November 28, or the "November Term" and May 28, or the "May Term" are traditionally the dates on which farm leases begin and end, or farm staff start and finish their employment.
To be strictly correct. the November and May Terms, or Martinmas and Whitsun, to give them their correct names, actually fall on November 11th and May 15th, but over the years they have been pushed back to the 28th of their respective months.
Nowadays farm staff aren't so bound by the old term dates and more-or-less come and go after working an agreed period of notice. While the old custom of hiring staff for a new term of employment to begin on the term dates is falling out of favour, the old ways of changing farms on those dates, particularly rented ones, are still practiced. So this is the period for farm sales.
I gave up the tenancy of my hill farm at the May Term and well remember that it was a very emotional time for me, particularly when I sold my livestock.
The previous summer I sold my cattle privately to a livestock dealer. Then I sold my flock of breeding sheep through an auction mart in late winter.
While I was sorry to see my herd of 70 beef cows and calves, and all the replacement young-stock go, I have to admit to having a tear in my eye when I sold the sheep. It wasn't so much that I was parting with them, but rather the realisation that my way of life was about to change forever. That night an eerie silence fell over the farm.
Traditionally the livestock would have been sold at the farm sale, with the sheep displayed in their lots in the sheep pens and other temporary penning, and the cattle on display in pens in the cattle sheds. The cattle would then have been sold through a makeshift auction ring - but nowadays health and safety considerations have persuaded many to sell their livestock through an auction mart.
Machinery and small tools on the other hand are sold on the farm at the farm sale. Volunteers had to be organised to power-wash the equipment and lay it out in neat rows in a field. All the small tools had to be bundled into lots, taken from the workshop and laid out on display in one of the large cattle sheds.
On the day, it was very hard for me to watch my equipment and tools - thirty-one years of memories - go under the auctioneer's hammer.
Farm sales in themselves are harmless, fun days out for the rural Nosey Parkers. They are an opportunity to openly inspect the land and buildings of a farm that you could never quite see properly from the roadside. More importantly, farm sales are social gatherings where all kind of rural gossip is traded.
Friends of the outgoing farmer come from far and wide to give him or his widow a helping hand, and those extra bids can fairly push up the size of the nest egg at the end of the day. Farm sales can also be an opportunity to purchase a badly-needed piece of equipment cheaply, although sadly bargains are few and far between and many end up regretting paying too much for somebody else's junk.
I remember once attending a farm sale and buying a tractor-driven compressor for blowing up tyres, only to be told by the farm-worker: "That's as much use as the teats on a bull". He was right - it never worked, and lay long-forgotten in my workshop until the day it was sold for a handsome price at my farm sale.
There can also be valuable vintage farm equipment for collectors to bid for.
A record price for a vintage tractor was paid recently at a sale in Norfolk where a collection of nearly 200 rare and vintage tractors - thought to be the largest in Britain - went under the auctioneer's hammer.
Among the highlights was a 1918 Holt 75 - the only surviving example of its kind used by the British Army during the First World War - which sold for £150,000. Among a number of other high-priced tractors was a 1954 Marshall MP6 that fetched £80,500, a new record for a conventional "vintage" tractor.
My tractors made more modest prices, but at the end of the day I had a very successful, but emotional farm sale.
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