Land Girl - The Happiest Years of My Early Life

A Memoir of Service in the Women's Land Army 1939-46

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Last and Best Assignment as a Land Girl: Marshaw – The Trough of Bowland

February 4, 2014 By LG-Admin 1 Comment

Haymaking

A picture of men loading hay onto a horse drawn cart.

Haymaking. As discussed in the chapter, loading this cart so that you did not lose all the hay once it moved was a real art.

Hay time in August, was another busy time and we always seemed to be working to get it in before it rained. When to start this task was a crucial one, and that was left to Mr John, for a prolonged spell of dry weather was required, something we rarely got. So when started we had to get at it. First the grass had to be mown, left to dry, turned and then brought in. Loading it required skill because if it not packed carefully so as to get it to hold firm it would just slide off. Unloading in the barn was slightly easier, but it was still hard work and I perspired freely, caught many seeds with my hair, and received many midge bites. I was well ready for a bath by the time we finished. When we worked late on such occasions as this Mrs Drinkall would always leave a good supper for us that we were more than ready for, and often chided Mr John that he was working Veronica and me too hard. It did get a bit too much at times and on one occasion I became totally exhausted.

Other Tasks

Of the other particular tasks that I recall, one was muck spreading of which I already had plenty of experience. Of course this task was manual, that meant filling a cart from the midden using a pitch fork to loosen and lift the matted and well matured material and taking it to the fields, dumping the load in heaps and going back to spread them. Another was ditching, and that meant getting down into the ditch, usually in the cold of winter it seemed, and where the sides had fallen in and digging the ditch out to its original bottom. Hedging was slightly easier work, but hawthorns have sharp thorns, here I cut and layered the old to form a stock proof hedge. The cut pieces I piled in heaps and burnt. Fire appears a living thing and it was company, but while the smell of the wood smoke was pleasant too, it got into my clothes and hair and stayed with me for days.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Filed Under: Chapter 6 - Marshaw, The Trough of Bowland Fells, Part Two Tagged With: 21st birthday, Abbeystead, church, clipping time, clogs, daily routine, dances, distractions, Friesian cows, haymaking, horseshoeing, hunting parties, lambing, Liverpool, Lonk, Marshaw, recreation, repairing stone walls, sheep, sheep shearing, sheepdogs, shirehorses, trips to market, Trough of Bowland, Veronica

Comments

  1. David Drinkall says

    April 23, 2020 at 1:52 PM

    I am David Drinkall, born and raised at Marshaw and would love to hear more stories about Marshaw.

    Reply

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About Me

Proud member of the Women's Land Army, Jeanne Flann, nee Harlow, here. Happily retired in Utah after a full and satisfying life that got off to a great start working as a Land Girl in the Trough of Bowland, you can read more about me.

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Book Outline

  • Introduction
  • Part One
    • Chapter 1 – Prologue, the Sullivans, the Harlows and My Childhood
    • Chapter 2 – Joining Up – The Women’s Land Army
    • Chapter 3 – Lancashire College of Agriculture at Hutton
  • Part Two
    • Chapter 4 – Lower Greenbank Farm Over Wyresdale
    • Chapter 5 – Holt Farm Gateacre – Tragedy & Deliverance
    • Chapter 6 – Marshaw, The Trough of Bowland Fells
  • Part Three
    • Chapter 7 – Epilogue
    • Chapter 8 – Recognition at Last
  • Appendix

All Sections

  • Finished for Now – Land Girls.Me a Memoir
  • Welcome to Land Girls
  • Appendix – The Bowland Fells
  • Recognition at Last For Land Girls
  • Epilogue – Life After Being a Land Girl in the WLA
  • Last and Best Assignment as a Land Girl: Marshaw – The Trough of Bowland
  • Second Assignment as a Land Girl: Holt Hall Farm, Liverpool – Tragedy and Deliverance
  • First Assignment as a Land Girl: Lower Greenbank Farm, Over Wyresdale

Land Girls Memoirs and Other Memoirs

In the two step process of creating a paper memoir and now converting it into a web based one, it is my hope that my memoir, Land Girl - The Happiest Years of Early Childhood joins other Land Girl memoirs as a member of that genre, and contributes to it.

My husband has his own memoir through the same process as mine, paper memoir first, then website GunnerFlann.com. He too hopes his memoir contributes to the National Service Memoirs genre.

Please let us know if you agree contact me.

Recent Posts From the Blog

  • Finished for Now – Land Girls.Me a Memoir
  • Welcome to Land Girls
  • Appendix – The Bowland Fells

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