A bachelor farmer in Upper Wharfedale, who worked hard and long, began each day by drinking a basinful of warm fat. He died of old age.

I'm not suggesting a return to old-style eating, which would be unsuited to an age when machines do most of the hard work and shedding weight is a major health problem.

Yet at a time of adulterated, low-calorie, prepackaged food, I listened enthralled as a fellside farmer recalled the real farmhouse fare.

This was not as "fancy" as innumerable television cooks would have you believe. "Half of 'em wouldn't knaw which end of a cow to milk." Country fare was satisfying but "in t'auld days there were some terrible practitioners."

The first thing a man seeking employment on a farm inquired about was food. "He'd 'appen be content with a little less brass if he knew he was having one or two good meals each day."

We got on to the subject of geese, which provided a nourishing if fatty repast and also yielded lots of grease. He remembered his mother rubbing goose-grease on his chest just before he went to bed. "Tha greased thi clogs an' all wi' it. Down through t'lace holes. It stopped watter getting in."

The talk switched to "butching" pigs. There was a time when every farmer kept a pig or two for family use. Each district had a pig-killer who did his job, then returned a while later to cut up the carcass.

It is said that an apprentice was making a bad job of cleaving the suspended body of a peak. His boss said: "Go easy, lad - or thou'll hev both lugs on one side."

Cutting up was a gory business. There were no refrigerators and a family found itself with a lot of pork. The shoulders, hams and flitches were put in salt "for a fortneet or three week or summat like that."

In the days when farming families were neighbourly, pieces of pork were distributed and in due course, when the neighbours had their pigs slaughtered, they reciprocated. "By swapping back'ard and forrard, you had fresh pork nearly all t'time."

It's your stomach that holds your back up. Porridge (usually spoken of as "poddish") was a staple food. Oatmeal was delivered by the hessian sackful. "Then we must hev gitten better off or summat, for we git Quaker Oats."

Before he went to school, mother doled out some porridge in "a basin wi' three blue rings round it. (I keep coming across bits o' broken porridge basins outside). When thou'd had thi porridge, thou supped thi' tea out o' t'same basin."

It was "just same" at dinner-time (which posh folk call lunchtime). "Thou had thi taties an' meat an' stuff on a plate. And then mother would put thi rice or semolina pudding on t'same plate. Thou didn't have owt fancy like having two plates."

As the pudding spread to the side of the plate, a brown ring was visible. "Pudding had shoved what were left o' t'gravy to t'outside. Thou were telled to eat it up. It were aw-reight."

My friend had little respect for modern bacon. He was brought up at a time when a bacon-eater had fat dribbling from either side of his or her mouth. "Folk who buy bacon and ham today don't knaw what real bacon and ham is. But if thou hasn't had it, tha doesn't knaw, dost ta?"

There was more "body" in bacon. "In them days they kept pigs for a birthday", by which he meant that a pig was not killed when it was less than a year old. "They're not so old now. There isn't such things as bacon pigs. They're porkers now."

To him, modern bacon was "summat like brown paper." And ham! As my friend spoke, I thought of that glorious passage from the writings of J B Priestley, when he described the elements of an old-time, West Riding tea.

Modern ham's nowt like the stuff they had then. "Thou gits it sliced and then they put it in fancy cellophane stuff. It all goes wet. When we had ham sandwiches, yon ham was twice as thick as t'breead (bread).

"Ham thou gits today is like pages out o' t'Bible, it's that thin. If thou holds it up, thou can see through it. I marvel that they've found a machine to cut it that thin. And it tastes o' nowt."

There was an intermission, as some tea was brewed. He was getting "clagged" with ceaseless talk. He drank deeply, then said: "Toast." What could be wrong with toast?

"They put thin bread in these toasting machines. We have yan. It's aw reight but it dries it reight through. Proper toast is made out o' bread thou's cut thick and then put to t'fire on a toasting fork. It just burnt t'outside. Tha swapped it round and did t'other outside."

Then thou "ladled it wi' butter. Thou didn't put butter on and scrape it off. By - wouldn't I give owt for summat like that today?"

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