Land Girls and Lumber Jills

December 16, 2010 6:06 PM

Land Girls and Lumber Jills is an exhibit at Scotland's National War Museum. It explores the history of the Women's Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps. These two organizations were formed during the First World War to compensate for shortages in male laborers in agriculture and forestry, respectively. The museum's exhibition ties in a collection on flickr, interviews and a book available for order online. Other sources online will allow one to hear audio samples of the Land Girls' stories, read Land Girls' and Lumber Jills' memoirs and watch old propaganda clips about them or more recent documentary videos (more on YT). Officially commemorated in 2008, these civilian service organizations have also been the subject of a film, "The Land Girls" (trailer), an ITV sitcom, and a BBC series (Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The British Women's Land Army model was successfully replicated in the U.S. with the Woman's Land Army of America (whose members were known as "farmerettes") and in Australia with the Australian Women's Land Army.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal (8 comments total)

I just gotta say ... we oughta have awesome post contests more often.

Carry on.
posted by notyou at 6:20 PM on December 16, 2010

Women are awesome. Why did it take us guys so long to realize this?
posted by SPrintF at 6:28 PM on December 16, 2010

We currently have this British Army over here on an extended tour.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:33 PM on December 16, 2010

This is terrific - can't wait to make my way through all these links. Thanks!
posted by chihiro at 6:50 PM on December 16, 2010

Thanks, notyou, but I wasn't really thinking about the contest. I stumbled upon the exhibit through a random article about how the Scottish National Museums redid their website in HTML5. Then I fell down the rabbit hole of this seemingly endless trove of material about a fascinating story I'd never realized was out there.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 6:55 PM on December 16, 2010

My grandmother was a landgirl, she died in 2008 but lived just long enough to receive her medal, which in true landgirl spirit filled her with bemusement at that the fuss was about after all this time.
posted by fire&wings at 7:01 PM on December 16, 2010

If those women and me existed at the same time, I would totally love to hang out with them. Thanks for this post, for me it's so awesome to see women doing anything besides putting on makeup or flipping their hair. Now I want to go run out to the forest and play with saws.
posted by shinyshiny at 7:03 PM on December 16, 2010

I didn't realize that one of my Firefox add-ons was blocking the video when I first found this while searching for material. Here's the first two episodes of the BBC series on Vimeo.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 9:05 PM on December 16, 2010