Thrifty advice amid a drift of snowdrops

My fetish began when I retired from farming and my wife brought a few clumps of snowdrops down from the farm the following spring to remind her of her former garden. They are best transplanted when they are flowering, or in the "green" as gardeners say.

Those few clumps looked lonely on our large lawn, so I asked several former farming neighbours and friends if they could spare me some of theirs from their gardens or woods. That was when I noticed that different farms tend to have different strains. Some flower earlier than others, there are tall ones and small ones, some have dark leaves and others are lighter coloured, there are different flowers with different petal arrangements and colours, while some have two flowers on a stem.

While there are 20 species of wild snowdrops in the world, they are not native to the UK. Over the years plant breeders have created hundreds of different varieties, so collectors are spoilt for choice.

Some rare varieties sell for as much as £360 for a single bulb, but my passion is not driven by money. I love snowdrops for their beauty, and the fact that they are one of the first flowers to appear in the spring to brighten up the garden and they last for several weeks. Knowing where the different clumps came from reminds me of the friends and neighbours who gave them.

Anyway, I confessed my secret to the farmer I was visiting and asked permission to take a few clumps from his woods next spring.

He kindly agreed, and told me that there were several different varieties to look out for, and where to find them.

More interestingly, he told me that his grandfather used to employ thirty women and girls in the spring to pick bunches of those snowdrops, that were then sent by train to London to be sold at the flower market.

I couldn't help but admire the thriftiness of that generation of farmers, and it reminded me of my own grandfather. He farmed on Sanday, one of the outer Orkney isles, during the Depression of the 20s and 30s. As the name suggests, the land on that island is predominantly sand, and it was over-run with rabbits in those days.

My grandfather protected his grass and crops from those ravenous, nibbling pests by surrounding the farm with rabbit-proof fencing, that had the bottom of the fine wire mesh dug into the ground to prevent the rabbits burrowing underneath it.

In the late afternoon, a gate would be opened to allow rabbits to come in off the links to graze a field. Later on in the evening, my grandfather, assisted by his farm-workers and their young boys, would slowly walk across that field in a straight line, carrying a long-net stretched between them that caught the rabbits as they tried to flee back to the links.Those rabbits were subsequently gutted and skinned, and their carcasses sold to the navy to feed the hordes of hungry sailors stationed on the warships anchored in Scapa Flow. The skins were also sold.

I also remember, years ago, an elderly local farmer's wife who had several large holly bushes in her garden from which she cut berry-bearing sprigs that were sold to local florists to make Christmas wreaths.

Even I succumbed to gathering and marketing nature's bounty as a schoolboy when I used to gather rosehips that were taken to school to be sold to a dealer for badly-needed extra pocket money.

It's amazing how many things growing wild in the countryside have a small value, but are overlooked or ignored by most in these more affluent times.

In times of real hardship a rabbit "for the pot" could be a life saver for a hungry family, while selling flowers, wild mushrooms or wildflowers could bring in small amounts of valuable cash.

My grandfather used to say: "Keep your eyes peeled for any chance to make money, and when you do, make every penny a prisoner."

Those simple words of wisdom came from a man who had experienced real hardships and knew the true value of money.