I began my farming with four dear old women, working on the land, when wanted for light jobs; the youngest must have been fifty at least.  They received the time-honoured wage of tenpence a day, and worked, or talked, about eight hours.  They loved to work near the main road, discussing the natural history of the occupants of passing carts or carriages.  They knew something comic, tragic, or compromising about everybody, and expressed themselves with epigrammatic force.  A farmer occupant of a neighbouring farm in long-past days, was a favourite subject of such recollections.  After relating how “he were a random duke,” and recalling his habits, one old lady would conclude the recital with an account of his last days, adding, as if everything was thereby finally condoned: 

“But there, ’e was just as nice a carpse as ever I see, and I was a’most minded to put his paddle [thistle-spud] beside him in his coffin, for he was always a-diggin’ and a-delvin’ about with it.”

One member of this quartet, when ill, had a dish of minced mutton sent her in the hopes of tempting her appetite.  She eyed the gift with disfavour, and announced with scorn that “she preferred to chew her meat herself!”

In due course these old ladies retired from active service and younger women took their places; women were especially necessary in the hop-yards for the important operation of tying the selected bines to the poles with rushes and pulling out those which were superfluous.  It was difficult, at first, to accustom them to the fact that the hop always twines the way of the sun, whilst the kidney bean takes the opposite course.  And there was a problem which greatly exercised their minds:  How were they to reach the hops at the tops of the poles—­14 feet from the ground—­when the time came?  It did not occur to them that it was possible to cut the bine and pull up the pole.  They soon became very quick and expert at the tying, and their well-worn wedding-rings, telling of a busy life, would flash brightly in the sunshine as they tenderly coaxed the brittle bines round the base of the poles, securing them with the rush tied in a special slip-knot, so that it easily expanded as the bine enlarged.

Women are splendid at all kinds of light farm work whenever deftness and gentle touch are required, such as hop-tying and picking, or gathering small fruit like currants, raspberries, and strawberries; but I do not consider them in the least capable of taking the place of men in outdoor work which demands muscular strength and endurance and the ability to withstand severe heat or bitter cold or wet ground under foot, through all the varying seasons.  Village women have, too, their home duties to attend to, and it is most important that their men-folk should be suitably fed and their houses kept clean and attractive.

On the farm of my son-in-law, in Warwickshire, I have seen something of the work of land girls, to the number of seventy or more, for whom he provided a well-organized camp with a competent lady Captain; and I know how useful they proved in the emergency caused by the War, but I still adhere to my former conclusion as to the more strenuous forms of farm labour, without in the least detracting from my admiration for the courage and patriotism that brought them forward.