Parsonage Farm III – kids, cat, chick and children

Arnold William Pym’s entrancing shots of Parsonage Farm’s animals: goat kids encounter a cat, and a cat is fazed by a chick!

Arnold William Pym, chief accountant for Imperial Tobacco in Bristol, had a talent for filming animals and children as evidenced in his home movies. Here he has obtained delightful shots of the farm’s nanny goat, her kids encountering a cat and a confident chick taking possession of a cat’s saucer of milk.

With his wife Jenny (nee Zaaijer), Arnold Pym bought Parsonage Farm, Publow, near Pensford, Bristol and there they created a garden of note and brought up four children – Michael (b.1936), Frances (b.1938), John (b.1944) and Andrew (b.1946). The nanny goat ‘Flita’ and her kids seen here were kept for milk during WWII, the Pyms also keeping chickens (Silkies), geese, ducks, rabbits and maintaining a large vegetable garden. Jenny, with childhood memories of WWI (when her family in the Netherlands had hidden a relative in the attic and silver in a wall cavity), had stocked up on salt and sugar before the outbreak of WWII so that she had plenty for preserving food.