THE sight of farmers clipping their sheep is another traditional rural sight which is becoming gradually less common.

But back in 1976 the custom of farmers in Farndale joining their neighbours to help each other with the seasonal clip was still going strong.

Some of the men pictured here at Bitch-a-Green Farm near Church Houses were using the traditional hand shears to clip John Wilson's flock of 350 ewes.

This task was an arduous one - a team of ten people in all worked for ten hours to get through 250 of the sheep.

Mr Wilson told the Evening Press that "clipping days", where neighbours helped each other, involved no pay for the helpers, just four good meals a day.

The paper also noted that machines had almost entirely replaced hand shears, but though the traditional method was much slower, some farmers thought it also meant the clipper was much less likely to get a "bit near" to the sheep.

Presumably farmer Bert Harper, from Skiplam Grange, Nawton, took a different view, for he was pictured in May 1958, and then again almost a year later with young helper Raymond Gamble, and both times Mr Harper was using electric shears.

Another long tradition in sheep farming is dipping, an essential part of disease control.

Our pictured scene, which seems to be from the Malton area, shows the animals being given the full treatment.

Updated: 12:21 Friday, August 09, 2002