ENGLISH rural life in the middle years of the 20th Century is vividly brought to life in a new book by a Worcestershire farmer.

Growing Up On The Farm is written by David Townsend, who was born in 1945, a few months after the end of the Second World War, to parents living at Gaines Farm, Knightwick, near to Worcestershire's border with Herefordshire.

The book is a vivid evocation of farm life as it was lived in the 50s and 60s, and the author describes in great detail how the livestock was cared for and the crops tended in those days.

The book includes chapters with titles such as Haymaking and Harvesting, Fruit Picking and The Dairy Herd, featuring drawings of the tools and equipment used for each special task.

The author's purpose is not simply a nostalgic look back at the ways of a bygone age.

As he says: "I saw many of these historic experiences being lost, skills that in a day to come may need to be reintroduced for us to survive.

"So I felt the urge to put pen to paper and relive those years."

As a result the book will be of considerable interest to anyone who wants to farm in the "old-fashioned" way, as Mr Townsend goes into some depth about the methods and techniques of animal husbandry and cropgrowing.

From the Fruit Picking chapter, for example, he includes painstaking descriptions of how his father used to graft young saplings, and of the special technique used to put up ladders safely against fruit trees, and to pick fruit once up there.

Again, in Shepherding, Mr Townsend tells readers precisely how to shear a sheep, and to help a ewe give birth.

Growing Up On The Farm is published by Authors OnLine.

It is available from Mr Townsend by sending a cheque or postal order for £9.99 plus £1.50 postage and packing, made out to D F Townsend, and sent to 4 Amos Gardens, Harley Warren, Worcester WR4 0NW.