Wartime Farm

- Season 1

(2012)

The first episode begins with the team moving into a cottage farm, this time in Hampshire. With a WW2 looming on the horizon, the team set about making a number of improvements to the farm.

This 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 the farm should continue to rear.

With German air raids causing unprecedented damage to Britain's major cities in the winter of 1940, the residents of Manor Farm are instructed to make preparations for an influx of evacuees from London, Portsmouth and Southampton.

As Europe falls to the Nazis and British trade vessels are diverted to send supplies to the Russians, the British government tightens its grip on farms like Manor Farm, expecting more and more home-grown food, drink and clothing.

1942 - Episode 5 - It's 1942 and the team face running the farm under increasing food and fuel shortages. The Ministry of Food has demanded an extra 840,000 tonnes of wheat be produced.

1943 - Episode 6 - By 1943, food imports had slumped to their lowest levels during the war, and farmland was becoming tired after years of consecutive use.

1944 - Episode 7 - It's 1944, and a turning point for the Allies in WWII. Manor Farm's flax field--a crop heavily used by the military--has suffered in the unusually wet summer of 2012.

Episode 8 1945 - In this final episode, the team faces a harvest under the conditions of summer 1945. Five years of constant farming have degraded the quality of Britain's fields, threatening crop yields.