Photos of a younger Farmer Sam and his life growing up in England and early days in America
I thought I would put some old photos in here. Some are of Farmer Sam growing up at Upper Midford Farm, Bath. England. The family still lives and farms there. Others will be of relatives and other people and places that have come into my life. This page will be gradually added to and better organized as time goes on.
I was born in 1949 at Houghton near Cambridge, England. My father was the manager of a large farm. In 1955 he got a job as the Agricultural Adviser to a chemical company. We had to move to Bristol.
Dad bought a beautiful Queen Anne house in Shirehampton. The house was called Boskenna (see photo). We lived there for six years until my father finally realized his dream of owning his own farm. He bought a small run down dairy farm in the village of Midford, four miles south of Bath.
We moved to Upper Midford Farm in 1961.
I freely admit that, unlike my 6 brothers and 1 sister, I didn't do well at school. I left when I was 16 and went to work on our farm. I was the cowman and milked over 100 cows twice a day for the next 3 years. Morning milking had to be finished before the milk lorry arrived at 9.00 AM and took the 10 gallon churns down to the dairy in Bath.
Then it happened! I got the urge to travel. I managed to get a job with a company that exported top quality agricultural animals from Britain to countries all over the world. Britain, being an island, does not have the same endemic diseases that occur in other countries, so progressive farmers like to buy good clean livestock from Britain.
I did a train trip with 200 pigs into Romania, several flights on cargo planes to many countries, including Turkey and Iran. I can't count the number of trips I did on ships. They were usually tramp steamers going into some pretty miserable ports. When you have farm animals on board they usually send you to some distant wharves. I did a trip to Libya on a proper cattle boat that actually went in to Tripoli harbor. My final trip was to take 23 Charolais cattle to New Zealand. I was told it was a one way trip. If I took it I would have to find my own way back. I was now 21 and I went!
It was an amazing trip on the New Zealand Shipping Company vessel, MV Hinakura (see Photo). All the ships of NZSC had Maori names.
It took 8 weeks arriving in Wellington in April.
I lived in New Zealand for almost a year. I did various jobs including office cleaning at night and construction in the day. I got the chance to work on a Greek ship (Australis) that was going to Acapulco via a stay in Fiji. I had always wanted to go to America, especially San Francisco, so here was my chance. My plan was to go up the West coast into Canada and then overland to New York and back to England. After managing to get a U.S. Visa in Auckland I weighed anchor. The voyage took 5 weeks. I really liked Acapulco but with almost no money I had to keep moving.
I took buses and hitch-hiked up through Mexico (you could do that in 1972) and got into the U.S. with $20.00. It was late at night when I got to the border.I told the border guard my plan. He must have known I intended to work in the U.S. as I it was obvious I would need money, but back then there wasn't any immigration problem and a white European that intended to go home didn't seem to cause any concern. He let me through with the comment that he wished he was going on my travels with me.
I made it to San Francisco!
