The WW2 Women Who Became Wood Cutters | Wartime Farm EP5 | Absolute History

the great British countryside setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War [Music] Churchill called it the frontline of freedom [Music] [Applause] attempting to cut off turn to five [Music] the plow had become a weapon of war it was the farmers principal weapon of war that was starved into surrender now archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth goodand are turning back the clock working man a farm in Hampshire as it would have been in the Second World War by 1942 Breton had endured three years of blockades farmers was struggling to deliver food targets and raw materials were becoming scarce so the team has learned how to cope with shortages of fuel would animal feed there's also addressed the hardship that came with the bombing of our cities by setting up an emergency feeding center desperately this is the untold story of the countryside [Music] third year of Britain's food and Sundays [Music] which meant they had fewer ships to export food to bring increasing the strain on farmers to save the country from starvation the minister of food demanded that an extra eight hundred and forty thousand tons of weeds be produced [Music] even more grassland was plowed up to meet the demand but it still wasn't enough with all these fields given over to producing cereals farmers struggled to find the space for other crops the Minister of Agriculture insisted that every spare scrap of land be puts a good use even Leicester Square and Regents Park were dug over to grow vegetables we're gonna get rid of all this scrap metal which of course can be used in the munitions factories to build tanks and planes but we're also gonna free up a patch of land now it doesn't look like much at the moment but once we get this cleared if we ever get this cleared you want to hang there Peter once we get it cleared okay we will be able to put a crop in for harvest later in the year but we've got to work quickly Alex and Peter are going to grow a bean crop to supplement the feed for the dairy herd but there's a problem Wow small pieces of land like this had never been cultivated so we're in need of plowing well this is a good Nick but their size and awkward shape meant an ordinary tractor couldn't do the job so we're looking for something that could plow that land and Harrow that land the government had a solution a scheme where farmers could lease specialist equipment to help maximize output and of course the the Ministry of Agriculture's where they're encouraging us to do these things they're actually offering these things on hire so you know let's take our pick let's have a look here see what we've got obviously something like that is too big but it was like the trusty tractor it does the work of two horses it plows over an acre per day using only two gallons of petrol and a land girl can start it and it stays itself Wow on to a winner what if a Lango can start it there maybe even we can start it Peter by 1942 that wasn't just a food shortage timber was insured by two would imports declined as shipping lanes were cut off let the outbreak before Britain was importing almost all her timber indeed I think it was only 4% of that timber that we need it and used in Britain that could be sourced from Britain in fact once we looked around us what we realized but the problem was not so much where was the word going to come from but who the heck was going to get it with many male forestry workers being drafted to fight the Ministry of Labour calling the nation's women to step in they formed the woman's timber cool female tree fell asleep and soon became though oh geez I mean nowadays you might paint yourself well you know what's the big deal would you know what's it mostly useful paper furniture but in the wartime it had a really important function for a start many of our best fighter aircraft were made would wartime industry also depended on wood the largest consumers of timber for commerce which required Joe Mason Tracey Anderson work for the Forestry Commission and have enlisted the help of Ruth and her daughter Eve basically we just the full body thing I would sort of expect you to be you find it girls worked in shops secretaries I think it must have given a lot of young women a real feeling of self-confidence a self-respect that that they could you know be out there be doing something truly helpful for the war effort something for your country in a really practical way this is exactly the sorts of things that were proving their girls were just as good at boys [Music] was the Ministry of I think to use machines to increase efficiency with animal feed in short supply Alex and Peter are using their cleared patch of land to grow beans for the catalogs with the help of a trio of tractor enthusiasts Richard Loudoun Jett Raven and what have we got here Oh little faeces neck sort of tractor I could probably work with this is your trusty tractor for next week right trusty tractor yeah best sewing small tractor at the moment rusty tractor you've got it for a week with a range of attachments as well okay I've got a book here with all the attachments in you've got a player with it and this camera and all sorts so I should think that will do you reading for you there people originally designed in 1933 the trustee was modified during the war to reduce the amount of steel it required as supplies ran short but this is the kind of thing that for the patch of land we've cleared would be ideal yeah small patches like this are exactly what was needed to be put into production well let's hope so and we've got something here that's sort of halfway in between me and a spade and and the tractor in the plow this is one of exactly the first job is to prepare the tractor for plowing rather than being towed the plowing attachment forms one unit with the tractor it should be a one-man operation this [ __ ] so right I don't tell me you need five people which when you put it in the hedge gonna start this yes yeah yeah yeah let's show you better show me how to start it okay Jill's on right all right so this is like starting the old lawnmower here we go your field weighs over half a billion cubic feet of wood was needed during the war for everything from aircraft to ships and rifles [Music] Ruth and Eve have had a common stumbling block weight of the truth is causing the sorter jam the safest option it's my to pinch Rhea yeah it's not quite big crown on it this one it's gonna catch the winner you can see it rocking and when it rocks it'll come back little Jam the saw and you won't be able to do anything at all so the best thing we can do to give you guys a hand now is if we put a wedge in the back right I'll keep the cut open means use the saw will move freely through right find the wedge in at the back here just taking care not to bang it into the store that is so much prayer with that wedge in well that's moving I think we're nearly there she's beginning to really wobble now you can see the gap opening and closing you can also see the wedge bobbing up and down when she goes we need to get out of the way if you can also shout timber when it goes because they would have been working in groups so you would have wanted to let everybody else know the trees about to go yeah [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] okay fine a trustee tract ain't ready to go it's now time to stop bowing the depth of the plow can be easily controlled by an experienced farmers could even set the tractor running on its own only needing to turn it around at each end first appearance this is a pretty heavy looking piece of kit but actually with its set right you can let the engine do all of the work and I'm actually now just guiding it you know but it's still quite cumbersome and then terrify the hand of stone [Music] the trusty tractor is entirely British man until 1943 when wartime shortages resulted in the use of American engines with the land plow the final job is to smooth out the soil ready for sowing the plow could be easily replaced of over 20 so that's the field done I've got beans in while the sun's still shining all right here we go [Applause] a next stage for Ruth and Eve is to remove all the smaller branches from the tree a process known as smelling when you join the team before you went off on four weeks training on the first couple of weeks you did everything a little bit of absolutely everything and then you're allowed to sort of choose which things you are best at and for the second two weeks for training that's what you concentrated on whether it be the measuring the surveying the felling itself thus netting or indeed bark peeling this is the wrong species for that but if you were interested in making explosives a really really useful thing with barking and aza Bucks voluntary so anything like that was carefully peeled and debarked the barks we made it to charcoal that was then part of the explosives industry girls could be sent anywhere in the country to be piloted with locals or to Spain hostels or camps one person who knows firsthand the trials of being in the women's timber Corps is Irene Howell who became a lumberjill in 1943 what we did beforehand though I really there's things they really said complete change from what you've been doing before I mean that must've been quite nice actually to be I'm out and about doing something ever and that stays endures - yes yeah so the women's timber corps was in a sense sort of a step up yes lovely but conditions were tough rheumatism was a common ailment amongst lumber Jill's resulting from long periods working in the forests in damp conditions oh is this you yes what I mean what did you like best about being a member of the timber call yeah baby the other girl sweetie I wouldn't used to being with a lot of girls used to have a good tongue you enjoy it did you feel you were part of you know the war effort when you were out in the woods well yes yes you certainly part of the war in fact we had to do something after 18 you all had to do something so just got on with it yeah just as important as felling a tree was measuring it so this is to work out how everybody gets paid yes we get paid when women's Tim McCaw got paid by results yep okeydoke so let's measure us off a 10-foot length and see how much we don't show we calculating the amount of wood in a tree was the most intellectually demanding job it was vital to ensure that nothing was wasted it normally went to well-educated girls who excelled at maths okay well just take the circumference of the tree now 2.8 not all the timber in the trees usable the curved sides must be removed leaving just the central portion to calculate the amount of usable timber a Hoppus conversion table was used that's nine something nine see what four foot nine four foot nine so ten foot lengths we're looking at a girth of what did we say four foot nine ten foot log and then you just read across there to see on beneath one 14.1 square feet in that piece of timber now the tree is ready to be sent to the sawmill for final processing before the war only 4% of the timber used in Britain was homegrown by the end it was 60% over 18 million tons [Music] throughout the war milk was seen by the government as essential for the nation's health a much-needed source of nutrition especially for children to produce enough for the population cars were removed from was very soon after birth and fed with artificial hip leaving the freshmen the farms cars have been taught to feed from bottles but bottle feeding is time-consuming so Alex and Peter must train them to drink from a pocket oh this one's got teeth Peter nearly no stupid that one okay see what we do see what we do we remove these from the equation entirely yeah yeah come on okay you're so close yeah yeah nearly nearly my fingers yep we need to learn to laugh here we are here we are it's like a milk bonanza this is where it is this is really good stuff is and there we go there we go what's one those moments on the farm on any farm when you get that moment of Independence in an animal you know it's got just a much better chance in life improved methods of dairy farming paid off in 1942 sales of milk hit over a billion gallons 40% above pre-war levels but with imported feed scarce and less milk for the cars they needed an additional source of protein in their diet one solution was beans Alex and Peter have ordered a new seed drill two soda beans more quickly but their efforts have been watered by the weather not as dry as it could be not and the problem is the rain isn't letting up we've got clouds in the sky we're expecting more rain on top of what we've already had you can see this water sitting on the ground but we've got an afternoon of joy and we've got to the stage where we've just got to get these beans in the ground you ready for it better I am but the main thing is in the context of the war this was bonus ground this was turning every inch of your farm into something that could produce a crop that's enough in there that's enough in there and it's a fantastic way to get rid of this this is really versatile you can sow virtually any type of seed at the moment we've got it set up so that it's it's for beans and there's a regulator on the back which determines how often it drops the beans out sir we've got a setup for was it six inches something like that yep now the only problem is Peter is as you're pushing this through this claggy filthy clay you're going to struggle to get traction with this wheel my only concern so you're going to walk in front so I've known some tallest and now I understand here on the draw have watch you as the wheel rotates it turns to chambers one removes the beat from the center into a second which drops the beam into the ground producing a clicking sound that is going going good but we're selling quite thin to start with just so we know we've got enough beans to do the whole patch then we can just come over and so again but this should hop is not fixed shut so I just put them on the road but yes put them on the road for long afternoon I think [Music] a bit of a struggle but we got there yes you're looking well it's looking like they're evenly drilled here let's just hope that they're evenly drilled across the whole patch but the main problem we're gonna have here is we don't have very good drainage and this clay soil is holding the water so you know it's gonna be a tough call the wartime reduction in imported animal food was especially tough on pigs without enough food to sustain them the government ordered a massive cold and pig meat became scarce one solution from the Ministry of food was to establish big clubs where communities collected their kitchen leftovers to feed a shared animal turning waste into meat six months ago Ruth started a club with a piglet brought shorty Ruthie's stock woman debbie under wouldn't have come to check whether shorty has grown large enough for slaughter hello shorty right so she's about six months old - no yes she'd been eating our pig club scraps enjoying herself I mean I don't think she's quite ready for slaughter ya know she's still a bit on the small side yeah yeah that's the way we do things nowadays of course Annie's gone by they did things differently and one way they used to feel how much weight they had on them they put a thumb up the pigs bottom and you could pinch and see how much mate sound terribly lovely no no I'm not offering to do that now but that is one way of doing it if you push down you can feel you can feel where the bones are yeah and it gives you a good idea of how much covering the facts there is on there yeah but they also love a good back scratch as well she's really firm-fleshed which is good what that means is that muscle is building over at the moment there's not a great deal of fat and nowadays of course people don't want too much fat on their pigs but during the war we were desperate for any animal fats we could get our hands on so a nice fat pig gives you lots of love it's a bad thing if you put on a bit interesting that now we are getting close to slaughter we're sort of looking at her and sizing up we've got to share her half of her has to go back to the government we get the other half so that's a half of a pig between four of us it might not seem like very much but when you're so extremely short of absolutely everything that every little bit helps as well as bacon petrol and diesel had also been rationed since the start of the war but in 1942 the shortages grew even more extreme prioritised so those who didn't need their cars for vital work and no longer buy petrol farmers were allowed small rations of petrol primarily for their tractors that they needed to look for alternative options for other farm vehicles the boys have found inspiration from an unlikely attraction without doing you breaking so have a look at this Massey Harris may see how his tractor but what else well obviously be modified to run off of some other form of fuel yes exactly solid-fueled so wood and coal yeah fighting in North Africa severely disrupted petrol imports there was an alternative fuel there was a bit cold so you got all of your solid fuel burning in here okay but that isn't what's providing the power source is merely providing the gas that that you're then gonna burn for the power source so I suppose : would contains a calorific value a lot of that calorific value is turning into gas I think that's what we're trying to capture this is a filter chamber speed so we've got a rough idea of how this works you can find us a vehicle and you can convert it I can try to you what you try and get your head around this see if you can knock something up and what I'll do is see if I can get my hands on some wartime fuel with which to power perfect we're actually a short supply gas-powered engines growing more popular in the 1940s [Music] in cities and town gas was available by our main supply and was carried in a bundle - acid to power but many areas of the countryside weren't linked up to the mains so the boys will have to make their own code detail is enlisted to help a conservation officer Colleen Richardson who has a 1930s athletes he's hoping to convert his engine because of a vehicle can be used for important jobs well this is it this is our is our vehicle because she's bringing it in now it's it's currently running off petrol and we're going to convert this to run off coal gas this is the machine once the task is done you'll be able to drive it for 30 miles on one load of cold have you ever done this before no okay I know the theory no it's it's not easy but I think between us we can sort of have a go at making it work [Music] to survive yeah but we have an engine currently running off of petrol we need to convert it to run off the gas that's coming from the coal so on the front we're gonna put essentially a hopper into which we will put our coal and this coal will be on fire and this fire will be giving off gas off the coal and we're going to collect this gas and feed it down into another container this is just gonna take out all those impurities that's in the smoke so what eventually gets fed into our engine is good clean gas when burning coal only 40 percent of the energy in the cozy the other 60% escapes as coal gas [Music] kollene begins work on the heart made from an old warrior imitator shape it will sit near the top of the furnace and carry the coal the reason that we need this dome shape is so that as the vehicle is moving along and it's sort of shaking around it actually shakes the coal down into the fire because of this shape another quench I'm going for a non quench yeah [Music] during the war 200 million tons of coal was needed each year to keep the country willing and power the factories involved in alex has come to a mine in the forest of dean owned by Robin Morgan so how far down we going there Robin I would say the cover you got here was some around two hundred forty two hundred foot yeah vertical that is right coal was plentiful in Britain the problem was how to get it out of the ground before the war British mining was hugely dependent on manual labour less than 10% of coal was cut by machine so Robin was this mine opened during the Second World War oh this point I thought like 200 years ago actually pass for this mine was right okay so and so some of these workings here would definitely have been worked during the Second World War oh definitely yeah but skilled miners were leaving for the battlefield and there was real danger that cold vital to the war effort would run short okay so where are we now then for we're nearly done the tongue facial I can hear I can hear people working away the government appears four times here - but conditions in the mines were so notoriously bad so in 1943 Ernest Bevin the Minister for labour resorted to conscripted young man's words 10% of all those called up for war went under is that no there's not a lot of look there but it's surprising oh you can adapt yourself to work in places like that yeah when I first came into the mines years ago it used to terrified me to look up these coefficients yeah I wouldn't even put my foot in there I thought but you get so used to it after a dangerous thing actually right so a little baby boys though they would have come down the mine and felt exactly like you did the perfectly a momentary Ford yes absolute oh yeah we loaded up yeah right but you want us to go up there and have a go then yeah by all means yeah you want funny yeah you'll find it a bit awkward to start with like you know mining expert Rick Stewart has come to help Alex extraction please really loving this I'm not so certain okay it's quite roomy yeah yeah joking aren't you so Rick this is the Kong face yeah absolutely but you can see all the black coal where yeah and so I talked to basically take this out so what's the strategy here then picking it out by hand know what we're gonna do we are gonna use a pick but just a small hole in the face well then we're gonna use a sore foot err boring machine so if you want to crawl in where that dish is yeah just hole in just I've just cracked my knuckles on this pit prop here digging this hole this is working in the most extreme conditions it has to be said well I'm thinking I'm pretty much about there and that's not bad okay go back for the first time anyway so next thing we do is you want to get this thing set up yeah yeah that's a pretty mean looking drill bit that isn't so that's now in yeah so once we've got the air on we're more or less ready to drill Robin could you oblige with the air [Music] [Applause] that is a beast whoa that is a bit of kit and we're just put in two foot shot hole in 1015 seconds almost 20 mm baby boys use that many found devastating three the end of 1943 they would have gone into the army the Air Force the Navy yep after December 1943 ten percent of those boys would come down the mines yeah and that was done effectively on a random ballot like 40% of those called into the mines appealed against their fate but their cries fell on deaf ears five hundred men were prosecuted for refusing to work but many paid a high price for their dissent though many who rather than coming underground actually went to jail instead yeah yes what all choices that so we're now drilled the hole and next we're gonna do is charge it electric guitar yeah absolutely we're using electric detonators here first thing we do put the charge into the hole what I got the charge yourself in we then need to put the stemming in as the stemming is a piece of clay which holds the charge in the hole directing the blast into the coalface like so is to connect up the foreign wires when we're satisfied at there things like a when we've tested our circuit we then fire are charged at the forge Peter in college and this will deduce next stage is to make a gas cooling wrong pipe we will transport the coal gas between the furnace and the filter come on we've got to bend this pipe yeah yeah and to do this we're gonna fill it with sand are you yeah because it's a hollow tube and once we heat it up this gets very soft ruh and if we bend it it'll just kink and what we want is the gas to be able to flow evenly through the pipe work so we have to fill it with something which is flexible but can take the heat in the fire and that is kiln dried sand using sand to bend pipe work is a very traditional technique dating back hundreds of years this is the the former that we've made to bend the pipe to give us a sweeping curve from the top of the furnace down into the filter right okay in order to be flexible enough to bend the pipe must be heated to 800 degrees Celsius that's okay keep going keep going keep going okay whoo look at that good Bend yeah [Music] as it passes through schools right job done yeah yeah well done right okay just work it way back Oh politicians can a dream who you like that unlike farming where the women's Land Army and conscientious objectors could provide help the mines relied solely on Bevin guns for extra labor part of the reason that mining was such an unpopular occupation but the danger involved around a quarter of all wartime - would suffer a serious injury during their time underground blasting the coal face was a particularly hazardous task [Music] [Applause] this is an exploder yep so first job yeah is to connect up the firing wires but like a car battery then exactly yeah exactly the fari handles in yeah and what you're waiting for is that like to come on there yeah which tells us that we've got enough charge in there to fire okay give out a winding up charge yep yep and then when you're ready you just press the fire button and that's that one there yeah so I can press that now [Music] [Applause] once the coal was blasted from the face the Bevin boys had a hard task of clearing it away they'd be an experienced miner would be up to you Rick to set the charges but the Bevin boys would be the ones charged with actually taking all the coal away from the face and out of the mines yeah I'm never doing some of the less skilled work as of pullings of the coal down from the face yeah and also than running it up to surface so dangerous work Burke's it wasn't technically difficult no no and not glamorous either of like military conscripts there was no letter for the Bevin boys even after the war ended in 1945 Britain still needed coal the Bevin boys were not demobilized for another three years so a kind of big thank-you if you like he's long overdue for that we're forced to come down here and more slowly I mean sort of another 20,000 Bevin boys many of them were dead now most of whom are dead yeah and so a huge thank you from the nation right Peter calling last ready to assemble that coal-powered creation one of the things that this sort of characterizes is in fact a lot of the sort of blacksmiths and engineers had gone away to war and it was the farmhands who are having to turn their hand to serve engineering and improvisation using whatever lay around the farm and the the problems that we've encountered and the the sheer effort involved in in making this work is exactly what would have happened during the 1940s [Music] one more job to the engine well we need to fill up our filter this is gonna take all the particles that are coming through which is essentially just smoke it's going to filter those out so we're all left with its gas yeah just got some Heather so we're just gonna start putting this in essentially the leaves and the flowers are highly absorbent and also the the particles will stick to the is a very large surface area I haven't I haven't pushed it down too much no that's fine it's just sort of just lightly packed yeah lid on it's been absolute you know three-day math another done a three-day marathon here's your cold barely recognize you two in there as usual right looks absolutely amazing what this is this is calling this Colin's vision come to life to start producing gas [Music] Ruth has arrived to give the ambulance its first test-drive are you gonna talk me through it right okay okay I mean and there's no starter button underneath right cool put the choke on we just wired him to partly on my grandfather drove lorries right throughout the wall I wonder if he had this it's amazing though how many women did through the driving during the war one of the easiest groups to train up were young women so for a brief period in the early history of Motoring wartime motoring was surprisingly feminine perhaps the most famous wartime ambulance driver everything finally in place now for the moment of truth [Music] [Music] works is to take a crispy that fan as well keep telling that we have added a lot of weight Emily well I have to say Peter this this is an absolute thrill it's not the fastest I need more time written most certainly one of the most exciting this is a vehicle that we can use around the fall but pretty much anything [Music] vehicles like this you'll be writing about there Peter with him [Music] he's off to a nice Flocker user lucky boy [Music] the ambulance can do us the good service of running them around for us [Music] cooking dinner come on Ruth let's get some food no heats must be wasted I love it can't cook in a whole new way of doing it camp cooking pan fantastic how many curls can you cut your dinner on great one tin of spam a couple of eggs and a bit of bread all right yep din dins Wow oh joy of joys one into the pan roof oh no oh it's the height spammers good but that is absolutely delicious I must have been mad [Music] after months of being fattened on scraps shorty has reached the size a wartime Pig would have been at slaughter this is it then shorty time to say goodbye Constabulary here to make sure we do it all aboveboard fair play because meat was so valuable during the war the license was required to slaughter pigs every time a pic Club slaughtered a pig you were supposed to have a police officer present to ensure that it was all done properly in a bulb or a license yes as opposed to the license so that we can't be sneaking off any extras well I think she's done really well considering what she's been eating she's not bad shape is she she's nothing quite good in she yeah she's really put on my channel then let's get you going come on girl jingo [Music] every Pig slaughtered from club was taken by the government to be distributed as part [Applause] how much of this went into the rationing system some also went to provide emergency relief to the victims of air raids Southampton just sing quiet for teaching time but you [Music] those who survived so the Ministry of food set up emergency feeding centers often using meat from sources like victims Ruth has come to lend a hand at her local center the prices were cheap and were kept capped in order to ensure that their food really was available to everyone so for example a starter like soup would be 2 pence and a main course with meat potatoes and two veg you're talking about aprons and that really was dirt cheap food as with all restaurants during the war you didn't need a rationale - to dissenters yeah I've got the stock of a local emergency feeding station and it is really quite grim reading and had 13 cases of baked beans with 24 cans in each case they had beef hash biscuit cocoa tea and sugar condensed milk meat roll rice pudding and soup and that was it for several weeks the Cavs have been fed on the diet of artificial milk [Music] feed strict aggression farmers often used fodder crops such as sweet disciplining the diets to save petrol boys are resorting to old technology to prepare the feed this is a horse gin or a horse engine and like many a wartime farmer I haven't used one of these for a long time a gin is a geared mechanism which is turned by a horse transferring power through a series of shafts to any machine of farmer choosers all the machinery have been driven by one of these during the Victorian period but they were phased out and they were replaced by Lister engines so obviously they run on petrol and during the water there was a fuel shortage so kit like this was being dug out put back together to see if it works and if it did it could drive machines like this and this is just a beet slicer and it's going to slice up far our roots and hopefully we can wean our cattle onto solid foods well Peter fixes the gin Alex is tacking up the horse okay Ben who was the hardest bit of getting a horse tacked up is throwing all of this stuff over his backside by the time you get to 1942 where the numbers of tractors have more than doubled but I'm sure many old boy farmers as well would have found themselves in this situation must have been lovely for them I think to have brought Old Faithful animals back into service and to have seeing them working once again for British agriculture personally I relished the opportunity to get a heavy horse in on the farm because you know they really are fantastic form of power ok with his bridle on now he's ready to go Peter has finished assembling the Jim I think we're ready you get the horse on this and slice up some roots whoa how you doing think we're looking good Alex it's all there it's all connected okay you're happy with it as happy as I'll ever be jolly good the horse is hooked up to the main drive shaft which will turn the gears well here we go let's see how he gets on walk on walk on [Music] and this is the tricky bit for the first time we're gonna walk over this Bend come on walk on walk on steady steady lad good lads okay Alex I'm going to start introducing some roots okay the use of fodder crops suppose my own guru is slicing he's doing really well really pleased with him this is the tricky bit and step up and there we go easy it just goes to show that horses could still do a job on wartime farms good lad and emergency feeding centers employee volunteers to make and serve the food especially [Music] Jill dates has volunteered to help booth with the cooking but their ingredients unlimited so the menu today is boiled onions with white sauce a Jill's making the white sauce aren't you I can see it looks very exciting mr. cornflour poor troll made with pork and the beans and bread to pad it out and then the pudding plum Duff and custard the meat itself was supplied by the government for such feeding centers off ration but where it originally came from is of course all that pork that is being collected from the pig club's up and down the country you only fun without white sauce well it would be much more fun with a nice dollop of margarine isn't Papa Fleur it's thickening the next stage is to mix the pork beans and breadcrumbs together I think it's quite interesting that the cheap food of wartime was in many ways exactly the polar opposite of modern cheap food modern fast food this is food in most entirely without fat and without sugar and that pretty much is exactly what the modern fast food is not the mixture is wrapped in floured cloth ready for boiling I mean the advantage of boiling everything and and an awful lot of food in this British restaurants was bored is that you can do mass catering very easily another good point is that those who are eating it haven't seen it made they don't say it don't say it I know it does for three hours and then coated in breadcrumbs dessert is plum Duff which course is this sort of spotted dick the plum Duff is made from flour breadcrumbs suet raisins for sweetness and pounded eggs I was gonna mix up the egg powder now this was something that was new coming in from America eggs were rationed whether they were in powder form or fresh form the powdered eggs are mixed with water the equivalent of two eggs may deserve the 12 people the war is the sort of height of processed foods in many ways powdered milk which we're making the sauces out of rather than fresh milk powdered egg partly because it was a way of concentrating nutritional value into a very tiny space for the ship's no I mean if you can get nutritional value of 12 eggs into a packet that size why would you move fresh eggs around however lacking in meat the main course may be however tired you're feeling there's nothing like a stodgy puddinin' custard for cheering a person up Alex and Peter have finished milling the Swede and are ready to try it on the calves smells good don't smell too bad actually yeah now I'm quite confident here because eating everything in sight no okay go on in Peter hey what's that he's just licking it is he no he's not listen he's eating it you can hear him putting those molars to work grinding down the feed in wartime farmers would be looking to balance the diet so they don't miss out too much from not having their mother's milk they still put on bulk still put on the weight and will go on and become good dairy cows certainly in a wartime situation you'd have no choice because you don't have the feed and the Ministry of food is demanding all of your milk you you just have to wean them earlier than you would otherwise I am really considered how much the Second World War encroached upon the countryside I've always seen it very much the terms of city life and the Blitz but it really was being fought in these fields out here yeah emergency feeding centers soon became permanent fix Jersey and Churchill renamed them British restaurants until 1942 most working people army took home beating in public was regarded as embarrassing but after the government introduced a price cap of five shillings for three courses for the first time we had the option to eat out British restaurants would become a lasting social phenomenon and signaled the start of high street dining they're gonna be needing a longer break with that sir routes feeding Center is open for business the meat road is being served with baked beans which were considered to be such a sacred part of the British diet that may well a passion for the duration of the war [Music] Booth's father Jeff used to eating British restaurants as a child he's come to the feeding Center to sample Ruth centers testing out with British restaurants were serving 600 thousand meals a day British restaurants really sort of mark a turning point in in sort of British eating culture too I mean this is the time when affordable basic catering is suddenly available to a wide number of people British restaurants really sort of opened up the catering industry in many ways oh yes yes I think that's true and one or two like like ones I knew in Oxford they stayed right up until about the fifty well well into the 50s people just got used to eating out the idea of eating out there guys and I think caterers as well got used to the idea that there was money to be made out of doing cheap food what was a kid I didn't know what the money side of it really I must admit that's not as bad as I thought it would be either the meat roll it's actually it's quite edible really onions very nice Olly I don't know who's cooked them this time that was me right okay very nice lovely my truths emergency feeding center also seems to be ahead with deploys so I mean yeah that was really good I love them it was quite healthy food the fittest we've ever been information so they say they say but also any other things we can't relate to in terms of it's so rare in our lives that we ever see a food shortage Wars country really gives you an inner sight this is not just a shortage of one thing it's a shortage right across the board of every fair resting [Music] Pub things before they represent abortion on here from the need for women to fill new roles in the workplace to the necessity of a community [Music] great hardships experienced in 1942 and the way Britain sought to overcome them would have an impact stretching far beyond the years of

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 133,352

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, wartime farm, blackout restrictions, world war two, britain at war, british history, dunkirk, britain during world war, living in britain, ruth goodman, alex langlands, peter ginn, living in a farm, historic farm

Id: PjzL2lHNkzI

Length: 57min 36sec (3456 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020