Original Old Guernsey Farming Pictures and Photos.

Guernsey has always been famous for both its agricultural and its horticultural farming industry, and as this has been going on for many many decades I thought it would be nice to share with you a selection of old Guernsey farming photos that a friend who grew up on the island has agreed to loan to me. Many of these pictures feature farming equipment that will very soon vanish if not at least preserved in the form of pictures.

I hope these old farming tools are kept as long as possible in museums, but the sad thing is that many of these implements have already been allowed to rust away in fields and barns, and the best we can hope for is to see reproductions of them, or as in this case galleries of photos of them.

I am sure you will find these photos a fabulous nostalgia trip of times gone by, especially seeing men and women working in the fields in the old fashioned way with horses, pitchforks, threshers etc, and building haystacks the original way without the use of modern machinery.

 I would like to thank our good friend Charlie Browning (now in his 70's), for allowing me to use these photos from his personal collection. Charlie grew up on Guernsey and comes from a farming background here on the island, in fact what he doesn't know about old style farming probably isn't worth knowing.

Charlie is capable of both putting together, and naming every part of a horse harness for every aspect of work they may have been needed for in the farming days where horses were used more than machinery. As I only recently discovered, there were many different types of harness used on working horses that differed according to what work the horse was being used for at the time. In addition to this Charlie is able to name every piece of old style farming equipment pictured here, and explain exactly what it was used for, and how to use it step by step. This information should be preserved before it vanishes altogether as the older generations gradually die out.

My favourite historical photo in this article has to be the one that heads this hub, mainly because I am fascinated by the idea of using cattle rather than horses to pull the carriages of the era. An amazing image of a sadly bygone era.

I hope you all enjoyed this blast from the past as much as I did.