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FARMING AND FLOWERS IN THE 1930S

MetadataFramesRelated records
Metadata

WORK ID: YFA 1425 (Master Record)

TitleYearDate
FARMING AND FLOWERS IN THE 1930S1939 1939-01-01
Details Original Format: 16mm
Colour: Colour
Sound: Silent
Duration: 11 mins 55 secs

Subject: Working Life
Rural Life
Agriculture



Summary
This film contains footage of agricultural practice in the 1930s followed by footage of a garden.
Description
This film contains footage of agricultural practice in the 1930s followed by footage of a garden. The film opens on a field with cows grazing, a farmhouse in the background. The film then cuts to a pond with cows drinking from it. A young horse is also drinking. This horse is then shown walking away from the camera with two larger working horses, then standing in a field with them. There are lots of piglets in a sty running around. Some gather round an adult pig, perhaps their mother, who is...
This film contains footage of agricultural practice in the 1930s followed by footage of a garden. The film opens on a field with cows grazing, a farmhouse in the background. The film then cuts to a pond with cows drinking from it. A young horse is also drinking. This horse is then shown walking away from the camera with two larger working horses, then standing in a field with them. There are lots of piglets in a sty running around. Some gather round an adult pig, perhaps their mother, who is tied down. A man drives a horse drawn plough and a man with a pitchfork collects up hay. He wears black trousers, a flat cap, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a waistcoat. All the other farms wear fairly similar clothes. There is a hay bailing machine which has a tall conveyer belt which piles a large amount of hay. Two men stood on top of the pile use pitchforks to arrange the hay. There is a sequence which shows a pond with swans on. A farmer uses a mechanical thresher without horses in one of his fields (registration: AUB269), contrasting with the previous horse drawn machine before, highlighting changes in agriculture and showing technological advancement. There is a landscape of a field of wheat and then a close up of an ear of it. Then there is a flowery garden, a close up of a bee on an orange flower, and then a close up of a butterfly. The filmmaker uses an iris affect with display flowers close up. He also uses a split screen effect to show two lily pad flowers simultaneously. A blue vase with white spots is displayed in a room, holding some of the flowers from the garden. A heron stands by the pond. In the garden during winter, a bird is foraging for snow, and then is shown (it is presumably the same bird) sitting in a man's hand.
Context
With the Second World War yet to break out, a chance to see the dawning of farm mechanisation as an early motorised thresher is seen in action alongside horse drawn harvesters and ploughs.  As farm-hands with pitch forks collect the hay in the traditional way, and cute piglets enjoy the outdoors, our filmmaker makes the most of the newly introduced Kodachrome colour film to also capture some wonderful garden scenes.   Some farms tried early steam tractors, as horses were drafted into WW1,...
With the Second World War yet to break out, a chance to see the dawning of farm mechanisation as an early motorised thresher is seen in action alongside horse drawn harvesters and ploughs.  As farm-hands with pitch forks collect the hay in the traditional way, and cute piglets enjoy the outdoors, our filmmaker makes the most of the newly introduced Kodachrome colour film to also capture some wonderful garden scenes.  

Some farms tried early steam tractors, as horses were drafted into WW1, but it wasn’t until 1937, when Ferguson-Brown produced their tractors, with a three-point linkage system, that horse numbers much declined.  The popular Ferguson-Ford 9N tractors came out around the time of this film, in 1939.  After WW2, with the drive to increase food production, farms with tractors grew from 100,000 to around 450,000, from 1946 to 1963.  Despite the fact that tractors can plough ten acres of land a day compared with only two with horses, there is still at least one farm, in Hampshire’s Avon Valley, still using horses.  But only 1.5% of pigs are free range.
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