b'farming pursuitshe can only be spared a weekSeptember: school usually closed for harvest time, occasionally. gleaning, tenting pigs, tenting geese, thrashing corn 14 March 1864Charles Matthews [aged 11] hasfrom gleaning, minding pigs or sheep in stubbleleft off school for seedtime to work in the fields andOctober:harvesting, tenting pigs, sorting potatoes, probably he will not return until after harvest. ketlocking, gathering flintsThe calendar of the farming year as demonstratedNovember: Pocklington hiring Fair, boiling pig through the School Log Books between 1863 andpotatoes, churning, driving horses in plough, 1868 shows the boys performing the following tasks: Martinmasolder siblings who are hired out return January: thrashing, churning, driving the horses inhome for a week, tenting cattle, fetching sticks, the plough, holding a horse while it is clipped, usingpigeon-shootingthe bean mill, gathering sticks December: pulling turnips, Stamford Bridge hiring February: tenting birds, thrashing wheat, digging,Fair, thrashing, driving horse in plough, killing rats gathering flints, ferreting rabbits, helping at pig-killing,and mice, flinting, driving horse machine, pig-killing, taking dinners to farm workers, gathering sticks plough-boying, gathering evergreens for ChurchMarch: tenting corn, helping at seedtime, attendingOther reasons given for absence by the boys also sheep, gardening, tenting crows, fetching firewood,reveal the reliance placed on children by their family leading the drill for corn-sowing, flitting, lambing unit, sometimes from a fairly young age. They were April: flitting, tenting lucerne, gardening, gatheringrequired to stay home with younger children, to help in lambs, leading the drill a flitting, to clean their fathers shop, to run errands, May: getting pea-rods, ferreting for rats, tenting cattleto help older brothers on their delivery rounds. Some in the lanes, working among the sheep, helping at thespecific items provide extra information, for example:sheep-washing, gathering wool from the sheepwash,4 November 1863Charles and Henry Foster flinting, attending to a cow, drilling small ends,detained to meet Kirby Underdale carrier.ploughing 11 May 1864William Clough [8] is carrying off bricks June: gathering rubbish from standing crops of corn,for his father.ketlocking (paid at 8 pence per day), drilling turnips,16 May 1864James Johnson [aged 11] has returned churning, frightening birds from turnip seeds to school after being with his father a fortnight nearly, July: turnip singling, carrying dinners into fields orthatching Mr Shooters barn.onto Wolds, hay-making, gathering weeds from corn,21 February 1865The intense winterly weather gathering gooseberries interferes with the regularity of attendance at school August: harvesting, gathering rubbish from corn,as frequentlyboys are detained at home in the singling turnips, pulling peas, attending Pocklingtonforenoon because they cannot get their shoes on on Fair for hiring hands for harvest time account of the frost.The old school building (on the left) before Fishers closed and the lean-to and petrol pump were removed.BULLETIN 16 303'