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__THE HOME FRONT__

The Home Front was the name given to what was happening in Britain when the war was being fought. As more men were being called up to fight, women were asked to take over the jobs usually done by men. These included working in factories and on farms. Women that worked on farms worked long hours and they were known as Land Girls.

The Bevin boys worked in coal mines.

__The Land Army__

The Land Army was started by the government in June 1939 to increase the amount of food grown in Britain. Land Army Girls ploughed the fields, grew the crops and took care of the animals. They earned £1,85 a week at the start of the war, but in 1944 their pay was increased to £2.85. Many girls joined the Land Army when they were 17 or 18. They started work at around 5:00 am and finished around 5:00pm. Some of the girls had trained before they joined, others learned from the other farmers. By 1943 there were over 90,000 Land Girls, aged between 18 and 40. The work was often tough because most of the labour on the land had to be done manually, as combine harvesters hadn't been invented yet, although there were tractors. Horses were still used to pull ploughs and scythes were used for harvesting. It could take as many as twelve people to harvest a field of grain, even with the help of horses pulling a threshing machine. The corn was cut with scythes, and teams of people would follow behind to bind the corn into sheaves with corn ropes. The harvesters then piled the sheaves up to dry before it could be threshed by the horse wheel. Then the corn needed winnowing to get rid of weeds and chaff.

Here is a link to a video of a lady who was in the Land Army. It is very useful if you want to know what they did. http://caber.open.ac.uk/schools/stanway/video_popups/landarmy160_popup.html

Image from http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/women.htm