Rob Foster and his wife Iris have moved from Newfield Grange Farm to a new house at Scosthrop, leaving their son Simon to attend to a historic farm.

The Fosters have been associated with Newfield for a century and a-half. Simon is the fifth generation of the family to take charge.

The Fosters hail from the head of Nidderdale, the source of much of the fresh water which feeds the taps of Bradford and its neighbours. Low Riggs, a remote moorside holding some three miles from Middlesmoor, was the family home for umpteen generations. It remains a farm, being the home of the Beecroft family.

The Fosters "flit" to Newfield Grange driving their livestock and with their worldly goods on a horse-drawn cart. They had the help of neighbours who stayed overnight and returned to Nidderdale on the following day.

Rob occasionally visits a place where his ancestors "scratted" and from which they moved to find more and better land in Malhamdale. He told me of a farmstead named Moorhouse that was even more remote. There, in the days when there were no distractions like television, and when dalesfolk spent more time in bed, a brother of Rob's great grandfather reared a family of ten.

Rob Foster, one of the best-known farming personalities of Craven, believes Newfield Grange farmhouse was the second building on the site. The nearby Newfield Hall, which has for many years catered for discerning visitors to the Dales, was built in 1856 by John Alcock, one of the founders of the Craven Bank.

A retired textile manufacturer, one of the celebrated Illingworths of Bradford, lived at Newfield and the hall was subsequently occupied by J W Morkill, who became Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding and found time to write a history of Malhamdale. Rob told me that he died "in pauperous circumstances." But that's another story.

Rob's father Tom was "a great sheep man". Tall and well-built, he was present when T H Taylor, the Skipton auctioneer, organised sheep sales at Malham. He also organised a scheme whereby sheep from Craven farms were given a winter holiday in the Eden Valley, travelling by rail from Bell Busk station. The switch of ground to a vale that opens like a giant fan between the Lake District and the northern Pennines benefited the sheep. During the winter they dined on root crops.

Tom frequented sheep sales held at Kirkby Stephen, Penrith and Hexham. It was following a trip to Hexham that he died. The sheep bought had to be driven to the railway station. They led Tom and his companions a merry chase, so that by the time he boarded the train he was breathless and perspiring. The compartment in the train was unheated. A serious chill led to pneumonia.

I got to know the Foster family through Methodism. Tom Foster and his family were regular worshippers at Airton chapel. My wife corresponded for many years with Florence, one of the daughters who married Don Harling, a Canadian airman she met at Leconfield during the Second World War. They made their home in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. In due course, they were to share a grave in the churchyard at Kirkby Malham.

When Florence had been widowed, we spent a holiday with her and, in the setting of a Canadian city, with its freeways and skyscrapers, entered a bungalow to find the walls adorned with pictures of Malhamdale and of Dales livestock.

A woman who as a girl had a quiet upbringing on a Dales farm was now driving confidently along multi-lane highways in the shadow of skyscrapers. She organised a trip to the Backwoods and took us to see Niagara Falls, where (some years ago) a dalesman, determined not to be impressed by the immense flow of water, remarked to his host: "There's nowt to stop it".

When Rob Foster took me on a tour of the farm, he described it as "handy" being "in a ring fence with hard council roads round it and another hard road running through the middle." The ground is medium loam overlying clay, which means it does not dry out quickly during a drought.

I heard of the dairy enterprise and was introduced to beef cattle that were a cross between dairy and beef animals that would be sold aged 18 months or two years.

We stood on the highest part of the farm, which turned out to be the crest of a drumlin, one of the innumerable round-topped hills (composed of material left when the local glacier had wiped its feet). Rob said a drumlin provided some good sound ground but it was difficult to cultivate. So steep were the sides that machinery had to be used with extreme care.

He yarned about the days when two Irishmen helped with the hay harvest, which meant that mother had "ten folk to feed". We concluded with a discussion about farming finance. Said Rob Foster: "There isn't much in our job - but it's interesting!"

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