大象传媒

“Played havoc with my back”

Mrs Sellars & gang potato picking © Mrs Sellars

“I was 19 when I went to Lincolnshire from Sussex. I was employed around a large number of farms near Boston, either alone or with a gang of Land Army girls. We mainly carried out harvesting and crop picking, although I also did some work with lambing. This was not as easy as it seems, involving trying to calm the mothers down and cleaning up any muck afterwards. The potato picking was particularly hard going and played havoc with my back, as I was not used to all this physical labour. The uniform that was provided to all the girls, offered us very little protection from the winter especially when you were out there most of the day.”

“I was also involved in the team that did the rat catching. I didn’t enjoy it but it was a necessary job that had to be done or else we would have been inundated with the things. We would place traps around the fields, mainly around the streams and any holes we found. If any were still alive we had the lovely task of finishing them off. I tried to avoid that one, as often as I could, but still did my fair share. I used to look at them as a pest and not a living creature; it helped in a way I think.”