Showtime once again for veteran steward

Les Donaldson has never missed a Stokesley Show and even two new hips, the last one fitted just last month, will not keep him away this year. It will be the 139th Stokesley Show.

"It has always been the event everyone in the town and the surrounding countryside looks forward to," he says.

"I have been a steward here for over 50 years and in my younger days I used to show farm produce and sheep. I was a mangle-wurzel champion. We used to grow some very good mangle-wurzels. I used to go out on the nights before the show selecting the best of the best. We also showed hay and corn samples, too, and had success with those as well."

Today, the Donaldson line is set to extend his distinguished record. Les's eldest son Graham shows his pedigree Holsteins and last year had the Supreme Dairy Champion. Daughter Karen is on the society council and grandson John (one of six grandchildren) is also involved through Stokesley Young Farmers' Club.

"My grandfather and father also served on the council of the society," says Les.

"The show has become much larger over the years and we now get over 20,000 coming each year to our permanent show field on the edge of the town.

"I remember when the show field was a series of smaller fields, like paddocks all with hedges, and we had a six-acre wood, called Crow Wood (ripped out in 1965). The show was then more or less in sections around the wood whereas now it is all held in one broad expanse."

This year as president of the Stokesley Agricultural Society, Les vividly recalls an episode when he was a junior steward. "Percy Dickens was a very austere man. He was the senior cattle steward at the time, a role I subsequently took on for many years.

"At one show, Percy had two very prominent gentlemen who wanted to do things their way. They wanted to put their cow in a prominent place, so that it could be as close as it could be to the judge.

"They had been at him and had tried to pressure him into allowing them to move it. Then, as they had decided they would move it without his clearance Percy simply said, 'Gentlemen, I'm just going to invite you to take your cow home'.

"He said to me afterwards, 'You have to look after the exhibitors, but the exhibitors also have to show respect

for the people who put the show on.'

"That has stuck in my mind all of the time I have been working on the show."

Les was born in 1934 and recalls what farming was like during wartime not far from a port and a steel-making centre which the Luftwaffe targeted.

"Of course, there was no show. Our farm at Viewley Hill, Great Busby had an army camp with a searchlight base. I can remember standing at the front door and watching the searchlights pick up the aircraft over Teesside.

"The German bombers came and the British aircraft went up to match them. We used to see all that was going on in the sky.

"You lived in fear all the time. I recall one night when there was shrapnel flying about and it was pinging on our Dutch barn roof. That was when we actually knew we were in a war."

There are several native breeds which started close to Stokesley – the Cleveland Bays, Shorthorns (County Durham) and Teeswaters – and Les tells of a recent increase in Dairy Shorthorn numbers.

"There is evidence of a little swing back to the Dairy Shorthorn, with quite a lot now in Chop Gate. But dairy numbers in this area are not what they were."

Les retired from the day-to-day running of the family farm 10 years ago with his wife Barbara and they now live in Great Ayton.

"It was the right time for me to go. I'm a big believer in young men having the opportunity to farm their way in their prime years.

"The farm had grown from the 161 acres when I started to approximately 300 acres when I finished.

"Now it runs to around 800 acres and is much more extensive to accommodate the family because all three of our sons – Graham, Paul and Howard – are farming together, along with my grandson John.

"They milk around 110 cows and grow wheat, barley, oil seed rape and maize. As a society, we are also very pro younger people and the council is now made up of a much younger age range than it used to be. It's not made up of old men, which is a good thing."

Les well remembers ploughing with Clydesdales before farm mechanisation came along. "It was hard work, then we got our first tractor, an old Standard Fordson. Mechanisation has been the greatest change in my lifetime, which has since been followed by computers."

The main street of Stokesley traditionally hosts a funfair from the Wednesday preceding to the Saturday night of the show.

The biggest problem in putting a show on now, so far as Les is concerned, is health and safety.

"It has put more obstacles in the way than anything else. It costs at least an additional couple of thousand pounds.

"But it's not all about money. It's the time and effort it all takes to partition things off, put up additional fencing and get people into the showfield."

Regardless of his qualms, Les is still very much in love with the show that is his highlight of the year, especially this year in his role as President.

But don't cross him or the stewards if you're showing your stock – otherwise you may be about to suffer a similar fate to the two dairy men from years ago.

CW 11/9/10