IN these days of early specialisation, when children are asked to map out their future careers when they are barely into their teens, it is sometimes hard to remember that there was a time when Dales folk could turn a dab hand to almost anything.

It was far from unusual for a man to do a bit of tin mining when metal prices were high, fill in bad times with a little drystone walling when the market dipped, lend a hand at lambing every spring and work on the hay every summer.

Meanwhile, his wife would be bringing up the kids, tending to the hens, taking in a bit of laundry from the Big House or the pub down the road, hand-feeding a couple of orphan lambs and, on a Saturday, dressing the village church or chapel with flowers for the Sunday services.

Times were hard but they produced an equally hardy breed of folk, with calluses on their hands but neighbourliness in their hearts, and there are not too many of them left.

Which is why it was a delight to meet Holmes Gott, a wiry, sprightly 93-year-old who still lives the other side of a nine acre meadow from the house where he was born and who knows more about the good old days of "Coalin" than anyone else alive. For Coalin, read Cowling. It's the way the locals say it.

"Not many people passed this way when I was a lad," he said as lorries thundered past the windows of Nan House Farm on the notorious Cross Hills to Colne road. "That out there were more of a track then. But, funnily enough, it was that track that first got me into business."

And here began the long story of a lifetime of hard work. Or, as Holmes himself puts it: "Variety is the spice of life - and I've surely had my share of that."

The Gott family already had a reputation for being jacks of many trades when Holmes was born round about midnight on New Year's Eve 1910 (he is still not sure if his birthday is December 31 or January 1).

The family comprised farmers and builders. Controversially, I suspect, they had worked on the village chapel and built the Black Bull pub, two institutions which stood in staunch rivalry to one another.

When Holmes was 12, the old West Riding County Council decided that the track between Cross Hills and Colne should be replaced by a "proper" road. And they were desperately short of horses and carts to take away earth and deliver road stone.

"Dad, can I have a horse and cart, please dad?" begged young Holmes and so he became a carter for three years. It was the beginning of a long and varied business career that continues to this day - although he no longer charges for his labours.

When the road was finished, he became a builder's apprentice in Cross Hills becoming a specialist on mill chimneys - "Coalin's Fred Dibnah, that were me."

In the 1930s, he married farmer's daughter Ella who hailed from exotic Addingham - they met when they were dealing in pigs - and in 1949 he set up as a builder in his own right.

Here, he was able to combine many of his skills because British farming was going through a post-war boom and new hygiene rules insisted that milking parlours be built and maintained to meticulous standards. Holmes' little business boomed along with it and he and later his son David became experts in farm buildings.

As he slowed down a little, Holmes developed a hobby. Being a skilled carpenter, he was asked to make a wheelbarrow for a local child. Then he had to make one for the boy's brother, who was naturally jealous.

Then someone thought that these dinky barrows would make a nice garden ornament. Within a couple of years, Holmes had another business going and his barrows were being exported as far away as America and France.

He was holding weekly sales in Skipton Town Hall until officialdom stepped in: the fire brigade ruled that Holmes' barrows and other garden furniture were a fire hazard and he was chucked out. But when one door closes ...

His wife, Ella, had died in the 1980s and then a neighbour fell ill. And that's how he first made contact with Manorlands, a pioneering Sue Ryder hospice at Oxenhope, near Keighley.

Holmes still had a cellar full of ornamental wheelbarrows - and he started selling them for charity to support the hospice.

He is still at it, aged 93, and has raised many thousands of pounds - he cannot say how much because he hasn't kept check. He has also donated £2,500 to the cancer unit at Airedale General Hospital and David runs an annual vintage tractor rally to raise money for Manorlands.

This is all in the great tradition of the old time Dales. You work hard, do reasonably well, and then feel duty bound to pay something back to people less fortunate than you. How long such traditions will last only time will tell.