Wicklewood farmer Basil Cook has recently clocked up 70 years in the agricultural industry.
When his father suddenly died, Basil, then only 14 years old, took over the running of the family's Vicarage Farm at Wicklewood.
In his first month, wages for the five men and a boy employed on the farm came to a total of £37 2s 11d.
The cowman, who worked seven days a week, was the highest paid earning 38s a week, while the head horseman was on £1 15s 6d.
There were nine dairy farms in the village then, he recalled.
Now, of course, you have to go miles to find one. Five years later, and at the age of 19, Basil hired another farm in the village, and later acquired it to add to his acreage.
He remembers buying a short wheel-base Sunbeam car and converting it to pull a binder, and he still remembers his first tractor, an Allis B, which arrived in 1940.
During the Second World War he was a member of the Home Guard, and in 1955 he married Jo.
Basil was chairman of South Norfolk Council for seven years, and a parish councillor and church warden for half a century.