Featuring parts 1,2 and 3 of our award winning DVD series:

Farming on Film 1 - 1930 to 1960 (RRP £15.95 - 55 minutes)
The Second World War was a watershed in British farming. In the 1930s, the skilled human hand and the power of the horse still reigned supreme; but in the rush to produce food to beat the U-boats, traditional methods were swept away. Fifteen years after the war, sophisticated new implements and the concentrated, tireless work of the tractor had all but replaced them.  Drawing on archive film shot entirely on working farms in Lincolnshire, 'Farming on Film 1930-60' records the change from the days of the scythe, the horse-drawn binder and the steam threshing set to the all consuming combine, and from the traditional mixed farming to the large specialised units of recent years.  Highlights include footage of local and county shows, a primitive Claas combine, a gyrotiller at work, steam threshing and ploughing, and a wartime cattle market.

Farming on Film 2 - 1955 to 1979 (RRP £15.95 - 55 minutes)
Drawing on this archive material this video illustrates the changes affecting different farms at different times, from the middle 1950s to the late 1970s. Scenes of horse and tractor drilling, corn binding and carting, threshing and stack building sit side by side with images of self-propelled combines, automatic bailers, men riding the bale sledge while haymaking, and a range of attachments that made even the most humble tractor a do-it-all machine.  Vintage Fordsons and Little Grey Fergies are seen at work as well as larger 4 x 4 Muir-Hill machines. Back breaking jobs such as thinning sugar beet, potato planting and harvesting apples are shown, as are winter tasks like drainage trenching, hedge cutting and fencing.  The sugar beet campaign, the change to intensive livestock production and training 'the farmers of the future' at agricultural college in the 1960s are also featured.

Farming on Film 3 - 1947 to 1979 (RRP £15.95 - 55 minutes)
This DVD uses unseen archive motion picture film from the 1940s to the 1970s, often taken by the farmers themselves, to show how farming responded to that call by introducing new machinery, techniques and marketing that reduced the need for man- and horse-power in the fields and on the farms. Rare archive coverage of the first post-war Royal Show in 1947, sets the scene for the changes that are to come. Early material includes a traditional pig-killing, teaching farming techniques to 1950s schoolboys, potato planting by hand and early sugar beet lifting machinery.  The modernisation of green pea harvesting and beet and potato production, the change from extensive to intensive livestock production and innovations in material handling are all covered by films that show historic machinery hard at work in the right settings for their time.