Derek Griffiths

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Summary

Based on the interview recorded on 12 March 2007. It reflects the interviewee’s life and memories at that time.

Born in 1932 at Westfields, Hereford, Derek spent his life building one of the area’s most industrious mixed farms from the ground up — and his memories make for a remarkable portrait of post-war agriculture in the county.

Derek began his farming career working alongside his father, H.R. Griffiths, a pig keeper and kitchen waste contractor who collected swill from cafes, milk bars, and schools across Hereford. In 1953, the family bought Lower Little Hope Farm at Mordiford — a run-down 140-acre holding covered in anthills that his father renamed Hope Springs, declaring there wasn’t much hope in the original name.

The early years were tough. Derek tackled thousands of anthills per acre using a Ferguson tractor, harvested corn with a borrowed binder, and gradually transformed exhausted land into a highly fertile farm by spreading pig muck across every acre each year. The arrival of myxomatosis in 1954, he recalls, was “one of the best things that ever happened” — overnight, land along the woodland edges became productive again once the rabbit population collapsed.

Pigs financed everything initially, with the family eventually housing around 2,000 animals across multiple sites and cooking up to 50 tonnes of swill per week — a practice Derek describes as genuine, ahead-of-its-time recycling. Dairy followed: by 1980, he had built a closed herd of 120 Friesian cows, all home-bred.

Derek also speaks vividly of the farm’s natural life — nightingales singing from six or seven spots at once in the early years, grasshopper warblers in the woods, and fossils found in the fields. His one regret? Giving up cricket when the farm demanded his full attention.