Magical memories of goose fair in days gone by

We went every year, to sell big cattle and buy little wild beasts fresh from Dartmoor and just weaned from their mothers.

The Christmas Fatstock Show in December was party time for the locals, a chance to show off their best animals, and an excuse to end up in the local hostelry.

But Goose Fair was the the highlight of the year and the place to make money.

It used to be all about selling geese and poultry in the build-up to Christmas, but by the 1980s and 1990s there was also a massive cattle sale. Buyers from "up country" – that's anywhere north of Bristol – came in their droves. They wanted big prime cattle, which they paid big prices for, so if you had anything really good you took it there that day, because the competition was fierce – and prices went through the roof.

One year we took a group of 18-month-old Friesian bullocks, to be finished over the winter, because with lambing coming up we needed the sheds. We also took two big prime cattle, a Charolais and a South Devon. The Charolais got second to top price on the day and the South Devon took top. That was a good day.

My impressions are of getting up really early, loading the cattle on to lorries, getting the children on to the school bus, then shooting into Tavistock to make sure everything was offloaded and sorted properly. It was a great day and it was always my "honour" to sell them because a young woman in the ring brought laughter and ribald comments and an extra pound or two.

No political correctness in those days, especially in the market, and we used to haggle about "luck pennies" but I was never sure who won.

Goose Fair was also the day when lots of teenagers disappeared from school at lunchtime, and never made it back in the afternoon, because there were fairground rides and stalls and lots of exciting things to tempt them till dark. There were also many anxious parents, wondering where they were, so late at night and what they were doing? No mobiles in those days either. And getting up for school the next day was the worst. Not ours of course.

Apparently Tavistock still sells poultry, but Nottingham has abandoned all pretence of being about geese and cattle, and turned the day into one big fun fair. I suppose that's a sign of the times, like agricultural shows, because there's more money in entertainment than there is in farming.

Oh well, another tradition gone.

*Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer now living near Ellesmere and with her husband Peter is part of CowCash-UK