This Week On Movie Monday
Wartime Farm is an eight part documentary program originally aired on BBC2 in 2012. Historian Ruth Goodman along with archeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn take over a farm in Hampshire, England. The goal is to run the farm as it would have been during the second world war.
The second episode focuses around food rationing and preparations for the Winter of 1940. Under growing pressure from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food, the team has to make tough decisions over which livestock (if any) the farm should continue to rear. While the pigs, sheep and beef herd are removed, and the oldest chickens slaughtered and turned into feather dusters, Ruth manages to keep two pigs on as part of a “Pig Club” with their neighbours.
Alex and Peter spend much of the episode generating silage to feed their remaining animals over Winter. They first obtain sugar beet tops and nettles as raw materials, and then construct a small silo out of corrugated steel, with the help of two volunteers from the Women’s Land Army. Ruth, meanwhile, explores the beginnings of rationing, and uses the family’s meagre meat ration, and a bounty of vegetables and foraged mushrooms, to make stew in an improvised haybox. Rationing leads her to investigate the black market, as she and a shady visitor filter red diesel using a loaf of bread, and get familiar with a butcher who sells spare chops under the counter.
Alex and Peter spend much of the episode generating silage to feed their remaining animals over Winter. They first obtain sugar beet tops and nettles as raw materials, and then construct a small silo out of corrugated steel, with the help of two volunteers from the Women’s Land Army. Ruth, meanwhile, explores the beginnings of rationing, and uses the family’s meagre meat ration, and a bounty of vegetables and foraged mushrooms, to make stew in an improvised haybox. Rationing leads her to investigate the black market, as she and a shady visitor filter red diesel using a loaf of bread, and get familiar with a butcher who sells spare chops under the counter.
Directed by Stuart Elliott and Naomi Benson
Produced byDavid Upshal
These films are presented as an exception to the copyright act as fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire. See bill c-42 article 29.