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Les Birch turns 90 this
week and just a couple of days after that he will be enjoying the
40th Sellindge Steam Fair, on his land, manning steam engines and
keeping an eye on things.

After years working with steam
traction engines on farms, and later tractors, he has a magical
sense of when an engine is working well, or not, but while his love
of those engines runs deep, it is the love and companionship of his
wife, 89-year-old Bernice, that is most strong within him. The
couple were courting in the period leading up to the war and she
waved him off when he went to serve with the Kent Yeomanry. She
then had to endure five years with little communication as he
suffered and starved in a series of prison camps in eastern Europe
and she served with the Land Army in Lancashire.

He told the Express: "I was in 10
different camps from France to Poland. I was on a long march in a
the long march out, doing 700 miles and sleeping in wheat fields. I
was at Birkenau, near Auschwitz.

"We knew what was going on, the
thing was we were laying the railway lines to it. You could see in
the distance the coloured suits they had to wear. It was the most
atrocious place I have ever been in my life."

Bernice’s love endured and the
couple were reunited at Ashford station after the war, although Les
had to serve for a while longer - grossly underweight at just seven
stone.

They were married in 1946.

There have been Birches farming at
Hope Farm, also known as Gibbon’s Brook, since 1786, trhough five
generations, and looking through the ledgers from Les’s early days
as a contractor reveals a litany of farms that are no longer part
of the landscape, including Park Farm in Folkestone, various farms
under the Channel Tunnel works, including Longport, and Coolinge
Farm, where the Golden Valley is now, and Bargrove, which was
eventually developed by Les’s family and sits opposite Folkestone
Rugby Club.

Les said: "Tractors changed a hell
of a lot. Here my family had 250 acres but the economy closed in
and to keep themselves solvent they had to hive off some of it.
When I started we had bicycles with solid wheels and when we went
steam ploughing in Folkestone we would get up at 4am, walk to
Folkestone to start at 7am and then not get back until dark. Now
you have a few blokes farming thousands of acres."

In fact, today’s latest tractors
are fitted with GPS autopilots, that will guide the tractors around
the field, ploughing perfect furrows.

But if you want to see how it was
once done, when agriculture was the largest employer in the country
and not banking, head to Hope Farm, Sellindge, from May 23 to Mary
25, all day.

As well as steam engines there will
be heavy horses, motorbikes, vintage cars and more.