I'm Eunice Hoddinott, and I'm a farmer's wife, but I started my career after I left school at Jolly's in Bath, when I was 19, and I did training there for three years as an apprentice and after my three years I used to do more interesting things such as dressing, having a taxi around Bath and dressing these showcases in the hotels for the customers to see our produce. And I used to go over to South Wales with the company, we took over the ballrooms in the hotels there and showed all our goods for our Welsh customers. It was such a different way of life.

Can you tell me about Jolly's, what was it.

Well it's the House of Fraser now, it was the highest class shop around. They sold everything really. We had all these elite customers such as Queen Mary during the war and Haile Selassie who was staying in Bath for the war and, well, all the gentry around really. It was, you know, the most expensive shop around. So it was a great experience really. But then I left there in, and got married in 1940 to a farmer but I was born on a farm, my father was a farmer so I knew a bit about it. But I'd been used to electricity and bath and all that, and when we came to the farm we had no electric. So I had to find, I had to fill tilly lamps and take candles up to bed at night and the draught was so terrific coming in the windows it used to blow the candles out. And after a while we had to take… when the war started and things got very short, we had to take in evacuees. I had three of those, which had to share my kitchen and bathroom. And it was quite an experience because they came from London and didn't know the first thing about the country, so they had a lot to learn. But we managed and then I had land girls, we had two land girls living in, and they came from very different ways of life.

Tell me about where they came from.

One was a diplomat's daughter from Winchester, well he was abroad a lot and she went to agricultural college and trained so she was quite well into the farming. But what other ones we had we really had to teach most of it, how to milk, well they just learnt how to milk before they came to us but then they had to learn most things, so it was, some of them enjoyed it and some hated it. But then I had to feed them because they lived in with us, and I had to cook a very big breakfast every morning and then they'd come in for lunch and then again for an evening meal, and you know they worked so hard that really you had to wait on them and feed them well. And they appreciated it because they still come back to see us, and say what good times they were, and in fact one of them said well that was the happiest years of her life that she spent with us. So it wasn't all work. But it was a long day because we used to start milking at 5 o'clock in the morning and oh they wouldn't finish until 7 o'clock or so at night and then have a meal.

Tell me about the work of the farm.

Well we were growing as much feed to feed the cattle with as we could you see, and of course haymaking was a big thing because it was before hay bales. We used to rick it, you know, make it into big ricks and have a thatcher to thatch it. And then we grew some corn for the straw, which was stuck up into pooks they used to call them, before they com.. well it wasn't a combine then it was a thrasher came round to thrash the stuff. And then we, you put sacks underneath it and have to haul them away into the barn. That was a lot of the food for the winter and we used to buy linseed cake and I remember having to put that through a crusher because it came in great big slabs and you had to put it through a crusher to crush it up. That was my job to turn the handle of that. And then I used to make this butter and butter every week, which we were very glad of because the rationing was only two ounces a week.

What else did you do?

I preserved raspberries and plums and gooseberries, blackcurrants, things like that into kilner jars.

What about the meat?

The fruit I made into jam, pounds and pounds of it, and the meat we used to kill a pig every so often, we were allowed to do that during the war, and well we had heaps of rabbits, we used to live on rabbits a lot. And then I reared poultry right from day-old chicken to they were eatable size and ducks, same with the ducks, we used to buy them in day-olds and then rear them, all outside you know, just shut them in at night. And of course occasionally the foxes used to get in and get some of them and make a proper old mess. But there was nothing like those nice outside reared chickens, oh different, very different to what you get now.

Did you have to do the killing and the plucking?

My husband always did that, I didn't take on that, I never started it. No, I wasn't into that, or doing the rabbits. But he could do them so quickly, which would have taken me hours, but you know there was a lot of time spent getting the stuff out of the garden, some vegetables, doing them and coping with all the fruit. But you just did it as a normal thing. But I did have some help from the men's wives because we had twelve staff then, who lived in our cottages. And often the wives were only too glad to come out and earn a bit of money for a few hours.

Tell me about the visits from the church.

Yes well in the start the property all belonged to the church, and every so often they'd all come, several of them'd come down from London including a lot of the high people in the church, the bishop and some of the other people, and the agents from Wells, and they used to come and look all round the farm and they used to be very good and in those days you only had to say you wanted something and they'd provide it for the house or the, you know like the, they'd say to me, anything you want in the house? and I'd say oh I'd like a new grate in there, the other one is pretty awful, and there was no problem, you could always get something like that from them and they'd supply all the paint if you put it on and that sort of thing. But I was expected to lay on a meal for them, it was usually a high tea because after they'd looked round the farm they'd come in and it was sort of either I used to cook a big ham and salad and that sort of thing, or mostly sort of cheese and pickles and then a big fruit cake, and then they were always expecting a parcel to take back to London of butter and cream and bacon and that sort of thing, I used to cure the bacon, we'd lay it out in troughs and put a sweet pickle on it, a lot of it, and that was very nice. And they always expected a parcel to take back with them, which was fair enough I suppose. They looked after us very well in those days. But we bought the farm in 62 and of course from then on we had to provide our own things, but it was a very good thing to do as it turned out.

What were you selling to the government, because you were growing for the nation.

Well, not a lot that I remember because we were self-sufficient of everything, you really kept most of what you grew. I mean I think we sell far more now away from the farm than we did then. You'll have to ask my husband that.

You had your first child during the war.

Yes, that's right, after I'd been married three years I had my first son, and of course I remember getting, in those days you could get orange juice and cod liver oil to give them, free. Then ...

What was the maternity hospital like?

Oh well it was when, I paid to go, we paid to go to this one in, there was one in Wells then in Ash Lane, which was just a private, I think there was about six beds, something like that, which was very nice, and it was during the war when you couldn't use petrol to drive in there, so my husband rode a horse in every night, and the matron used to say, put your horse out on the lawn to cut, to eat the grass because we haven't got anyone to cut it. And he used to take her in fruit and vegetables and things like that, so he could call any time.

So how did you get to hospital when your time came?

Don't really remember. I know it was all a bit in a hurry, so I suppose he must have been able to drive in then. Because we had an allowance of petrol but it had to be for essential things, and of course during the blackout you could hardly see to drive at night because the lamps were all blacked out on the cars, just had a little bit like that to look through.

Tell me about the bombing raids.

Yes, when they were bombing Bristol badly, they used to come right over here and it was really frightening because they'd come over quite a lot of the time and the noise was terrific, and I was in a big house, just more or less on my own with probably a land girl or two, but we slept downstairs because we had shutters on the windows there, because you couldn't show a light, and my husband was in the home guard so he was out several times a week up on a hill with a gun, which was supposed to be guarding the village and all that, so it was very frightening really, because there was a bomb dropped about, oh less than a mile away, and it killed a cow and made a great hole, and they dropped quite a lot of bombs around. You never knew quite when it was going to come on you, and the windows would rattle, but sort of after a bit you took it, you know, as one of those things you put up with. And we had prisoners of war working on the farm which were, at Stowbury in Wells, the big house up there they took over, and we used to get these Italian prisoners come out, and, but they supplied their own food and everything.

Did you talk to them?

Yes there was usually, well there was one with them, would talk English all right, and he used to bring out the food and see to all that for them, light fires for them outside and they'd boil up kettles and make their whatever it was. But we were glad of the labour then, and they worked hard, they were good. And they were glad to get out from the camp and they enjoyed coming out, getting into the country. But I had another son in 48 ...

--- after the end of war.

Yes, it seemed to come quite suddenly, you know, we hardly realised it. I suppose we were so used to carrying on our everyday life that we didn't really notice it a lot, it didn't seem to make much difference to start with. Just apart from the relief, you know, of it. And of course you know we'd lost quite a lot of relatives during the war, cousins of mine and --- that were, and the yeomanry they all went into the war and got killed. So some of it was quite sad for people coming back, our relations. But we were fortunate, we didn't actually lose anybody very near. But things seemed to carry on more or less the same really. I, you know, you sort of forget in a way I suppose gradually the land girls went and the, our other staff, we got more of those back because of course the young ones had gone to the war. But we did have some older ones that were with us all their lives, they'd been with father in law and then they just stayed on, they were with us all their lives.

Did you listen to the radio?

Yes, we had the radio, yes. Yes, we used to listen to the bulletins on that when they gave them out, about the war and that's really our only connection we heard with the war, and the daily paper. But you know it was a very lonely life in a way because you couldn't go anywhere, we did have a local pub down the road which was the Queens Head then, that's where Mr Tinknel lives now, you know, that was the Queens Head and Nellie ran that and she was a real character, so we could walk down there in the evenings and we used to have some very nice evenings down there during the war really, because people'd shoot rabbits and bring in and she cooked them, she'd stick them on the range there, on a big frying pan and put some onions in with them and dish out meals like that, and cheese, there was always cheese and cider around because we used to make cider, and there was always plenty of cheese and cider and I used to take down butter and what was ever available. And we used to have sing-songs down there and that sort of thing, play cards, that was really our only entertainment during the war. We used to, some of them used to ride their horses there, cos you couldn't use your car as I say. They used to come out from Wells, people on their horses and that, yes it was quite a meeting place. Nellie, she was famous. She's still alive. She was a real character. They just had a small farm there as well as the public house.

Was there any other entertainment?

Well there was the pictures in Wells, but I can't remember going there very often.

Do you remember what you saw?

No, I don't really. Ben Hur. No I don't really remember going to the pictures much. We used to have people in, you know, for meals, local people. And occasionally the land girls would have their parents come down to stay, yes there was always, well you know people in and out the whole time, never a dull moment really. I can't ever remember sitting down and putting my feet up much.

Do you remember it as a happy time?

Oh yes, yes. You just took it all for granted and carried on, you know. You just had to. You didn't feel hard done by or anything, you just sort of, knew it all had to be done, or else things'd just pack up and collapse. Fortunately we were in good health, we never seemed to have a day's illness. In fact we're still pretty good now. Must have been all the healthy life we led you see.

So tell me about a day, say at harvest time.

Well I'd get up about 7 o'clock and the first job would be getting the children up and getting them ready for school, which was in the village then. And they had to walk to school, or ride their bikes, and then I'd get ready for the breakfast, which was often for about eight people and it was, you know, it was porridge in winter and then bacon, egg, liver, fried potato, fried bread, mushrooms if we'd picked them and that sort of thing. And lots of tea and then toast and marmalade, and sometimes I used to pack lunch for them if they were going out harvesting I'd often have to pack a lunch for them and then I, later in the day I'd take out a big basket with cheese and pickles and anything you know that's going, I usually used to make a very ordinary fruit cake that would cut up into a lot of pieces and big bottles of tea, I used to make the tea separate and the milk separate so it went further that way, and take the sugar, but of course we were rationed with sugar.

What about laundry?

That was a big job, oh yes. Because I didn't have a washing machine to start with, it was all done in a big tub and I had to boil the water up in a furnace, which was outside in the courtyard, and the washing was boiled up in there to start with, the white things, they all had to be boiled. And then brought in and rinsed and you put blue in the water to make them nice colour, and hang them out on the line, and I used to have one of those men's wives to help me. And then of course next day it was ironing day, we did all the ironing of the shirts, the men's shirts and the underwear, you know, everything that was needed, which took all the morning. And in the evening I used to cook another meal really, either fish or eggs of some sort, omelettes, I always had lots of eggs, and toasted cheese, that sort of thing, and it was usually a big cake again. And anything that was in the garden, in the vegetable line. There was always plenty of food because we either grew it or bartered it for something else, I used to barter the butter for other things that you couldn't buy.

Making butter.

I used to make the butter in a big churn, we used to skim the cream off of the milk and used to put the cream in this large churn and it took about 20 minutes usually to turn it, you'd have to keep it turned and there was a little pressure thing on the top that, and with a glass top you could see what was going on, and eventually it'd get into sort of crumbly bits and then you just did it a few more times till it went into a lump and then you took it out and rinsed it and put it out on a great big wooden board, like wooden platters, you dabbed it all in muslin to dry it and then pat it up into half pound blocks. You stuck it on the scales if you wanted to sell it or to get the weight and then impress on the top with a pattern, or do it with the butter pats across and make sort of squares. Was quite a long job because often it was, took about half an hour before you got it onto the board to pat it up.

So in the evenings, what did you do?

Oh you were usually quite ready to go to bed, because you had to get up quite early because we started milking at five you see, so the men got up early and the land girls and that, and so you were all in bed before ten o'clock. You just sat down, read a paper, did knitting or mending, of course you used to mend the clothes in those days, socks, men's socks, they used to wear out so quickly in the boots. But seemed to spend quite a lot of time doing that in the evenings. And then it was much the same the next day again, carry on.

And you were saying that was your only ...

Yes it was.

No we had no means of knowing what was going on really, apart from the wireless, because we had no daily bulletins or anything, you just heard it on the wireless and that was all you knew really because we didn't go out you see, we weren't involved in any of it. So it was rather passed us by in a way, you just, you know, felt mad at the war going on and all that was involved and made life very difficult for us, so we weren't too fond of the Germans bombing us and all that, but there, there was nothing much you could do about it, you just got on with your life.