Incredibly interesting series ....Wartime Farm

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
I was very impressed when Doge Ram made their superbowl advert and paid tribute to the people who provide our food. I think city folk take so much for granted when they go to the store pick up chicken or beef and veg and don't even pause to think about how it got there.

Well the other night Linda and I accidentally came across this series. We had missed all the episodes so i found it on the web and we watched it via the smart tv web interface which was pretty cool and the first time we have done that. Beats having to go through commercials.

Having a mother who lived through the war in England as quality inspector in a Spitfire parts factory, she never spoke much about the whole food supply issues or hardships they endured except to mention how her feet suffered from not being able to get the right size shoes.

My Dad was Royal Navy and he only ever mentioned food on board the ship.

But this series tells the story i had never even thought about when one learns the history of the second world war and that is the food supply and what went on in the lives of the farmers. Its an excellent series done by the same people that made the series a Victorian Farm.

http://ww3.tvo.org/program/186675/wartime-farm

There is tons to learn that never made the history books, such as the fact that the government actually commissioned artists to go out and paint war time scenes doing their own interpretation of events not always in keeping with what the politics of the day would like but they saw it as a way to keep the artists alive. (no one obviously is buying art in wartime) Artists were also except from military service if they wished simply to preserve the skill. The other thing that comes out is the need to produce flax and how strategically important that was. Also the use of pigeons and how farmers that had what i call homing pigeons were called upon to breed them in even greater numbers. They mention a figure like 16000 pigeons being used in the war especially in the Invasion period.
But the insights to how creative people were in order to survive are incredible. Well worth watching if you like to get a snap shot of what a wartime farm was all about. Hey they even mention the Americans :) :rofl: oh and the Canadians better say that before someone takes offense. Even Ben Affleck learnt that. :)
 
I've seen the whole series too, and I agree, very good. The lady Ruth in the series is excellent the two guys are good, one is a bit bookish for the job at hand I thought, but still a great show. It was very good, I learned a lot as well, like the animal kill off, they slaughtered tens of thousands of pigs, sheep and cows because it takes a lot more to produce a pound of beef than a pound of cereal, or example. Milk was kept up, but many other animal, even the dogs that used to work the sheep farms were also deemed a luxury.

Lots of inventive ways the tried to do thing, but it was funny seeing the two professor types in the one episode trying to recreate a tool called a mole plow that would dig an underground channel to drain a wet field so they could use it for crops, when I saw what they were building I KNEW that it would NOT work :doh:Pretty obvious these guys were anthropologists not physicist or engineers :D I'll bet the farmers around the area would have figured it out. Still it's a good watch, lots to learn and it is entertaining for sure.
 
Sounds great. Unfortunately, I am geographically undesirable and not able to watch the videos. As a native, I'm used to that from the rest of the world :rofl:.

Wait! Found it on You Tube, Yay!
 
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I don't have any direct knowledge of what went on with farming. However, I know a large percentage of the high school students worked in the fields picking crops. They also fired the "smudge pots." These were oil and tire burning contraptions to heat the air enough to keep the crops (mainly citrus) from freezing. The smudge pots produced black, oily, dense fog that you could not see 100 feet through. In the morning the cement sidewalks were as black as the asphalt streets. The first people on the sidewalks in the morning left their shoe prints, roller skate tracks, dog prints very clearly on the cement. The oily goo was stuck to whatever touched it. It was real nice; you could carry it in to your home or store carpets.

We had German POWs in town. They went out, with their guards, and worked with the crops. They were a surprisingly pleasant group---however, don't practice your high school German with them. The guys with guns didn't like that.

Don't get an old man started telling stories of the past.

Enjoy,
JimB
 
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