn, half a dozen Westmorland County Council workmen set to work from the A6 and cut out the snow on our lane until we met somewhere between the farm and A6, and then off they would go to cut somebody else out.

Snow-blowers are grand machines, but most of them are too big for our sort of conditions. But in the mid-fifties the council came with a snow-blower fixed on to a Jeep and I think that was the best machine we ever had working in the lane. I remember asking for it in later years but the council said they could not afford to keep a machine for only a few weeks work in a year. I said: "But farmers keep a baler or a forage harvester or a combine harvester for only a few weeks' work in a year, often for only a few days". I have to say they did not seem at all impressed. The sooner we hear the cuckoo the better.

Dialect word: Beal - meaning the lowing of cattle.