There's a Calf in the Sitting Room... Book

When 17-year-old Sheila Barry's parents were killed in an accident in 1945, she left her job at a factory in Ipswich and escaped to rural west Wales to live with her aunt and uncle, Madge and Cecil, at Penrallt, the family farm. It was a very different life from the one she had known: the ancient farmhouse had neither electricity nor piped water, and the sheds and byres were full of horses, cows, and pigs, each with their own name and personality. Sheila immediately became part of the Penrallt community, where her slightly eccentric family of 'in-comers' to the area learned from the experienced locals who were born and grew up on the farms of the Welsh hills. In There's a calf in the sitting room...Sheila lovingly recalls daily life on the farm in the forties and fifties, when farming was mostly organic and primarily horse driven. Episodes are retold with humour and affection: getting in the harvest, sending favourite cows to market, Madge's wranglings with recalcitrant stoves, and the reactions of Tom and Dave, the local farm workers, to the new arrivals.Read More