Land Army

Jenny Canning worked in the Women’s Land Army during the First World War. She is wearing her outdoor uniform in the picture. If you worked in the Land Army you got a uniform: brown corduroy trousers, green jerseys, A WLA hat and coat and hob nail boots. Go Jenny!

The Women`s Land Army (WLA) was created during World War One because of the real shortage of farm workers. About a quarter of a million women worked on the land in the Land Army.

The women in the Land Army did all the jobs required to make a farm work normally. It was important for farming to go on so that people could get food to live on.

Women who joined the WLA could choose to work in farming, cutting timber or searching the countryside for animal feed.

To save fuel for the war effort, horses replaced tractors and women did many of the jobs involved in sowing the crops and harvesting them by hand. This could be exhausting work for many women.

The same situation arose in World War Two – people needed home grown food and men were not there to plant and harvest it.