Wartime Farm Episode 3 of 8

now obviously to earlier than in some listings when our British farmers faced an almighty battle of their own the great British countryside setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War Churchill called it the frontline of freedom it was a battle fought by the farmers of Bryn when war broke out 2/3 of all Britain's food was imported now it fell under threat from a Nazi blockade the government turned to farmers to double homegrown food production the plow had become a weapon of war it was the farmers principal weapon of war if they failed Britain could be starved into submission now archeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman are turning the clock back to the 1940s over the next year they are running Manor Farm in Hampshire as it would have been during the Second World War this time the team approached 1940 when Britain's cities were bombed by the Nazis in the blaze they'll experience how the countryside defended and protected the cities one at 8,000 Spitfire revived old crafts to prepare for the biggest evacuation in history you know what are you doing Joplin got come on keep up we'll acclaim and celebrate the first Christmas on ration could it alter the balcony mind and have what fun one can the king this is the untold story of the countryside at war by November 1940 Britain had been at war for 14 months under the watchful eye of war agricultural executive committees farmers had grown over two million extra acres of crops in a drive to double homegrown food production but Britain faced an unprecedented onslaught in the summer of 1940 the Battle of Britain saw the German airforce attempt to destroy the RAF in preparation for a full invasion they failed and Prime Minister Winston Churchill saluted the courage of its pilots as a turning point in the war the gratitude of every home in our Islands goes out to the British Airmen who undaunted by odd and we read in their constant challenge and mortal danger are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few but the bombing of Britain's cities and ports would continue the Blitz killed some 40,000 civilians first wave of bullying was a not just a London but also at the port towns along the south coast Portsmouth and Southampton came in for a hammering night after night after night and there was no underground to shelter in if you're in South Hampton huge numbers of the population and she slept in the fields aerial bombardment was a terrifying concept endangering civilians in Britain's cities as never before so over three million women and children were moved to the safety of the countryside the largest evacuation of people in Britain's history farms with their many outbuildings were expected to accommodate as many people as possible it's not the best candidate is it and that thing there is just too big to even consider heating Alex and Peter are checking manna Farms barns for potential places to accommodate evacuees this is another candidate yeah there are a few holes are not roofinal yet there's nothing quite significant really there's what there's one two three four there's four holes on this side to make room for a vacuous here they must make urgent repairs to the ruse of the barns we just haven't got anywhere near enough beds if we got all these people coming so I'm just gonna have to knock something up quick they're gonna have to be pretty crude with imports restricted and factories switching production to weapons in 1940 everything was in short supply including furniture word was all these townspeople were on their way they had nowhere else to go they were being bombed out of their own homes and the country suddenly had to absorb huge numbers of extra people so how did you do it you know where'd you find the facilities where'd you find the beds where'd you find the bedding where'd you find the food where to find the pots and pans and it all had to be done so fast up and down the countryside villagers of all thoughts were bitterly gathering together everything they could to accommodate this influx of really rather desperate people oh you don't as an emergency bad mother building materials - were in short supply bombing destroyed thousands of factories and houses all of which needed to be repaired brick and tile factories couldn't keep up with demand so people in the countryside revived old crafts to produce them good afternoon gentlemen afternoon lows oh yeah well you come ready for work and a picnic and a picnic all right get the weather Alex and Peter need roof tiles to repair the barns for evacuees so they're calling on experts in traditional crafts Colin Richards and Mick Krupa what is it it's a tire making machine that is quite something it hasn't seen action for a long time so we're recommissioning it got bodies anymore this is a bit of a beast you put clay in one end right in theory you get tiles out of the other how many do you need probably a few hundred into the hundreds definitely so we need to get busy then the first job is to soften the clay from which the tiles will be made dance man yeah this needs to be pliable otherwise there's no hope for if this going through the machine well let's get it get it all and get it all in yeah squeezing the clay through the slot requires a great deal of power Colleen is hoping the petrol engine is up to the task ready well I'm ready when you are going in you okay okay yep humming is bringing Rama to the clay in the Box the fresh herb oil Oh Peter's been handed the vital job of cutting the molded clay into individual tiles Oh Lina what are you doing get on face work Peter chop and got come on keep up with a clay Peter needs to raise his game at the moment there we go I'm cut okay pluck all right all right so how many did we get out of that running Peter 1:2 working free actually opus 297 towers tonight bit down on let's get on with yeah nothing after here we go oh hey got em right after a bomb attack bricks often remained intact so could be reused tiles on the other hand easily shattered so new ones were in great demand the war distorted everything you know with the damage in the big cities the the brickworks and the tower works were working overtime and there wasn't any spare capacity and it was a case of make do and mend going back to basics and if you had the knowledge and the skill to make tiles yes is what you do few had produced tiles this way since before the First World War during the war imports of cotton and linen was severely restricted so bedding was in short supply routes following government advice and recycling old fabric to make patchwork quilts for the evacuees I've been making these little pockets on every night again when I've got a little bit time in making these little pockets I just run them up on the machine and then stuff them full of feathers the bags are made from scraps of material known as ticking ticking is just a really really tightly woven cotton it has to be tightly woven otherwise the feathers work their way out it's because that the end of a feather is really quite pointy and an ordinary fabric if it was just like say apron fabric you can push it straight through there so that would be really uncomfortable and gradually the feathers would work their way out so old mattress covers old pillows they all covered in in ticking great for making quilts so then I've got my thimble my needle I'll just sew each bag up and this is sort of part of this British patchwork tradition the idea of making you know stuffed pockets great huge fat stuffed crude pockets which I'm going to sew together into something well I think perhaps to a modern eye it would look more like a duvet than anything else but this is about warm it's amazing how quick it grows last five and after Rick's and then everything's squirt to start off with to harden the tiles there must be fired in a kiln but with no access to industrial kilns during the war temporary ones were built using whatever materials what's a hand we got many more to go no this is the the Lara Slayer what sort of temperature we're looking for here we're going to need to get up to around 900 900 degrees yeah that's gonna be really difficult though isn't it it is in these conditions as you know quite a challenge ahead of us really in these freezing November conditions maintaining a constant temperature of 900 degrees requires some clever engineering we've got to create four little chimneys because we need to get the heat all the way around the perimeter of the kiln and as we move from one corner to another we can suck the heat across the stack so heat is drawn to these four corners and these up guys that's very kind thank you you got the stage now your kilns basically complete but everything is very very damp and we need to dry that out slowly over a couple of hours because we drive the heat up too quickly it's just going to burst them tell the kiln must burn for two days and two nights this will require over a ton of firewood gathered from the forest to help them cut it up Alex and Peter have dusted off the farms 1940s power saw it looks extremely dangerous Peter yeah yeah he was at the Avon power saw have you ever heard of Avon power tools and no no it's not that company that went into prosthetic limbs is it hi storm uses nearly nearly Neddy he wants to go doesn't it just wants to kick into life yes yes one-take plate ready on the gear maybe Routh's make do and mend quilts for the evacuees are taking shape so this for I've done them together there will fit into that gap to be honest I'm to resist making it overly pretty there is a sort of temptation to slow down and start doing beautiful things make it look gorgeous I mean even a couple of stitches made in a you know little pattern here and you'd start to not only hold the feathers in place but it's a you know improve the look and obviously you know time under there okay chaps looks like grubs up it wasn't just women and children who were relocated to the countryside during the war so is 20 year old Don Sutherland but Don wasn't an evacuee he was conscripted into farm labor by the government because like 61 thousand men and women he refused to fight I decided to register as a conscientious objector when the call-up came I objected on religious grounds it was a very difficult decision to make I was believed that you love your enemies and you don't kill them you know you don't you don't try and hurt them right there must have been a very very difficult time of your life it was difficult you could only speak the truth and say that you didn't do you couldn't do it yourself and I couldn't do it I couldn't go out and kill people and that's what was about were there problems trying to convince the authorities as to why you you felt you needed to to object now the usual question is what would you do if a German and it's did such-and-such a thing to your daughter or your sister or your mother that sort of thing yeah I'd but I think that's questions are really sensible questions to ask really undoes not do no but won't do him in the vacancy hmm I only know that there are better ways of doing it than that some 5,000 conscientious objectors were imprisoned but Don was one of the lucky ones spending the rest of the war as a farm laborer well your threshing out and that's the middle of winter and middle of winter yes have been cold there yes it was and that that's that's one of myself that's the sugar beet that's a sugar beet a cartload a sugar beet right you know I was an office worker be so rich and office for seven years yeah so it was completely new to me to work with my hands but I think it's a it's good for any young man to do that really yeah oh yeah absolutely the work you did in the fields are bringing in these harvests did you did you feel even inadvertently that this was part of the war effort and that you're in some way doing your bit towards supporting Britain at that time well indirectly I suppose you are really I I don't deny the men going out there we're making a much bigger sacrifice than I was yeah yeah I must admit that yeah but is what that it's what they're having to do yes that I disagreed with you yeah yeah maybe it was always accepting that new you fight that's it you're cool without realizing what Wars like let me take that this is Daisy Daisy by December 1940 the bombing of Southampton and Portsmouth had reached a new intensity thousands more evacuees flooded from the cities to the countryside bit nervous put my best coat on like a good impression whoo we're getting it children under five were accompanied by their mothers hello welcome to manifold if we go here then we earnestly welcome to my home someone who remembers a vacuous arriving here over 70 years ago is Betty Rudd I found these mothers and these children and they are weeping and in a terrible state the children were crying and feeling miserable way well why why can't we go home mummy No why do we have to stay here mummy and it was really very tough and that was my first experience actually over there is the government assigned bulleting officers in every village to find accommodation for the evacuees that his father was the officer for the area around manna farm yes my father's here Aaron is long overcoat yeah there were extraordinary amount of people there with big houses owed time generally they didn't want to know at all the people of the but clothes we had a fight they thought they were above it indeed yes my father just marched in and that was it and the people who were being billeted out in the countryside were not countryside people there were very much townies with different ways that was the problem they wouldn't eat their greens through our tradition ships and we encouraged them to actually grow vegetables a lot of these their children and the idea they were quite interested met really it is one of the things about the war isn't it all sorts of different groups of people had to learn about each other yes it did town people had to learn about the countryside in country people had to learn about town people's their life would be that never be the same again would it no certainly wouldn't modern abates many evacuated children were put to work helping farmers to meet the government's demands of doubling food production don't get mad like in the Portsmouth you four children from the cities the countryside was full of new encounters many had never seen a chicken cow or Pig before she's big Pig isn't she why she's not as cute is the other stuff she's not as cute as the others issues she's big and scary to make room for more of a qyz the boys are making roof tiles to repair outbuildings they've been firing for 24 hours but the windy conditions are causing unexpected problems we had sort of gale force winds we've tried to slow it down but what's happened is we've almost got a blast furnace all that heat has expanded the kiln and so we've needed to restrain it otherwise it would have collapsed and we'd have lost all that effort we'd have broken our tiles and it would have been disaster I suppose at the moment the flames aren't coming off anymore so we need to get some ordinary guy down a little bit and you need to keep that eat going through you can't afford to let this temperature drop when we get to these critical stages get some of these right to the back of the furnace it's almost like a sleeping dragon and as soon as you stoke it up then you know the fire leaps out of the kiln tending kilns in all conditions night and day is tough work but Collins heard stories of how tile makers made the job a little bit more bearable I thought we might try and rig ourselves up a still be good apples and distill some local hooch what do you think I think that sounds like a good idea you're talking about using this to distill alcohol yeah the reason I know about this is my uncle did this during the war he worked at a brick and tile works and you know the heat was used for sort of cooking any game they caught and for making liquor really question is so Colin is it legal if we sort of treat it as medicinal then I think we we might be able to get away with it as long as we don't sell it a little drop of medicine to see the aches and pains alcohol has a lower boiling point than water so when this fermented apple juice is heated the alcohol in it evaporates first and can be collected because put it on the heat now Colin's improvised a distillation plant from a bike in a tube a water bottle and a saucepan so we fixed that to that that's worked well because we're joining metal-to-metal the inner tube that's like a gasket what we're going to do now is use the heat from the kiln to slowly sort of boy on the mash that's in there and with the water bottle that's going to act as our first condensing chamber and then the alcohol should come down the pipe and because it's so cold this should condense out so that what we get in here the drips is going to be our distilled alcohol I know Peters gays tongue hanging night at the moment oh well this is already conversation than that possible oh don't blame a look at us at all indoors nice she looks lovely come on snowflake the government's drive to double food production mint farmers had to reduce their livestock in favour of growing crops crops produced considerably more calories per acre than livestock with meat becoming scarce the government encouraged people to set up pig clubs raised communally on kitchen scraps half the meat went to the government with the rest divided up between the members yo come on snowflake there piglet shorty is coming on well but Ruth and fellow pig club member debbie Underwood want to breed a replacement for when the time comes to slaughter him come on I got another treat waiting for you so she's taking his mother snowflake to spend some time with local boy Douglas there's a good girl girls left leg then she goes straight in with Douglas Oh does she have to have a few days separate from the piglet before she's introduced to the ball he come into season three days after she's been weaned from her piglets Ryan so that's what we'll do we'll put her in now and that hit all his hormones will encourage her there in three days time she was coming ready some cow and you know Flay we go come on tell her girl but things are not going to plan somehow shorty is escaped to follow his mother Oh earth did you get out shorts I'll have to find where they're escaping from because that's not good is no because otherwise I'll just follow her to the ball the gates still closed but look at that before we take her to the ball we're going to have to fix that because otherwise Shorty's gonna be straight out of there yeah always the way actually actually might be lucky yes well done that woman right whoa there we go do the speedy right that's Douglas him with the hairy tops areas hello gorgeous boy yeah this is Douglas another back scratch he's only served about three cells so far so hopefully many happy years ahead of him there we go like they're having fun together gnarly it's the final night tending the tile kiln and the homemade still has produced a tonic to help the team cope with the cold well we're on our sixth bottle at the moment so Wow you know it's it's really sort of taken off I think you know to toast the kiln yes we ought to have a little snifter right okay well it's clear enough it certainly does lovely thank you very much that's very pleasant oh I find this medicinal actually yeah absolutely it's not long before Colin's tonic is making the hard graft altogether more appealing do thanks you guys for a fantastic experience fantastic kill they must enjoy just one more freezing night tending the tiles at the kiln so they don't it again although the government encouraged farmers to coal livestock in favor of growing crops they made one exception cowgirls dairy cattle time we got you indoors you know milk was seen as essential to the health of the nation particularly for children with cold weather on the way the farms precious dairy cattle must be taken indoors the government sets strict targets for milk production the dairy farmers had to meet so keeping the cattle in top condition was paramount it's not just about keeping the cows fit and healthy though obviously that's really important it's also about the quality of the milk and we have got a key the quality and the quota the quantity up right through the winter yeah that's really important yeah mom you know you're way over winter the cattle will be fed silage fermented vegetation made by alex and peter go on and on you go good girls Sarah move I'm always amazed how much you can taste what a cow has been eating in the milk yes that's a definite difference isn't that just of course another reason we need to look after him is they're all in calf yeah so they're all Jeunet Springs so we want to take good care of them she looks like she's got twins experience and [ __ ] after two days of firing the kiln is left to cool and the tiles to repair the barns for a vacuous should be ready feel awful lot of work has gone into making this kiln into firing these tiles into making the time and you've no idea what the results are one false move with a brick Colin slips and it lands on the tiles we can smash a whole load of them Colin's concerned that the harsh winter conditions may have affected the firing of the tiles so what we're looking for is a ring like a bell sounds like magic sounds good right superb will this match you're on your phone it's going out yeah I'm not fasting I don't as I think reason would be so good bunch of towels up and all on that Alexson peter head back to the farm to repair the buildings so they'll be ready for more of a qyz well you're a braver man than me Alex these new towels certainly look the part we will probably use best part of 2030 on this side of the building leads us with a couple of hundred for some of the major farm buildings oh yeah with the roof repaired Alex and Peter furnished the building with Ruth's beds and quilts it's not the most salubrious of accommodating on the farm but it's warm it's dry better than being in the city center of Southampton that's Italy come this way sit mummy's coming in as well most had no idea when they would ever return home how's that that nice and comfy although rural areas like this were seen as safe havens they weren't necessarily quite as safe as they first appeared there was a top-secret operation to lure enemy bombers away from the cities and into the countryside codenamed Operation starfish I think this is the remnants of the command post of sawfish or at least the starfish in this area only the first wave of German bombers were fitted with navigation systems they dropped fire bombs on the target lighting the way for the heavy bombers but by lighting decoy fires in the countryside the Bombers could be led off target very very thick concrete reinforced from this armored bunker on mana farm the decoy operation was put into action so that's the itch in there isn't it with all the sort of industrial zones of Southampton yeah place that the German bombers really want to target yeah now if you go a little bit further east you've got a similar bend in the river so in the landscape it looks almost identical yet other bombers are gonna be drawn to that site and instead of raining their bombs down on a city centre on people and on industrial heartland they're actually raining their bombs down on fields okay and what do we got there manna farm here decoy fires would have been ignited once the incendiary fires in Southampton were under control but this wasn't the only way the countryside help protect cities from German bombers so this is the Royal observer Corps that's right yes and we're part of the royal air force and we provide the Overland observation service for them because their radar only looks out to see nevel culling fir'd served in the Royal observers the table you see here the the map this is a small segment of the main map on the control table at Winchester so that's our little piece of basically what's within visual range of us so you see the young women with their long sticks and the boards and they're pushing out things around on a board we're providing the information for those girls that's right you will be putting your plots on the table that we've observed from here a huge network of civilian volunteers operated like a human radar 24 hours a day tracking enemy aircraft in the countryside this job often fell to farmers you actually had to have something out here on duty out in the open yes point is I'm basically standing in a field all night standing in a field all night we did have quite a sad number of of the older and men who actually died of pneumonia because the Rayleigh's so got so cold you really thought you were doing your bit if you were stood out here that's right seeing the planes go over doing something about it that's right in the 1 cent and the RAF weren't able to shoot down and we're hopefully decoyed by the local starfish site so that they actually and drop their bombs in you know on a poor farmer's field or yeah on these from were supposed to on a city to people yeah decoy fires were often just simple wooden baskets filled with flammable material just knocking up some baskets a la mode one operation starfish overseeing the operation is military expert Gerry Sutcliffe felon year to see you again good to see you excellent you worked out how to set them off yet well I was going to try and do it remotely by remotely sending Peter over here with a match but that would take a best part of the night try and get them all lid we can arrange something with some batteries and pieces of wire parents should go down which will heat up the food okay we shall go bang and hopefully the rest will go with it so we can be actually setting away a wedding that's the idea patterns of fire baskets were arranged to look like burning buildings and flammable liquids like turpentine creosote and paraffin gave the impression from the air of factories and fuel dumps going up in flames alright that's not how you catch quick if you stick something in flammable liquids and that on there okay get it wired up all the fires were triggered remotely using electrically operated detonators from the safety of a bunker trail that wire out okay just almost safe so Gerry we're in a situation now where we've got our fires ready to light now we didn't affect be waiting for a call from somewhere like Southampton industrial area they will live and dampened out all of the incendiary bombs there they're then putting in a call to us at which point we act when we get the signal okay so we're waiting for that call that's great Neville's teaching Ruth how the Royal observers tracked an identified aircraft and we have a height bar here and yeah on which the number one observer sets the height yeah and when you report it if it's six thousand or five thousand you bought it as five or six right I just don't bother to mention the thousand because everybody knows it's thousands right it's only thousand and all number one does is to cite the aircraft and follow it round and when he says on that means that wherever the square is that's the report you'll get right the showcase is eight one six eight direction direction it's which direction he's going ah yes okay so he's heading yes say off one one act whatever I tell you and then I she acknowledges by saying thank you it's time to put it all into practice on April 4 over 4 8 3 6 5 heading north 1 at 8,000 Spitfire thank you at the bunker operation starfish is about to spring into action are we going together here yep go before went to plan bombs would have soon been raining down here on the fields of manna farm rather than on Southampton it's difficult really to measure the success of operation starfish you know in many ways you look at Southampton today and it is an absolute shadow of the city it was before the Luftwaffe raised it to the ground really they flattened the entire city so it can't have been that effective but at the same time if operation starfish saved just one life then it was worthwhile by December 1940 despite the valiant efforts of the Royal observer Corps and Operation starfish across Britain 24,000 civilians had been killed in the Blitz hundreds of thousands had been made homeless and millions were displaced yet the nation was determined to celebrate Christmas yes it really was the only sort of unifying celebration that you got during the war I mean bonfire night obviously had to be canceled blackout makes sense Easter well with no chocolate that was a bit of a damp squib Christmas was the one big community-wide celebration of the year that means that shortages or no shortages are somehow got to pull it all together and create something that people recognize the sort of Christmases they were used to so Ruth's planning a Christmas meal and dance she's keeping the evacuees occupied by making decorations for the cottage oh good you are nice and careful I thought you'd be the lab for the job so many town children who are you know trying to get used to country living for the first time in their lives you also get the fact that many of the hosts out in the countryside we're trying to get used to children not just town children but any children there was no sort of rhyme nor reason really to the billeting and people who were lifelong bachelors suddenly found themselves with a house full of kids so good job I know some things had to keep you occupied in it that's looking nice I like this alex is also preparing for Christmas with factories working overtime on the war effort toys were in very short supply the government came to the rescue with advice on how to make your own there I've got a pamphlet here this is called improvised toys for nurseries and refugee camps these are the sort of toys that would put a smile on my face today here we've got a little little horse you can ride on and a rocking horse and it gives you all the patterns and here these are from cotton reels this little man here is made entirely out of cotton reels I like that one earth dragon taking inspiration from the pamphlet alex is making a Spitfire out of old tin cans already made the prop this is a propeller got an old roofing nail there which I'm going to somehow fix in there so that spins but I'm just hoping that and you know that these toys bring a bit of light relief during our wartime Christmas celebrations and there's actually a lovely lion in here which says some children may have passed through such horrors or be so weakened by illness or malnutrition that they have temporarily lost the creative art of playing a toy which they may carry with them always made you far more than we might imagine to restore the health and confidence and peace of mind to a child so what we're trying to make is fake sparkly snow he's like glitters like cheap full bitter like so many other things actual glitter was in short supply I mean you can hardly justify having a glitter making factory during real time tend to make it I've got to load of epsom salts here and then I just want as little amount of water as I possibly can to make them all dissolve there we go look at that scarcely liquid you fancy a bit of sparkly on your lanterns yeah it's gonna need some guns if it's gonna shoot the luftwaffe down so put a little mail in there shame to give this away by December 1940 nearly 4 million tons of merchant shipping including desperately needed food had been lost to German u-boats the usual Christmas fair of turkey had become scarce as farmers turned away from livestock in favor of crops so the government suggested an alternative i've plumped for something that the Ministry of Food suggested something called a murky dreadful Saturday name isn't it that's awful it's a mock turkey and these parsnips nobody's legs it's basically sausage any sort of glorified stuffing mind you that is between 50 right just straight all in I think punk now comes the crafty it according to the recipe the mixture must be molded into the shape of a real turkey certain to something shape our turkeys okay fasten it legs I might have to do the one benefit though of having so many people in the house is access to their ration box basically as soon as they're billeted with me they have to hand their ration books over to me and then I can you know I'm in charge of doing all the shop and doing all the food which means that you get sort of economies of scale it's all a bit more efficient when you've got a larger number of you this says it all this does that they're one pound 4 ounces our bacon that is five people's ration for the week you know one person's ration too little rushes you couldn't really do much with but when you get a block of five people's Russians you can start to do a bit more with it you've got a few more options it makes a bit more sense there he goes one mock turkey as well as caring for a vacuous the farm work must go on now the cows are inside for winter they need mucking out daily it's just a sort of job that would have been undertaken by conscientious objectors this way and as usual the government had some advice right well as it says in the leaflet here dung must not be wasted chaps ok I'll be leaving this by your bedside later tonight for you to read through I mean obviously as a farmer we know that this has the ability to fertilize the fields but failing to use it we're also doing our country and ourselves a poor turns yeah got your shovels yep good stuff Tom and Lauren are getting their first taste of life on a farm there we have it in operation liquid manure come up in in in in so coming from the city Lauren is this something you're used to huh no no if you once you forget what it is you're standing in yeah it's actually not so bad yeah the great thing about farmyard smells is the longer you spend with them the less you notice them once this has been the mainstay of all fertilizing on farms but it had been superseded really by artificial fertilizers which it was just sort of cheaper to to buy in but many of the fertilizers things like a potash for example had come from places like Germany so to make up for that shortfall the government were advising farmers to turn back to this natural manure there's a nice lot of urine in there as well so nice lot of ammonia which again is another really good part of the whole fertilizing process it's all for the war effort though so you have to keep reminding yourself with every shovelful Oh think about where are you reading tomorrow they will celebrate Christmas and many in the village will attend the local dance so root and Peter are learning to Foxtrot it should be easy this is supposed to be the easy dance that everybody knew dancer Lisa McLane has come along to teach Ruth and Peter the steps help we really really really need your help fools well we've been trying to turn the foxtrot we got the book and we've been them we're not going to be far though really I'm not surprised you really are not going to learn from that so you think I should just ditch the book I should throw it the foxtrot was developed in 1920s New York and during the war reached the peak of its popularity let's try it so two slow walks forward so it's slow slow quick quick slow slow quick quick slow slow quick quick easy why don't you try it together is that it that's a fun free D here we go slow slow quick quick slow slow quick quick very good up until the 1950s the foxtrot was the most popular dance and early rock and roll records were categorized as foxtrot slow quick-quick so absolutely everybody everybody would have known this stance it was a really really social finger I do chatty though you can actually chat while you dancing can't you I'm not leading hahaha slow quick-quick slow you're turning the wrong way now Oh disaster struck the team are celebrating Christmas Day 1940 style by inviting evacuees and neighbors to their austerity Christmas meal arson someone seems to have it's a chance to sample the delights of wartime mock delicacies smells really good so is it goose so lucky it's known as murky why is it called murky monster monster right hungry I say this s looking appetizing than a joy an old booster anybody interested in the past net leg run off with it about half a day is it edible very good very good I love this job nice yes stuffing is the favorite part of my Christmas dinner so that is my favorite Christmas done here we go Henry T absent murky and we love summer key yes if I was good I think that brings us around to present time there's no that's for gobbling down your mince pie there we go Ryan as well in your packet I'm meant to be it is a Spitfire there's a special present for you oh my goodness magazines often included instructions for homemade gifts oh gosh that's fantastic a little tilt up for you Ruth on the front I got there on the side on the side that's it made for my man's trilby hat make do and mend really dad it is it I'm really impressed leggo my own fair hands consumer goods became scarce as factories were turned over to war work so presence tended to be practical items right now next up Ruth no prizes for guessing Matthew Alex thank you all so maybe I've got an aeroplane as well very frequent so you trying to tell me something guys in 1940 soap was in fact the most popular of all Christmas presents happy Christmas to everybody and let's hope we're all here for the next one after lunch everyone heads to the village dancehall it was a chance just for a few hours to forget the horrors of war you wonderful isn't it I mean you know all that pressure bombers overhead people being blitzed on their homes you know the wall really coming home and then suddenly you can just forget it there's no way I can imagine the stress everyone was on the floor and all I can see how this OpenSocial release yes you can come yeah I mean people are losing their loved ones by this event people are being bombed out the whole hardness of war is really starting to bite home and here we have the community just letting their hand and get it all just put it all to the bucket in mind and have what fun one can while you can make the most of it one of your coma ladies and gentlemen the king the king and to absent friends god save our gracious Keith lonely vow noble King god save the king send him victorious happy and glorious low-tone a No for us god save the king despite the brief respite for Christmas Britain would have to fight on for another five years the pressure on the wartime farmer would get even greater as they battle to defend shelter and feed the nation next time the team face the conditions of 1941 when the Nazis engulfed Europe and demands on farmers increased the farm gets a government inspection kind of like the Iron Fist in the velvet glove production steps up I have an absolute bag of bones and in the darkness of war there's new life on the wartime farm find out how britain fed itself during the Second World War by ordering the open universities free wartime farm booklet call oh eight four five three double six oh two five seven or go to BBC coat UK / wartime farm and follow the links to the Open University home guard are facing a battle to look younger dad's army later as 744 next on BBC two fighting for the title of one man and his dog champions this year's competition concludes in just a moment

Channel: TheFarmvids

Views: 371,695

Rating: 4.9033742 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: bxztuX3fGVM

Length: 59min 3sec (3543 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2013