A Lasting LEGACY

Picture the scene: It is rural Britain and we are in the midst of World War II. All of our healthy male workforce is away, fighting in the war in France, and there simply aren’t enough people to run our farms. Farming is more important than ever as our nation is beginning to run out of food, and very little can be shipped in due to blockades.

Women have been asked to volunteer for the Women’s Land Army and leave the cities to come to work on our farms. These women become known as “Land Girls,” and their work is now recognised as being instrumental in keeping Britain fed during wartime.

There is a sense of chaos in the farming community: Most of these young female recruits come from cities and they haven’t got much of a clue about farming – and their training is largely inadequate, because you simply can’t teach a person every aspect of farming in just a couple of weeks of training.

Add to this chaos the pressure from the government to produce more crops. Britain was heavily reliant on imported food and we were barely receiving any food from overseas as the German U-boats were patrolling the seas, and farmers were being forced to plough up more and more land to grow