OU on the BBC: Wartime Farm

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Copyrighted imageCredit: BBC Play your part and dig for victory with the brand new series from the BBC and The Open University: Wartime Farm.

In Wartime Farm Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman will take on their biggest challenge yet. As with Victorian and Edwardian Farm, they will be taking up the running of a farm for a full calendar year, using only the tools and materials of an historic era.

But this time they will be turning the clock back to World War Two – and mirroring the demands of an agricultural endeavour unparalleled in British history.

Alex, Peter and Ruth are about to embark on nothing short of a revolution in British farming - one more akin to Soviet-style collectivization than anything else. With quotas and targets imposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, new sweeping national standards were set down, irrespective of what type of farm you had or where it was located.

Wartime Farm will be coming to BBC Two from Thursday 6th September, with a standalone Christmas Special on Tuesday 18th December, 2012. For further broadcast details, and to watch online where available, please visit bbc.co.uk.

Get closer to the Wartime Farm

Download your free Wartime Farm booklet Copyrighted imageCredit: The Open University / Women's Land Army image Paul Townsend BristolPast.co.uk

How did a hungry island remain fed during a long, wearying conflict? Download your free Wartime Farm booklet to find out. Read more : Download your free Wartime Farm booklet

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A nation at war has many demands on its machinery and manpower - can you share resources more effectively than Lord Woolton and help the... Play now: Wartime Farm: Can you Beat The Ministry

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Some nations suffered harshly during the shortages of wartime - others adapted and managed to keep their populace well-fed. Explore our map to hear some... Launch now: Wartime Farm: Food In the World War

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Episode guide

There are eight episodes in the current series, and a Christmas Special.

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war time recipes

Marilyn Whittaker

03 Nov 201221:04

I enjoyed the programme very much,but would love to find some recipes to try.Could you please tell me if there is any way of getting any copies.

ZONING?

Jo Storey

03 Nov 201214:44

I thoroughly enjoyed the series and, having been born in 1946, can just remember rationing - and being given the old ration books to play 'shop' with, when they were finally withdrawn from use.

I have recently acquired a wartime People's Friend Annual, more for the enchanting adverts than anything else. One intrigued me. It is an advert for Mars bars, which contains the statement, "ZONING now restricts Mars to the Southern Counties, but Victory will mean plenty of Mars for everyone".

I have never heard of ZONING (and, yes, it is spelt in capitals in the advert, whereas the rest of the statement is regular case). Does anybody know what it was? I'm assuming that it was a way of ensuring that food products weren't moved too far from the place of manufacture. For example, were Cadbury's products limited to the Midlands/North? I'm hoping somebody out there can plug this gap in my knowledge.

For interest, the adverts tell me that Phosferine Tonic Wine was 10/6d a large bottle, Pepsodent Tooth Powder was 1/3d and Ovaltine was 2/4d and 4/-.

The Scientists

Geoffrey Gardiner

29 Oct 201214:13

A great series, but did I miss some mention of the masterminds of the wartime food policy? I had the great privilege of working with Professor Sir Frank Engledow during the last years of his life, helping with his campaign for a long-term strategy for British Agriculture which ended only with his death at the age of 94 years 10 months in 1984. For me Sir Frank was the greatest scientist of the 20th century, and I speak as one who has met many great Cambridge scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and Max Newman the founder of computing.

Sir Frank and Professor Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher developed the statistical techniques which they used to increase the yields of crops, especially wheat. Without their work the world would be starving. In 1940 Sir Frank was asked to devise a food policy and he had to tell Winston Churchill what he planned. He knew Churchil had his own idiosyncratic notions about nutrition, but Sir Frank was not the man to mince matters. He told Churcill his plan and Churcill exploded, banging the table and exclaiming, 'A nation cannot fight on pap like that.' 30 years later Sir Frank was able to say, 'The nation could fight on it, did fight on it, and we now know the nation has never been fitter.' Sir Frank was able to use the results of recent research on nutrition done by two more great Cambridge scientists, Professor Robert McCance and Dr. Elsie Widdowson, both of whom also reached the age of 94. Sir Frank became a Lt. Colonel in the Great War.

These were very, very wonderful people, and they should be remembered.

Incidentally my school had a 'farm camp' each year and I spent some time on a large farm at Newnham Bridge, Worcestershire in 1944 and 1945. There were Italian prisoners of war around the first time, very jolly men, and Germans the second time, incredibly hard workers. I spent a couple of weeks bottling apple juice side by side with an charming Austrian prisoner. The Germans seemed to work harder for us, their enemies, than we British workers would have worked for anybody. One wonders how we had managed to win until one remembers that the Americans had more German ancestry than they had British.

Hi Geoffrey, Many thanks for

Openlearn Moderator

30 Oct 201210:45

Hi Geoffrey,
Many thanks for your wonderful comment Geoffrey, I've passed it onto the academics here at the OU as well as the production team at the BBC.
So pleased you enjoyed the series.
Many thanks again.
OpenLearn Moderator

tinned salmon

Lisanne Bainbridge

12 Oct 201210:38

Another small example of inaccuracy : I was astonished to hear the opinion that tinned salmon was easy to come by during the war.

Our village (in Northants) received one American food parcel. It was decided to raffle the contents at the school. I won a tin of salmon. I had no idea what it was, and was disconcerted that my mother burst into tears when I took it to her. She saved it for when my father came home. She also collected the ingredients to make real mayonnaise to go with it.

She grew vegetables, kept chickens and rabbits, and gave our food scraps to a pig, so we ate well. But tinned salmon was definitely an unheard of luxury.

wartime farming

Peter Jackson P...

11 Oct 201213:19

My wife and I throughly enjoy the Programme, but why is it that this show and others like it on farming during the war that no mention is ever made of the part that school children made. In west Suffolk where I lived it was compulsory for school children of a certain age had to do thirty half days a year doing farm work, and that was anything from potato planting and lifting, sugar beet thinning and lifting, and many other jobs that needed doing. Could we please have a little mention of the part we played.
Sincerely
Peter Jackson Phillips

Inaccurate props.

Andrew Bowman

28 Sep 201213:06

Whilst I enjoy the television programme I'm infuriated by the errors in the programme.
In this weeks episode a Field Marshall tractor features quite strongly. The Field Marshall was not produced until 1947, likewise a Fordson "half track" is visible in the opening credits and in the programme. This tractor a Fordson E27N with Roadless half tracks was not built until 1947.
Please if you are to produce programmes of this nature ensure they are factually correct.

Field Marshall

Roy Howitt

16 Oct 201212:34

Actually, according to Peter Anderson's excellent book "Three Decades of Marshall Tractors" The first incarnation of the Field Marshall, the Mk.1 went into production in June 1945 ( Which was still after VE day though! ).
However I am not too sure whether The Massey Harris 701 pick up baler was in production during WW2 though, I would be interested to find out.
Edit: After some research I found that The M-H 701 baler first went into production in 1950 but sales did not begin until 1951. Oh well....

Hi Andrew, Thank you for your

Openlearn Moderator

01 Oct 201214:48

Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your comments regarding the props, we have passed them onto the BBC production team.
I hope you continue to enjoy the programme (props aside).
Many thanks
OpenLearn Moderator

Wartime Farm- comments from a genuine landgirl

Mary Rowlands

19 Sep 201216:29

My 89 year old mother finds the programme "Wartime Farm" very interesting. Having been a Landgirl in Wiltshire she would like you to know that the men wore flat caps, not wide-brimmed cowboy hats, and the Landgirls wore grey dungarees, light brown shirts and brown (not green) socks for farm work. The Landgirls wore a small, brimmed felt hat with the badge pinned in the middle, and their overcoats were worn only in cold weather , on journeys or on formal occasions.

Howlers

Viv Watkins

09 Sep 201210:14

I thought that, as this programme is nearer to us in time and there are lots of people around who remember it, , there would be a high level of accuaracy. So many things that jar, I can't mention them all - Why are they using a horse-drawn plough behind a tractor? If Ruth can afford a Kitchette why can't she afford a proper mop and bucket? Why is Peter wearing an Army greatcoat. Why didn't they (or whoever did it) plough the headlands. Did they not have any information about how Mole Drills work; why not attatch it directly to the tractor? They would get the field ploughed 'in a month' - were they digging it with spades?
I am just hoping it will get better.

Wartime Farm

Shirley Nicholson

03 Sep 201212:41

First and foremost I wish to congratulate the BBC and The Open University for collaborating on the new BBC2 series Wartime Farm in which attempts are made to recreate the agricultural activities of WW2. It will undoubtedly go some way to demonstrating the extraordinary efforts and determination which both civilians and farmers displayed in their indispensible role in the War Effort.

Whilst this series focuses on recreating a Hampshire farm of the time, for those who are interested, there is an authentic account of the actual events of the time in Hampshire which was recorded by my aunt, Anne McEntegart. I compiled a book, The Milk Lady at New Park Farm, which focuses primarily on her detailed Wartime diary as she worked alongside the land girls in Brockenhurst, Hampshire. The diary describes in detail the farming practices which she had to undertake during her time on the farm.

The book has been reviewed by the NFU Magazine and praises the diary as being a “treasure as it tells it just as it was” as it records “a vanished world”. The diary is complemented by artwork by Evelyn Dunbar who, famously, was the only salaried British female artist commissioned during World War Two to depict the work undertaken by the land girls.

For those interested, the book is available at (commercial websites removed by OpenLearn Moderator 03.09.12)

Publication details

Originally published: Monday, 20th August 2012
Last updated on: Friday, 7th December 2012

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Body text - Creative-Commons: The Open University
Image '' - Copyright: BBC

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