My father, John Bowden, a hard-working, hard-living livestock farmer, who has died aged 101, always held the view that pulling together was better than ploughing a lone furrow.
He was proud to have been involved in setting up an agricultural co-operative in his local area. It had genuinely benefited its members over the years, he said. In winter 1962 a handful of farmers from the sheep- and cattle-breeding area of north Cumberland (as it was then) met in secret in the back room of the Conservative club at Haltwhistle, on the Cumbria-Northumberland border. They had heard that a southern-based trading company planned to set up a co-op in their area. In a pre-emptive strike, the northerners decided to start one of their own.
Calling itself West Tyne Farmers, the group combined members' buying power to cut prices on items such as livestock feed, fertiliser, fuel and seeds. John agreed to be the group's chairman, a post he held for its first 17 years. Since it began, West Tyne Farmers has steadily maintained a membership of about 30. It is admired as a successful example of a small buyers' co-op, unobtrusive yet effective.
John was born in Gateshead, then in County Durham. The Bowdens were city folk – mainly accountants. But at harvest in 1926, aged 14, John started work as a "farm laddie", an apprentice at Hardriding farm, near Hexham in Northumberland. He received no pay, just his keep. By 1935, he was considered reliable enough to be granted the tenancy of Wydon Eals, a 500-acre mixed farm in the picturesque South Tyne valley. Initially his meagre income came from rabbits sold to a travelling butcher, small amounts of cream from the house cow, and potatoes. In due course he ran a Limousin bull with a herd of hardy suckler cows and bred Blackface sheep.
Away from farming John was generous and sociable. He was always first to the bar, often the last to leave it. He had massive hands with palms like stottie cakes and fingers as thick as Cumberland sausages, and he liked to spread them out on a pub table and challenge other regulars to arm-wrestling bouts.
He lacked a formal education, but admired Robert Burns and taught himself the Scot's poems by reciting them as he walked behind his horses or rode on a tractor. The rhythm of farm work, he said, helped him to remember the lines.
When he reached 100, he was asked by a local television reporter for the secret of his longevity. He replied: "I've probably eaten too much, I've probably drunk too much and I've probably worked too hard. But I've been lucky – and I've survived."
John was predeceased by his wife, Christine, whom he married in 1942. He is survived by two sons, Ian and me, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.