The great British countryside.
The setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War.
Churchill called it the "frontline of freedom".
It was a battle fought by the farmers of Britain.
When war broke out two-thirds of all Britain's food was imported.
Now it fell under threat from a Nazi blockade.
The government turned to farmers to double home-grown food production.
If they failed Britain could be starved into surrender.
The war started on day one for farmers.
They were told, "You have to turn this land into a food-producing nation again."
Now historian Ruth Goodman,
and archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn
are turning the clock back to the 1940s.
Over the next year they'll work Manor Farm in Hampshire,
as it would have been during the Second World War.
MAN: Morning.
This time they face the conditions of 1940...
...when Nazi bombers brought death and destruction to Britain.
The team must deal with rationing...
That, in total, is your fat ration.
That's particularly hard to make last the week.
...make use of every last resource...
This was an experiment. I can see why people hadn't picked it before.
...and confront temptation round every corner...
- You're well on your way to becoming... BOTH: A black marketeer.
...as the race begins to beat the shortages...
Ooh! Whoa!
...on the Wartime Farm.
(Air-raid siren)
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll
(Bicycle bell)
In 1940, German bombers were targeting Britain's docks.
Destroying food imports by sea and by air.
Britain's farmers were ordered to plough up an extra two million acres of land.
But with so many fields growing food for people,
there weren't enough to grow food for animals as well.
- (Groans and exhales) ALEX: Oh.
- (Grunts) - Oh, nearly.
Cows are getting hungry.
Hallelujah!
If you hit the lever and get these belts running...
Alex and Peter are preparing feed for their livestock.
It was cereals like this that were now in short supply.
Peter's milling up a barley meal.
It's a classic feed for feeding anything, from pigs to cows.
But, of course, barley could be used to make beer.
It could be used to feed human beings.
So it was considered a waste, really, to feed it to livestock.
If we were to turn that into flour, make it into bread,
we'd feed a lot more people than you could animals.
Yep.
This competition for land was debated at the highest levels of government.
The Ministry of Agriculture had been granted emergency powers to control farming.
And they now told farmers the time had come to make a difficult decision.
PETER: This is a map of Manor Farm, is it? - Yep, this is Manor Farm.
The Ministry of Agriculture are breathing down our necks
asking us to grow more food for human consumption.
But essentially, looking at this map,
there's not a lot of room on our farm for growing wheat.
- You can't see the map for animals. - No. Exactly.
Wartime planners knew they could feed more people with a field of wheat,
than with a herd of cattle,
and encouraged farmers to drastically cut their livestock numbers.
You've got to make a call on what can stay and what can go.
If we're gonna keep anything, it really ought to be the dairy herd.
The Ministry is saying the priority should be milk production,
and then all the other livestock only comes after that.
In which case we've got to lose the beef herd.
So these have all got to come out.
If we're ploughing up the grassland we're not going to have it to feed the sheep.
So I think they're gonna have to go.
I mean, basically, pigs eat the same food as people.
So they're in direct competition.
So I think they ought to go.
- So we've got a few chickens... - Yeah.
...and a dairy herd. - That's all that's left.
Millions of livestock were slaughtered in the wartime cull.
But they weren't the only ones affected.
It does beg the question - with no sheep on the farm...
...what happens to little Henry dog?
It's a tough decision. We're thinking, "Are we gonna eat enough?
Is it people who are gonna be starving?"
You look at that thing in the corner and think, "You're eating food I could be eating."
It's a tough one, isn't it? Imagine being in this situation.
You've got the faithful sheepdog you've had all your life - grown up with it.
Many people felt it was a kindness to put them down, rather than pets starving to death.
We just can't get rid of Henry,
cos then we will have lost our most intelligent member of the team!
- We've gotta keep the guy. ALEX: It will be a little bit too much.
- There he is. PETER: He will be useful. We'll need him.
But we still have to try and find a way to keep a dairy herd going throughout the winter months.
(Mooing)
Come on, cows.
The Ministry of Agriculture wanted dairy farmers to feed their cows
on a foodstuff packed with protein.
Silage.
Silage is made by starving freshly-cut grass of oxygen,
preserving its nutrients for feeding, over winter.
But with so many fields being ploughed up, grass wasn't always available.
So the boys must find an alternative.
- Where exactly is it we're going? - We're going to a farm that grows sugar-beet.
- Sugar-beet. OK. - Yeah, so get yourself comfy.
It's a bit of a drive.
And I have to say I haven't quite mastered the gearbox on this old boy.
- (Gears grind) - No...
So we're going to go and pick up sugar-beet, yeah?
Well, no, not actually sugar-beet itself. We're going to pick up sugar-beet tops.
You're gonna have to start swotting up.
Leaflet number four from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries,
it tells us all about sugar-beet tops and making silage.
Fresh sugar-beet tops are equivalent in feeding value to the same weight of swedes. Wow.
And in normal weather they may remain fit to feed for several weeks.
- Yes, but... - But...
"If the supply of tops is too great to feed fresh,
the surplus should be ensiled for later use."
That's the idea, Peter.
If we make a silage clamp or we get some kind of drum we can get the silage in,
we can use that feed all the way through the winter.
How many sugar-beet tops will fit in this car?
Well, I don't know, I'm sure we'll...
The glove box is quite roomy.
...get a handful!
Sugar-beet was a vital wartime crop, grown to take the place of sugar imports.
But vast acres of sugar-beet created an urgent need for machines to harvest it.
Farmers were required to muster some particularly ingenious new contraptions.
Hold it, pal.
ALEX: Morning, chaps. MEN: Morning.
Good morning, sir.
Alex and Peter have come to meet the men
of the Peterborough Farm Machinery Preservation Society,
who are trying out one of the earliest of these intricate harvesters,
which was made in Denmark in the 1940s.
What are you doing here?
We're just doing a bit of a modification to try to improve the performance of the machine.
Right. OK. So we've caught you at a point of experimentation, have we?
- You have, yes. - (Laughter)
This is fantastic for us, because this is almost certainly a scene
that you would have seen in 1939/1940 with the outbreak of war
and the introduction of this type of technology.
Farmers are confronted with this new and innovative equipment,
which they've got to tweak and tinker with to get to work.
And it's exactly what these guys are doing.
Basically, a lot of fiddling with nuts and bolts.
The machine does two different jobs.
One part lifts the beets out of the ground and the other cuts the tops off.
- So you've got to steer this? - Yes, that's what's worrying me about that disc,
- if it don't steer me. - (Laughter)
You've always got a bit of extra muscle here, Ron, just in case you need it.
I think we're ready to go, aren't we?
Yes, I'm sure we're ready if the tractor driver's ready.
Whoa. Whoa!
That's an early sign, Ron, that this thing could go...
- Yes. - Right, OK.
- Didn't go far, did it? - No.
- We're getting a rhythm going. - Hold it. Whoa.
- Oh, I spoke too soon. - Uh-oh.
- Why did it miss there? - (Low chatter)
- Right. - Try it again.
Third-time lucky.
Oooh. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa!
So what are they gonna - ooh - what are they gonna do, then?
Your guess is as good as mine.
While the boys focus on making food for the dairy cows,
back on the farm there are others animals that won't be so lucky.
Pigs were seen as a luxury and bore the brunt of the wartime cull.
Their numbers fell by nearly 60% over the course of the war,
and pork became a much sought-after rarity.
(Grunt)
Yeah...
But there was one way around the shortage.
Ruth's come to talk to stockwoman Debbie Underwood about a possible solution.
I was wondering if we could hang on to one as a pig club? What do you think?
What do you mean by a pig club?
It was a wartime scheme to get together and raise a pig communally.
People bring all their kitchen waste and their garden waste.
You've got enough food to feed a pig and then when you slaughter it
you divide the pig up between everybody who's fed it.
It was a way of keeping some bacon and pork in the system.
Pig clubs were officially encouraged by the government,
and were popular not just in the countryside, but in cities too.
Around 7,000 were set up raising 140,000 pigs between them.
So how are we gonna choose one?
- Well, it's quite a nice even litter, isn't it? - Yeah.
- They're good-looking piglets these. - They are, yes.
So maybe if I find some people who'd like to be in the pig club,
and then get together, and we'll cook up a batch of swill.
- OK. - Feed it to those and see which one's greediest.
Cos whichever one is the greediest is the one that will fatten quickest.
Lift it, lift it out. Get it out there.
The machine is still causing problems with the beet harvest.
OK.
If they can't get it going they'll have to lift the crop by hand.
That's how it should be.
Ron Knight harvested sugar-beet as a boy and remembers how it was done.
- They lay them out in rows like that. - Right.
And then go along and chop them like that.
And that knife has been replaced by that machine?
Yes. You have a go chopping that, see how you get on.
Mind your thumb, you don't get another one.
- Aim where I've marked it. - Aim where you've marked it.
- There you are. - That was... that was quite an excessive chop.
- You're only an inch out, look. - (Laughs)
To harvest this field by hand would take about a month.
The machine should get it done in two days... if they can get it working.
I think we're getting clogged up with the leaves it's cutting off the top of the beets.
The tops we should be taking away for silage?
Yes. I reckon we need to shovel them out of the way of the machine.
Looks like there's gonna be some work for us here, Peter.
With the tops pulled out of the way, the machine is able to run smoothly.
ALEX: Those two forks, they get underneath the beet, they lift it up.
As it goes round, the drum knocks all the dirt off of it, OK?
And then kicks it up into a bucket on the other side.
When that's full Willie opens it and it dumps the load onto the ground.
And this is what it's all about.
Here are our sugar-beet.
They're a rather unsightly-looking turnip, OK?
But six of these boiled down would make about a kilo of sugar.
It's amazing to think that during the period of the war
these were responsible for producing the domestic sugar ration.
That's nearly 3,000,000 tons of sugar.
Sugar-beet was the ultimate wartime crop.
It was transformed from being a niche product grown by just a few farmers,
to being a mainstream crop farmed all over the country.
- Hello! OTHERS: Hello!
- Hey, you've brought the swill. - We have.
Ruth's got some recruits for her pig club.
Let's fatten that pig up.
RUTH: Ooh, fantastic.
- There you go. - There we are.
So have we got?
Beetroot thinnings, ones that haven't fattened out.
Tops of old cabbage plants.
Old potatoes there that are no longer suitable for our use.
You want to slap it all in? I've got some on the go already boiling away.
The scraps will be turned into a soupy swill.
RUTH: All good stuff.
The swill was often collected by one designated person,
as pig club member Gill Dicks recalls.
Your parents, Gill, were actually in a pig club during the war.
That's right, yes. It was operated by our local butcher.
- What did you put in the pig swill? - Everything that wasn't eaten.
We didn't separate any of it out.
If it was food and it wasn't eaten it went straight to the pigs.
And they did also used to take the bones as well.
I mean, nowadays people would have kittens about the idea of that.
They'd be worried about contaminating the food chain.
Feeding pigs with animal by-products
was linked to an increase in foot-and-mouth disease during the war.
To avoid the hazards Ruth's pig will only be fed with waste from the garden, not the kitchen.
Are you gonna be able to keep up the supply of swill, do you think?
- We will try, yes. - Yes.
It's towards the end of the year... it's always more difficult during the autumn.
If we can keep it up, you know, six months down the line, half a pig between us.
- Be good, won't it? - That sounds very nice.
The beets will sent to a factory to be refined into sugar.
Alex and Peter are collecting the tops, which they plan to turn into silage.
How are you feeling about this, Peter?
Well, I can see why... I mean...
Obviously, in the war, they want to produce
as much silage as possible to keep the animals going.
But this was an experiment. I can see why people hadn't picked it as a silage crop before.
But this is going to be the key to keeping a dairy herd in a wartime farm, isn't it?
This is gonna provide the succulence providing we get the silo right.
Providing we get the silo right.
I've got that first bucket of swill.
- Ah, let's have a look. - I hope they're...
(Ruth grunts)
...they're hungry.
- Funnily enough, it smells delicious. - Yeah.
- Let's see if they're hungry. - Let's give this a go.
- Come on. Show us who's a big greedy pig. - Right.
RUTH: What do you think?
- She's turned her nose up. - Yeah.
Which is quite easy for her.
- Well, this is going well. - This is going really well.
Ruth's plan is to choose the greediest pig for her pig club.
Come on, then. A little bit closer.
- They're quite intrigued by this, aren't they? - They are.
They're interested, not actually eating it yet.
Ooh, yes, they are.
- Yes, they are. - Ahhh!
- Especially her with the little short tail. - Yes.
- Little shorty. - That's the little female.
So that might be quite a nice one to keep.
Let's have a look at her. Grab her.
(Squealing)
- Well, she's certainly noisy. - (Laughs)
- Listen to you. - This is the one with the short tail.
She's good, isn't she?
- Look at the fat belly on her. - Yeah.
I think so. I think this is the one for us.
Ruth will keep Shorty and Snowflake, but the other pigs have to go.
Yeah, I know you're cute. Yes, you are.
(Both laugh)
One piggy to another.
Alex and Peter are back at the farm.
They'll let the sugar-beet tops wilt for a few days
before turning them into silage for the dairy cows.
Get on! Get on!
First, they must deal with the animals they don't want to keep.
Sheep were considered a low priority as they needed to eat a lot of food
to produce relatively little meat.
Come on.
All wartime farmers getting rid of livestock had to deal with a new force
that would come to dominate their lives.
The Ministry of Food.
The idea of the Ministry was to control, really, all of the produce that came from farms.
So pretty much anything you produced on the farm
would have to go through the Ministry of Food.
The arrival of the Ministry of Food meant farmers were now answerable
to two government bodies.
On this side of the farm gate they had the Ministry of Agriculture.
Anything that went on on a farm was the concern of the Ministry of Agriculture.
But on this side of the gate was about the Ministry of Food.
So when the livestock passed over this threshold,
it then became the concern of the Ministry of Food.
The Ministry of Food was responsible for the biggest food distribution network
attempted anywhere in the world -
...the rationing system.
I've got here the ration for one person for one week... in 1940.
Of course, not everything was rationed.
You could have as much bread as you could afford,
as much vegetables as you could get your hands on.
But a whole range of things were rationed.
Rationing began in January 1940...
with bacon the first meat to go on the list.
Four ounces per person per week.
You could have it as ham instead, but not as well as.
It amounts to about four slices.
The butter, however, is even more scarce.
Can you imagine trying to manage on that much butter a week?
You were allowed other fats.
This is for cooking fat.
And that, in total, is your fat ration.
That's particularly hard to make last the week.
Joining the first wave of rationing was sugar, around 12 ounces per week.
So if these foods were rationed in January,
by March meat, fresh meat, had joined the ration.
Unlike these, which are based on weight, meat rationing was done upon value.
How much money you were allowed to spend.
If, in 1940, you bought a really good piece of meat,
this is how far your one shilling and tenpence took you.
So that would be a week's meat.
Not bad. But you'd only eat meat, say, two days a week.
You could, however, be a bit more canny.
If I bought something like a shin of beef...
which you can see immediately is a less quality cut,
I could have an awful lot more.
That there is one pound of cheap beef,
and I could, in fact, have had three times that amount,
for the same rationed money that I had for that cut of beef.
And, alongside it, offal.
And I've got here kidney and liver.
This amount of offal cost the same as that little bit of beef.
Now to a modern eye you might think, "That's not so bad. That's not so very little meat."
And it's true, but this is the peak of meat-eating during the war.
At the beginning of the war you're allowed all of that.
As the war went on the amount of ration for meat reduced and reduced,
and reduced and reduced.
So within a year and a half it was half that size.
Suddenly your ration was just one of those a week.
The Ministry of Food made huge efforts to get people to accept the ration system.
People talked a great deal about fair shares, about fairness.
At this time of difficulty and scarcity,
the whole of the rationing system was presented to the population
as about being about fairness.
So that everybody had ration cards, including the Royal Family.
That was important to people. It made people feel quite differently about the whole system.
But though the scheme was based on fairness,
those in the countryside had certain advantages.
The ancient tradition of the Hedgerow Harvest came into its own,
as people went out to forage for whatever they could find.
Here, Henry, you was supposed to be spotting these.
Even in the depths of autumn, nature's bounty could be pressed into use.
There's no doubt about townies came off a lot worse during the war.
If you're out here in the countryside, you've got so many more resources at your fingertips.
Whether it's finding your mushrooms or acorns on the floor,
or horse chestnuts or sweet chestnuts, or blackberries or whatever.
You know, there's so much more food about in the countryside.
There's loads of food, really, when you start looking.
Alex and Peter are getting on with the job of deciding which farm animals to cull.
ALEX: Ah, now... - We've got too many, haven't we?
There's too many. So, unfortunately, the writing's on the wall for some of these old birds.
A chicken lays most of its eggs in the first three years of its life.
After that its productivity declines.
I reckon that one there.
If I grab her feet she's gonna flap.
If you grab both feet together she will flap and make a lot of noise, but she'll be safe.
- (Clucking) - That's the one. That's it. Straight down.
Wrap her up. Perfectly done. Beautiful.
And quite a red... Here, a red wattle and comb.
This is a classic sign of an older bird - a very deep red.
And it's those feet - if you look at those feet...
you know, look at the... Ooh.
- Has a bit of fight now, hasn't she? - She does.
You know, she's got calluses on the bottom, quite large calluses.
You can tell she's quite an old bird. So...
That's a natural bird to cull.
Come on, then, boy.
Come on, I'm sure they'll be something in here for you.
It wasn't just wild food that added to rural diets.
Having more land meant country people were far more likely to reap the benefit
of the government's "Dig for Victory" campaign.
- Terry, you're already here. Sorry. - Hello, Ruth.
Manor Farm gardener Terry Budd will help Ruth decide what to plant in the garden.
We've got this leaflet now from the Ministry of Agriculture
encouraging us to grow some of our own veg.
"Savoys, sprouts, kales. Vegetables all the year round...
...if you dig well and crop wisely."
The Dig for Victory leaflets were written to help gardeners
get fresh produce every month of the year.
They were widely distributed or you could write to the Ministry and request one.
That's quite a nice sensible plan, isn't it? There's nothing fancy about it.
There's nothing exotic. This is your basics through the year.
There are already some vegetables to harvest in the garden,
and Ruth's making them go as far as she can.
So I'm making a giant, great big enormous stew.
Huge. Several meals' worth.
Anything that isn't eaten as stew will be turned into soup later.
Yum. I do love mushrooms.
Ruth's stove is powered by paraffin.
But along with other types of fuel, paraffin was rationed,
so cooking the stew for several hours would be a real waste.
There was a popular wartime solution that Ruth's keen to try.
This is my cunning plan. I'm gonna make a hay box.
Now, it's a funny thing a hay box. There's no heat source.
It's sort of just insulation.
But it does the job that you might think of, say, like a slow cooker.
So, hay.
And I'm making a really thick layer,
not just on the bottom of the box, but up the sides of the box
and eventually I'll make it in the lid as well.
It's all about keeping the heat in.
So the stew that I've got on, when it's really thoroughly boiling,
and it does have to be thoroughly boiling,
then I can transfer it from there straight into here.
It's really very fuel efficient.
I'm only doing the cooking for that first initial boiling stage.
Snuggle it down in there.
And then on the lid... Seal it all up.
And you've kept the heat in. The heat can't escape.
So the heat stays there, carrying on cooking slowly and gently.
That should do. Right, cooker off.
(Blows)
The perks of living in the countryside didn't go unnoticed by outsiders.
Strangers frequently turned up at farm gates looking for ways to beat the rationing system.
Mark Roodhouse is a historian who specialises in the wartime black market.
- Hello. - Oh, hello. You must be Mark.
- Ruth. - Sorry. Muddy hand.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
You're the chap who knows about dodgy dealings.
- Yes. - (Both laugh)
Where would you like to start?
Secluded rural locations made the perfect base for black-market activities.
- Well, underneath here... we have... - Bread.
...various things for our black-market experiment.
Here we've got red petrol. This would have been used by the army.
And dyed red by the armed forces to stop people stealing petrol,
which was rationed and in short supply.
The police would take a sample from your tank
and if it was red they would know you had stolen that petrol and so they could prosecute.
So, what we're going to do is take the dye out of this petrol,
so that we can put it in the tank of a car without risk of being caught.
There are lots of anecdotes about how people could get hold of this dyed petrol,
and remove the dye.
So I thought that we could have a go and see which of these proves the most effective.
- Have you done this before? - No.
And I don't think anyone has ever tried this kind of experiment since the 1940s.
The first method to be tried is mixing it with aspirin.
That's supposed to separate out the petrol from the dye.
- That do it? - Yeah. That should do it.
Was there much of this going on?
There is a surprising amount of fiddling about with petrol, particularly on farms.
For example, Billy Hill, who was one of the big London criminals of the '40s,
he had a run-in on a farm in Hertfordshire, which he used for storing stolen goods.
And also used it as a base for operations such as this one.
Oh, maybe we've got the wrong brand name. (Laughs)
Maybe it needs a bit of time.
While they wait to see if the aspirin works,
Ruth and Mark try filtering some of the petrol through charcoal.
Go on. Go on. You do the honours.
You're the one who's been reading about this stuff.
Oh, I think we're getting something, but pour slower.
It's definitely better than the aspirin, but it's a bit pink.
Lastly, they'll try sieving it through bread.
As one of the methods of dealing with petrol, this seemed the least likely one.
- It seemed such a waste of... - Of good bread.
...a waste of bread.
- It's holding a lot of petrol that bread. - It's coming through.
Ooh, so it is.
- That looks clear to me. - It flipping does.
- I can't believe that's worked. - (Both laugh)
- I have to... - That is just amazing.
I have to eat my words. I never thought that would work and it... it does.
And in some ways the cheapest and easiest of all the methods.
- Yes. If you've got the bread to waste. - If you've got the bread to waste.
Bread, of course, wasn't rationed.
With the telltale dye removed the petrol could be sold on the black market.
If you have this, you have your loaf of bread,
you're well on your way to becoming a black marketeer.
And pestering farmers up and down the country
and trying to get them into your dodgy-dealing ways.
- Absolutely. - You wicked man, you.
Anyone involved in making or selling food had opportunities to make a bit on the side.
Butchers could be notorious black-market operators.
- Hello. - Hello.
- That looks tasty. - Me?
(All laugh)
Mark has brought Ruth to meet local butcher Simon Broadribb.
The Ministry of Food has worked out, speaking to various butchers,
what they should be able to get off a carcass, allowing for a bit of wastage.
But a skilled butcher like Simon here
can make more joints off that carcass than the Ministry allows for.
It's keeping the trimming to a minimum, nice and lean.
Under the ration system consumers had to register with a particular butcher.
So shopping around was not an option.
Many butchers felt a strong temptation to sell off parts of the animal
that would usually have gone to waste.
Let me you show the difference between a wartime chop,
with a big long bone, all untrimmed,
to what the customer wants now.
This lovely little lamb cutlet, nice and meaty, not too much bone, hardly any fat.
To our wartime chop - you can see it's almost twice as long.
- Yeah. - I get more money for that.
Well, the customer would get less meat for it. Let's put it that way.
- Right. - And a lot of your weekly ration,
you would take as the bone.
So it's really important if the customer wants a good cut of meat, they get to know Simon.
If Simon likes them it changes the relationship between customer and retailer.
The customer's not always right. The retailer's always right.
By including plenty of bone on their cuts,
butchers could ensure they achieved the weight of sales the the Ministry of Food was expecting
and still have plenty of meat left over to trade on the black market.
- You've not got too many qualms, have you? - No, no.
And I deserve it. I'm working hard. No qualms at all.
And if you're making sacrifices in lots of other areas of life,
aren't you entitled to a little bit of home comfort?
You've sent your sons off to war, your daughters are in the factory.
You're working extra shifts, extra hours.
Surely there should be a little bit of reward for all that extra work?
By the autumn of 1940 black marketeering was becoming widespread in the countryside.
At the same time, ships importing food to Britain were being sunk by the Nazis.
WIRELESS: This is the BBC Home Service.
Among them was the HMS Jarvis Bay,
whose heroic self-sacrifice enabled the rest of her convoy to escape.
MAN ON WIRELESS: I would first like to mention the gallant action of the Jarvis Bay.
Without one thought for their own safety, her crew immediately attacked the raider,
without one thought but defeating the enemy.
Words fail to express the gallantry of the men aboard the Jarvis Bay.
It really emphasises the cost of human life.
It does make you think about the value of what they were carrying on those convoys.
If you waiting for that, doing something a bit dodgy,
you know, meaning that more stuff had to come in, then you're culpable.
Many people in 1940, who had perhaps not taken the rationing system quite as seriously,
may then have reflected back on the severity of what they were doing.
Hm.
It's time to see whether Ruth's hay box has done its job.
That's one of the best stews I've ever eaten. Mm.
Those hay boxes, they're really efficient, aren't they?
- Cos you use less fuel, I suppose. - Less fuel and less time as well.
Tea.
Brought in from the four corners of the Empire, Peter.
Thanks to the brave merchant shippers.
We'll drink to them.
To merchant seamen.
(Owl hooting)
(Birdsong)
With merchant ships taking a hammering throughout 1940, imports fell rapidly.
Livestock farmers, in particular, felt the impact
with imports of animal feed falling by over a third.
Where is that dog?
- Henry! Come on, Henry! - A mind of his own.
Home-grown alternatives like silage now took on a new urgency
and the boys are ready to have a go at making it.
The first step is building an airtight container, or silo, for the sugar-beet tops.
But there's some bad news.
We have the remnants of a sugar-beet crop.
- Look at this. - We've got hoof-prints, cow poo.
(Laughs) I wonder who the culprit was.
The cows have got into the field where the tops were kept.
And eaten them.
They've eaten all the green material and left us with the actual sugar-beet, Peter.
And they've had a good old snack, on what is essentially their winter feed.
So they've raided the larder early, haven't they?
They really don't understand. This is all for their benefit.
Yep.
All we're gonna have to do is go out there with scythes and forks and get more material.
There was plenty of official advice about unorthodox ways to make silage.
I guess it's a measure of just how desperate the government had got
that they were advocating harvesting nettles which is essentially a weed.
But nettles are very nutritious. Good iron content.
Good protein content.
They crop up and they just grow everywhere.
It isn't just scraps to go in the silo that the boys need to gather.
They must also forage for materials to make the structure itself.
All of the metal in Britain in 1940, of course would be used to build bombers,
...fighter planes.
So we're gonna to have to make do with scrap from the farmyard.
- The problem is, it's a lot of work, isn't it? - It's a hell of a lot of work.
- We need some help. - I think I should get down the labour exchange,
and see if we can't pick ourselves up a couple of land girls to help us out with this.
Cos we're gonna need it.
The wartime drive for food production meant extra labour was desperately needed.
An intense campaign encouraged women to join in the battle of the fields.
Thousands responded and the Women's Land Army
soon became a feature of farms across the country.
Historians Nicola Verdon and Caroline Bressey have come to help build the silo -
a classic job for the indispensable land girls.
- This is Peter. - Hi.
Peter, Nicola and Caroline. They're our land girls for the day.
Yeah, so, Nicola, shall we get cracking on sorting this tin out?
- OK. - If you do that,
if we go grab some tops, to stick in it.
- Sure. - When we finally build it - if we finally build it.
Henry's not enjoying this damp ground, is he?
I don't think anyone's enjoying this damp ground.
Land girls worked at least 50 hours a week,
with full-timers paid roughly two-thirds the wages of male agricultural labourers.
Nicola Verdon has written extensively on the history of women in the British countryside.
Was there a clamour to join the Women's Land Army?
Certainly it was a very attractive proposition for some women,
who saw it as a way to get out of the city centres, and to enjoy the outdoor life.
They may have had a certain image of what farm work was like
and, of course, the government propaganda and the posters were rather glamorous.
I think the reality when they got here was rather different.
It must have been quite a steep learning curve for many of these young girls,
coming from the town to a completely sort of alien environment, and an alien set of jobs.
Farmers and also a lot of women themselves had to be persuaded
that they were both physically capable of doing the work and doing it well.
Yeah.
So there was quite a lot of prejudice amongst the farming community
but women proved themselves.
They proved they were physically capable of doing the work,
that they were honest and kind of honourable workers.
So a lot of farmers were won over.
It's certainly a great story and we're incredibly indebted to you for your help today.
Cos otherwise I don't think we'd get this done in the time we have.
The number of women in work rose by over two million between 1939 and 1943.
And voluntary organisations also flourished.
The pears have all dropped in the orchard.
But the tree round the back has still got quite a lot on.
Ruth is getting involved with the Women's Institute, or WI,
and has roped in her daughter Eve to help with her first task - food preservation.
So, Mum, what exactly is the WI?
Well, it's a women's organisation that was very much part of that whole desire to do your bit,
and to try and sort out some of the problems that war had caused the population.
And food preservation was high on their agenda.
Over 5,000 tons of food that would have just rotted on the floor
and been eaten by wasps and things.
- 5,000 tons... - That's a lot.
...of extra food because of this.
You could sort of feel that every apple you pick is one in the eye for Hitler.
(Both laugh)
"He ain't gonna starve us out, cos we're gonna sort it."
Yeah.
Ruth will collect apples from all over the farm then take them to a WI centre to be preserved.
At the silo, the girls of the Land Army are proving their worth.
OK, this one's a bit shorter than that one.
Doesn't matter about the length, but the camber will be the same.
- Right. OK. - The internal circumference.
- Does that make sense? - (Laughter)
I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
The thing is, I've worked with Peter for years so I know his strange language.
But not all women were accepted into its ranks.
An infamous rejection was that of London-born Amelia King,
who tried to join the Land Army in 1943.
Caroline Bressey has studied Amelia's case.
Initially, she was rejected from the Land Army, from serving, because she was a black woman.
The woman who was recruiting noted the colour of her skin and erm...
suggested that it might be a problem, and Amelia was rejected four times.
Eventually, she went to her MP and questions were raised in the House of Commons.
- Yeah. - And that's when it hit the headlines.
Amelia's plight was taken up by the national press.
The Land Army claimed that no farmer would employ a black woman.
But one farmer went out of his way to challenge this.
Alfred Roberts.
He said, "Well, if she's willing to work, I'm happy to take her on."
So she said, "Yes, I'd like to do that job,
but only if the Land Army employs me as a land girl."
It was a matter of principle that she wanted them to take her on.
And the fact that he had come forward undermined their argument
that they couldn't find her a place because of prejudice with farmers.
So they took her on.
The story was especially famous at Manor Farm,
because Alfred Roberts was a neighbouring farmer.
Where are you here in this photograph?
I'm in the background somewhere.
His daughter Betty Rudd worked side by side with Amelia King on the land.
- Is that you there? - Yes, that's me.
- You're right behind Amelia. - I'm right behind her, yes.
Betty, your father was the farmer who gave Amelia King a job.
Yes. He was, yes.
Do you know why he did that?
Well, because he felt so strongly about it.
Why should she be refused to work?
It was the headlines in every paper at that particular time,
and nobody would accept her.
So he immediately got hold of the phone number and phoned these people and said,
"She certainly can come here."
Amelia came and she was part of the gang. She enjoyed her time here.
She did. She was very good.
And also the other girls were good to her. They accepted her.
- It was hard work. Very hard work. - Yeah, yeah.
When you think of it, looking back, they all said, you know,
it seems like five years just sort of went like that,
cos we were enjoying ourselves so much, working and doing things for the country.
- Yes. ALEX: And growing food.
Growing food, yes, which is the essential thing.
After her time in the Land Army Amelia King disappears from the pages of history.
It's believed she died in 1995.
But her actions as a young woman helped to chip away at the prejudice in British society
as wartime pressures forced barriers to be broken down.
Although women were doing the same jobs as men
they were still expected to run the home.
The Women's Institute advised their members to let nothing go to waste.
I got this great book come through from the WI.
Thrift Crafts.
It's got all sorts of things in here including what to do with feathers,
which considering we've just had to cull the chickens makes sense.
The WI put out wartime publications with a heavy emphasis
on reviving old-fashioned rural skills.
Using every feather off every bird you pluck,
I mean, people in the countryside have been doing that for centuries.
But it had fallen out of favour.
Suddenly you didn't need to in quite the same way.
Things were more available in the shops, you know.
And here we all are at the beginning of the '40s
suddenly having to go back to this older, more thrifty way.
And the WI they were just in pole position to be the ones to disseminate this knowledge
into a much wider section of the population.
The book recommends using the chicken's wing feathers to make dusters.
As well as being the very best feathers for feather dusters
the wing feathers are also some of the hardest to pull.
I mean, you'd expect it, really, wouldn't you?
By far the biggest and toughest and you've got this strong quill at the bottom,
which makes them so good for the job.
It doesn't actually say in the book how you make the feather duster, it just says that you should.
So, erm... I thought I'd probably just sort of tie them with some thread.
My theory is if I start with a little, sort of like a posy or a tuft to be the top,
(Sings) Doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.
I wonder if this is gonna work.
Binding the feathers in a spiral makes a duster that will get into every crevice.
Quite serviceable, I think.
Thank goodness for the WI and their little booklets.
With the silo built, the team can start filling it.
But first they must make careful preparation to ensure the silage material
isn't contaminated with soil.
A little mat here.
Otherwise, unwanted bacteria will develop and ruin the taste of the cows' milk.
- That's fine. - I think that's a good covering.
- Looks good. - Right, pitchforks.
- Choose your weapon. - Your work doesn't end there.
- Do I stay in here? - You stay in there.
And as Caroline forks it over with our help - have you got your fork handy?
- I have. - You'll tread it like an Italian treading grapes.
- Yeah. - Chuck it over.
So am I trying to shift it?
It's the trampling down that counts.
Treading the material forces oxygen out of it,
which in turn allows the nutrients inside it to be preserved - a bit like pickling.
It's actually very hard work. I'm quite out of breath now.
But we're getting there. It's getting higher.
Although silage had been known about for centuries,
until the Second World War many farmers in Britain had never tried making it.
This really is at the forefront of 1940s farming.
All their lives farmers, you see, they've been making hay,
and that was really much more of an art form, whereas making silage was a science.
And it was a science they didn't really understand.
So they were deeply sceptical.
Really, the government wanted this to happen on every farm,
but the reality was it happened on very, very few farms.
So we would have been innovators of our age.
ALEX: Where do you want it? - That far corner.
The Women's Institute preserving day has begun...
...staffed by the ladies of the Hampshire WI.
Throughout the war centres like this operated all over the country,
preserving thousands of tons of produce for the nation.
Anne Stamper is the WI's archivist and has come along to supervise proceedings.
I mean, the sheer numbers of tins, the sheer numbers of pounds of fruit.
- It's huge! - Yes.
Yes. And we're just on this one page here.
68 and a half pounds of fruit.
41 and a half pounds of sugar.
And that yielded 74 pounds of jam and jelly.
- Free... for one day. - Yeah.
But though the WI was famous for jam-making,
that wasn't the only preserving method at their disposal.
(Low chatter)
In 1940 home-canning machines were donated to Britain from North America.
But home front housewives had never seen this technology before.
You don't hear much about home-canning, do you?
- Not very much, no. - Have you done it?
- I haven't done it, no. - Really?
- No. Never. - Has anybody here ever canned any fruit?
WOMEN: No.
- Bottled and jammed, but not canned. - Not canned.
Oh, I hope we get this right, then.
Oops.
Ruth's about to put this machine into action for the first time since the Second World War.
- Line it up carefully. It sits in there. - Sits in a groove. That's quite easy.
- So lock it in. Clunk. - Right.
- And now... - Got to turn the handle at least 20 times.
That's better. One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
11, 12, 13...
...20. Did anything happen there?
It's stuck.
- Well, it seems to have worked. - (Laughter)
So then this has got to be sterilised. This is what this other pan of water's for.
- That's right. - So we sort of cook it in the can.
I think we can get the hang of this.
After being peeled and cored the apples are covered in sugar syrup
to make sure no oxygen gets in.
Working closely with the Ministry of Food
the WIs sent their produce straight into the rationing system with no reward for themselves.
And all these people in here they would have been volunteers?
Oh, yes, these women or other WI members would be coming in here
from nine in the morning until five in the evening.
So, as a volunteer, making a gift of your apples, making a donation of all your time,
you get nothing back personally?
No, it's your contribution as a countrywoman to winning the war.
OK, Peter, are we ready with the molasses?
We are, Alex.
Now, this is another by-product of the sugar-beet industry.
OK? It's a bit like brown sauce this stuff.
It's really sweet.
But it was absolutely crucial, this stuff, to making silage.
So whereas sugar was rationed in all other parts of the war,
of course the government was so keen for farmers to make silage
that they gave them a special dispensation to use this stuff.
Molasses were seen as vital to the preservation process,
helping fermentation of the crop to begin.
The government encouraged all wartime farmers to make silage.
And though it never became widely popular
levels of production are estimated by some to have reached a million tons.
The ladies of the Women's Institute are celebrating a successful canning drive.
Together the WI and the Land Army engaged almost 600,000 women in the war effort.
In fact, the two organisations were headed by the same person,
Lady Gertrude Denman,
who did everything she could to ensure they helped each other out.
In fact, in this copy of Home And Country,
which was the WI magazine,
Lady Denman actually wrote a letter which she actually headed "An Appeal to Farmers' Wives".
Oh, yeah.
"The prejudice against a woman attempting to do a man's work dies hard..."
That's true enough, isn't it?
"...but the progress of the Land Army in the past year shows that it can be overcome."
And very practical too. She goes on in that letter to suggest
that one of the ways that WI members can help is by inviting Land Girls into their houses
to have a bath, if the place where they're working hasn't got a bath.
And she suggests they come as guests of the WI meetings and indeed that did happen,
and quite a few joined the WI.
Yeah, it's looking good. You're getting higher.
In tribute to their sisters in the field,
the ladies of the WI are rounding off the day
with the Land Army's official anthem, Back To The Land.
(Piano intro)
♪ Back to the land, we must all lend a hand
♪ To the farms and the fields we must go
♪ There's a job to be done
♪ Though we can't fire a gun
♪ We can still do our bit with the hoe...
(Hums tune)
- A race against time this, Peter. - Yeah.
- Gotta move faster. - Yeah.
A little overlap there.
- Not a bad job that. - That's a brilliant job.
- It makes you realise how hard work it was. - We're extremely grateful for your help.
With autumn's bounty safely preserved, the team are ready to face the winter,
and the shortages that wartime would continue to bring.
♪ If you come with us back to the land!
RUTH: Hip hip! ALL: Hooray!
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll