Wartime Farm - Episode 2 - World War II

Episode 2 finds our farmers Ruth, Peter, and Alex facing the conditions of 1940.  The team must deal with rationing and making use of every last resource.  The race to beat the shortages begins.  Hitler is bombing the docks and the U-boats are sinking the ships bringing food over.  Britain’s farmers were ordered to plow up more land.  With the fields being used to grow food for people, there was not enough for the animals to eat.

Alex and Peter are preparing feed for their livestock.  They are using barley to feed the animals.  Using barley for animals was a waste for animals because the farmer could use barley for people.  Alex, Peter, and Ruth will have to make hard choices concerning their animals.  More people could be feed with a field of wheat than with a field of beef.

Ruth wants to keep the dairy herd because milk production would be important for the war effort.  The beef herd will have to go, as well as the sheep.  Millions of livestock were culled for the war effort.  Will pets survive the wartime cull?  At the time many people felt like it was a kindness to put their pets down.  Henry will not face the fate of the British pet during Wartime. 

How do the boys feed their dairy herd?  They go to a sugar beet farm to pick up the tops for silage.  The government encouraged the farmer to feed their dairy herds silage.  Alex plans on making a clamp or a silo to store and make silage.  They make their way to the sugar beet farm and see the device used to harvest sugar beets.  They meet up with machine enthusiasts who are experimenting with the sugar beet harvester.  One part of the machine lifts the sugar beets and the other part cuts the tops off.  The experiment is proving to be a challenge.

Pigs were seen as a luxury.  Sixty percent of the pigs were slaughtered.  Pork became a rarity.  Ruth wants to save a pig and she suggests a pig club.  A pig club was made up of a group of people who agreed to feed a pig until it was time to slaughter.  To see which pig they will keep, Ruth suggests that they make swill and see who will be the greediest.  The greediest pig will be the pig that will grow the fastest.

Ruth goes shopping and brings home some meat.  Rationing began during this time.  Ruth shares what rationing looked like to the people.  Sugar, pork, butter, and cooking fat were rationed according to a pre-determined measure.  In January fresh meat was rationed and it was rationed by value.  Each cut of meat had a different value and so if you were cagy with the butcher you could get more meat if it was a cheaper cut.  Everyone, including the royal family, had ration cards.

If you lived in the countryside, you had some advantages.  You could go into the woods and participate in the “hedgerow harvest.”  Ruth finds mushrooms in her garden.  She comments that there is much more food available in the countryside.

Continue to watch this episode to find out about wartime farm conditions and how Ruth, Peter, and Alex adjust to the changing conditions.

The second episode would be an excellent episode to show because it demonstrates how Ruth, Peter, and Alex adjust to farm life.  That said, you could also use this episode for clips.  Ruth leads the discussion on wartime rations and that is a fascinating look at how the rations for meat grew less and less.  They also discuss black marketing and how they removed red dye from gas.  This would be a good clip to show for a science class.