SUMMERTIME would see Jim busy either cutting and working peats on his small peat dale up the lane, or trying to secure enough hay to see Jacob, his donkey, through the winter.

He cut the grass in their orchard using an American scythe, which is the type you mostly see in use today.

The shaft was curved and shaped, and when stood up straight it reached up to his shoulder.

He had never quite mastered using a "long pole ley" or scythe.

On these the pole was straight and reached way above his head, besides it proved awkward among the fruit trees in the orchard.

Jim also cut some of the laneside grass near Bluebell Cottage and made that into hay to be stored in the small brick barn ready for use in the winter.

These jobs also meant that Jacob was brought into use, both to pull the cart for carrying peats home, and also for leading (carting) the hay.

Jim was kept well fortified with oatcake and cheese washed down with his favourite nettle beer cooled in the ice cold water from the well.

In harvest time, Jim was often called in to help make running repairs on farmer's binders and although he had been a ship's engineer he was very much at home with all things mechanical.

Often money did not change hands, but Jim would be offered a bag or two of oats when they had been threshed.

These were most useful for their pig, poultry and, of course, for Jacob.

There was not a spare building in which to store the peats for winter, so Jim built them in the form of a stack shaped like a small house with an apex roof using peats as slates to turn the rainwater.

When the peats were ready for their last drying process up on the moss or dale, farmers would build them into 'howks', which were beehive-shaped stacks each containing about 500 peats.

This was a cartload and as much as a horse could manage.

Jim would make three loads or even four out of a howk so as not to overload his donkey, and if the ground was soft he would load lighter still.

If ever Jacob found a load to be too much for him he would simply stop dead and nothing would move him.

So Jim would simply throw off enough peats to lighten the load and pick them up next time.

Once Jacob found the load to be lighter he would put his shoulder into the collar and off he would go.

When they used the peat in winter there would be bits at the bottom of the stack and sometimes it could appear a bit woolly, this was known as 'torf mull'.

Jim would collect this into an old cow tub and soak it with waste tractor oil he got from a farmer.

When you got some of that in a piece of old newspaper, it was the grandest stuff out for getting a fire going.

Brother and sister were happy in their retirement.

I never heard what happened to them.

I expect they lived to a ripe old age.

I hope they did anyway.

During their retirement it is more than likely that they would not have wished to change places with anyone.

There is a word for it of course - it's called contentment.

Thought for the day: Two drunks in Kendal needed to get home to Sedbergh.

"I know," says one, "we'll borrow a bus." So he goes into the bus garage and as he hadn't come out after an hour his pal went in and said, "What's taking so long?" "Well", said the first chap, "the one with Sedbergh on it is right at the back." "Never mind," said his pal, "We'll take the one with Kirkby Lonsdale on, we can walk from there."