O n alternative Fridays I have to take calves to market. I usually arrive at market by 11.15am for an 11.45am start but these starts have been delayed recently because it's the time of year when people sell ewes and where I go to market, the ewes are sold before the calves. It's no good being impatient, so I lean on a gate and watch the sheep trade.

The market for sheep has never been better: driven by our currency that has helped exports, against the New Zealand currency that hasn't helped their exports. If you spot a sheep farmer today it's just about as close as you will ever get to seeing a happy farmer.

In today's market place they take a trailer load of sheep to market and they can't get all the money in the same trailer to get it home.

Yesterday I watched them selling the Clun Forest rams. Forty to 50 years ago, the Clun was the most popular breed of sheep in the UK. Now it's something of a rarity on farms. Traditionally I think there were more than 30 breeds of sheep in the UK and on top of that, endless permutations of crosses. These days the most popular cross is called a North Country Mule, which is a cross between a Blue Faced Leicester ram and a Swaledale ewe, but these are Scots Mules, Welsh Mules and just about everything else you can think of.

When the champion Clun ram came in to the ring yesterday I thought it would make about £300. It made £310. I thought to myself that I wasn't involved in sheep but I was spot on as a sheep valuer!

I was reading a history of the Clun's recently. On one day in 1928, I think it was, there were 22,000 sold on one day in Craven Arms. Two days later a different firm of auctioneers had a similar large sale in the same town.

In those days, all the sheep were walked in to the sale and the historians noted that there were so many flocks of sheep being driven down the valley from the Clun Forrest area to Craven Arms that shepherds arriving at junctions to the main road would sometimes have to hold their sheep back for 20 minutes before there was a gap in the procession sufficient for them to join.

Years ago I was in the area and had a day shearing Clun ewes within sight and sound of Clun church. There's not many of us left who can say that.

■ I was reminiscing about the passing of our village blacksmith recently and inevitably my mind doesn't just stop there, it goes on and remembers stories of long ago that were passed down.

They were quite remarkable in the fun involved, given that all those years ago the life of a farm labourer and his family would be so difficult and the farmer employer would have a huge hold over a man, as almost all of them lived in a cottage that was tied to the job.

Step over the line and job and home could be gone in two weeks' time. But despite that, they did have fun and here is one of the stories.

At the other end of the village to the blacksmith was a cottage that had with it three acres or so of ground. For the time, that ground was, compared with the lot of the farm worker, riches beyond belief.

If life was hard, and it was, there would be some envy and resentment – and the lucky man who had the bit of ground wasn't particularly nice anyway.

Every year this man would watch the progress of the hay harvest on the farms around the village. Most of these farms were of 400 or 500 acres and might employ five men.

As the hay harvest was drawing to a close he would get someone to mow his hay crop and over the following days he would turn it twice a day by hand. With immaculate timing it would be ready just as everyone else had finished, so it had become traditional for most of the men in the village to go to his field after tea with pitch forks, they called them pickles around here, and gather it up by hand and carry it forkful by forkful to the barn and put it safely in to the dry.

It might sound an impossible job in today's mechanical world but there might be 10 or 12 of them and in three or four hours of very hard work they would have the job done.

They would all be paid on the night and it became tradition for them all to walk the mile or so to the nearest pub and no doubt they would drink all the money they had earned that evening. But why not? and good luck to them.

But one year things didn't turn out as expected. When they lined up to be paid, the pay was less than the year before. The resentment and envy festered to the surface and harsh words were exchanged. The man with the field wasn't to be moved – he had all sorts of excuses and it wasn't the usual jolly crowd that made its way to the pub that night.

Instead of the drink and the company lightening their demeanor, they became more morose and when they walked back down the lane at 10pm, revenge was in the air.

Unfortunately for the man with the field, it was a beautiful moonlit night. The labourers paused at his gateway to collect their pitch forks, looking at the cleared field and smelling the new hay sweet and safe in the barn.

Into the field they went and over the next three hours they carried all the hay back out of the barn and put it back in the rows in the field just exactly as it had been when they arrived that evening.

You can only imagine the reaction of the man with the field when he went to the gate next morning. He must have done what is sometimes described as a double take. His mind must have gone through a rapid sequence: who did this; why did they do it; what am I going to do now; and more importantly, what's the weather forecast?

He had to go from cottage to cottage seeking help. Everyone would be expecting him but they would have made him grovel. And there would have been the matter of payment to decide.

The hay was returned safely to the barn that night, none the worse for its adventures. The men had two nights in the pub that week, and a good story to tell, too.