Women's Land Army

With the country at war and all able-bodied men needed to fight, there was a shortage of labour to work on farms and in other jobs on the land. At the same time it was becoming increasingly difficult to get food imported from abroad, so more land needed to be farmed to provide home-grown food. The Women's Land Army provided much of the labour force to work this land.

The advertising slogan read, 'For a healthy, happy job join The Women's Land Army'. In reality, the work was hard and dirty and the hours were long. Some of the girls received training before they were sent to farms; the farmers themselves trained others. 

The Timber Corps was set up to teach women to make pit props, necessary for working in mines, which then had to be loaded onto lorries and transported to  the mining areas.

The girls of the land army looked after animals, ploughed the fields, dug up potatoes, harvested the crops, killed the rats, dug and hoed for 48 hours a week in the winter and 50 hours a week in the summer. As there was not enough machinery to go round they often had to work with old fashioned equipment, such as horse drawn hand ploughs, and to harvest crops by hand.

Of course, all this heavy, outdoor work made them very hungry. One advantage was that extra rations were allocated to farm workers to give them the energy they needed to farm the land.

The land girls also found that the work was hard on their clothes, so they were supplied with cheap, second hand battledress once their uniforms wore out. Rubber boots were important items for working on a farm, but with the war shortages, rubber became hard to get. Boots then had to be returned for reconditioning and sold back to the workers at a cheaper price. They were allowed to buy these without coupons.

Although the women worked hard, they were not paid the same wages as men. If a man earned one shilling an hour     (about 5p), a woman earned just over ten pence (about 4p).Some of the girls lived on the farms; some were housed together in hostels. They were moved between farms by the War Agricultural Committee to make sure they went where they were needed

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