Chapter 01 - Family and Farming

Roy and I, along with sons Graham (15) and Philip (13), went to live at Mulfra in 1981 with Roy’s Uncle Joe. Joe’s wife Annie had died only three days before the contracts were going to be signed for them to buy a bungalow at Heamoor. A buyer for Mulfra had been found. Of course Uncle Joe, who came here in 1964 from the family farm at Treassowe, did not then want to move and asked us to come up here to live and look after him. We packed up and moved in. Joe died in 1983.

To me it was a dream place to live; there was space and the old house, plenty of land to keep our horses and some cattle from Roy’s father who was giving up farming at his farm in Ludgvan. We felt very privileged and have worked hard to get and to keep the place in some sort of order. Roy also worked at various jobs, but his first love was working with granite and he was involved at one point with the development of a large old granite house and later a hotel, Acton Castle, on the cliffs near Prussia Cove, which was being converted into flats. Being a farmer was handy for doing that job because he used to take buckets of dung with him to mix with water, and then brush over the new granite to encourage the lichen and mosses to grow so as to blend in with the old stone.

Graham left home at eighteen and is now a Business Development Manager for an independent contract catering company who, for the second successive year, are on The Sunday Times List of The Top 100 Companies to Work For. He lives in the Cotswolds with his wife Valerie and their children William (13), who plays rugby and wants to be a film director and Ellena (11), who excels in her school work and plays football in the under twelves team for Gloucestershire and is in the Gloucestershire School of Excellence. Valerie’s father, Alan, went from Scotland to work on a tea plantation in India where he met Helen, formerly VanIngen. The VanIngens originated from Holland and owned the most prestigious taxidermist business in India, based in Mysore. There is a huge collection of trophies in special air-conditioned rooms in Mysore Palace. The family also had a coffee estate further south.

Philip stayed local and married farmer’s daughter Hannah Bone whose parents, Mollie and Charles, have a dairy farm at Bosiliack. Philip and Hannah have three children: Sophie (11) also excels at school and wants to be a maths teacher; Matthew John (7), whose passion is football and the computer, and Millie (5) who has won many rosettes showing the show pony Bobbie Boy. Philip works for Tony and David Ellis, driving massive tractors and at times lorries after passing his HGV grade 1. He is very well known in the farming community in this part of the county.

My mother lives at St. Ives and for several years lived at Bosporthennis, where my great grandparents lived, it is the nearest farm to us northwest over Mulfra Hill. My father died suddenly in January aged 85. He was a true St. Ives man and was admired and respected by all who knew him. I miss my dad, especially his phone calls: “Hello, Mon, Dad here.” Or when I phoned him: “Hello, Dad, your favourite daughter here.” As he only had one daughter I didn’t have any competition!! My father was the son of a fisherman and didn’t really understand farming but he would have a joke when Roy complained about the cost of things, “You’ll have to sell a cow!” was his favourite reply. I have a brother, Kevin, who is quite well known locally for his singing and guitar playing. He lives in St. Ives with his wife Elizabeth.

Roy and I both have farming in our blood and I think you need to have that to truly understand that farming is a way of life. Farming is going through a very bad time. People like us, with smallholdings, are few and far between and I can see the time coming (not quite yet) when we will say we’ve had enough. Our calves are bringing the same money now, or even less, as they did twenty years ago; but have our costs stayed the same? Maybe it will be because we are no longer able, but I think it will be the bureaucracy, rules and the complicated Single Farm Payments that will finish us off. Government interference finished our B&B trade and I can see our farm going the same way.

Monica Olds