Sybil Seamer

Sybil Seamer talks about her youth in Sussex and her time in the Women’s Land Army during the war.

A Farmer’s Daughter
In the Land Army

Sybil Seamer

I was rather keen on the idea of joining the Wrens. One brother, who was in the Navy at the time told me that I didn’t want to join the Wrens. He didn’t like the idea. Eventually I decided on the Land Army. It was market gardening mainly and nurseries and I was sent to Arundel to do my month’s training. I was with three other girls in a house in Arundel and we used to cycle to the nurseries, which were two or three miles out of Arundel up a hill…it was quite hilly round there…to these nurseries to do our training early in the morning. We would be working for about an hour and then of course the men would stop for their breakfast…we used to wonder why we couldn’t stay in bed an hour longer and start later. First of all they would talk to us but not as a group. We went into the greenhouses, which were very hot as this was in the springtime and there were tomatoes growing. We were taught how to take the side shoots out of a tomato plant and how far they should go up and how careful we had to be. We weren’t allowed to use gloves of course because you could damage the plants and then we had big mushroom sheds there. They were working in a half dark with lights just over the different beds. We picked the mushrooms and then watched while the foreman put the new spores in. The men who worked in these places had their favourites of course with the girls. There were some that had been there longer than others and some that had been in the Land Army for a long while. I can’t really remember when they first enlisted girls into the Land Army. It must have been near the beginning of the war because there was a certain group who had worked on the land during the First World War I believe. From there, I went to another nursery in Sussex and they did other things as well…digging ground outdoors all day in the winter and sometimes digging trenches. You had to dig it properly.
Fortunately I suppose, my father had been a very very keen gardener and was a member of the Horticultural Society and when I was young he used to show in all our local shows. He was quite well known in the area for the prizes he won. I think he won three of the Banksian medals, which is the highest award and another award of commendations so I had been brought up with somebody who was nearly always in his garden, mainly producing vegetables for the family but also for other people as well. Quite often he would dig up a lot of the garden opposite to get the best vegetables to show. He grew everything as far as I can remember. We would dig the trenches. His own celery was put in. I think soot was put in, mostly with the celery and then he used to tie round corrugated cardboard so the celery grew up white. I can always remember fresh radishes for tea…dipped in salt with bread and butter…that is all there was…things like that, which they don’t do now. Radishes go in salads (nowadays). He didn’t have a greenhouse but he seemed to grow most things. Near where we lived there was a strip of land, which was like an allotment. It all belonged to the general and so you always had a large garden…. He always gave me the first pod of peas, which I wasn’t very keen on…not the fresh raw peas. It was supposed to be the thing! I think he grew everything from what I can remember, though probably not asparagus there but those sorts of things were considered more delicacy and needed more tending. He also kept chickens so obviously the garden was well manured and it was all naturally done and I remember even somebody said to him once at one of his shows, “What do you do to keep your runner bean runs straight? Do you stroke them?” So he said, “Oh yes”
To show them they had to be as straight as possible. He grew shallots and onions. He liked growing shallots because of course he liked those for picked onions.
At one place where we were there was a walnut tree so walnuts were pickled. We always had fresh eggs of course…we weren’t allowed to waste food in those days. It was a totally different lifestyle from nowadays.
At the last nursery I was at we grew onions as well. I was hoeing rows of onions, and lettuces. We had greenhouses there so also the inevitable tomatoes…a lot of tomatoes. They all went up to London of course in those days and they were still fresh when they got there. They went on an early morning train. We had to pick sprouts outside. Of course that was terrible it was believed in those days that sprouts were much better once the first frost had been on them. Therefore they weren’t picked until it was frosty and we had to go out to the fields to pick them. The men said that we couldn’t wear gloves…that would damage them. As a result of picking sprouts I have arthritis…and that one can be quite painful. You would only pick a few before your hands were getting cold. You couldn’t feel them. I pulled radishes in summer; twenty-four to the bunch with their tops on and of course just dipped in a tub of water so that they kept fresh.
Every piece of land available was used. People started growing their own as Incredible Edible are trying to do now.
If you had a glut of runner beans and you usually grew more than you wanted to eat, they were always sliced and put in salt in big stone jars and they would preserve eggs in isinglass. You could poach those sorts of eggs or use them for scrambling but they weren’t nice for boiling. They didn’t have the same flavour but were definitely all right for cooking. We did have much cheese…only two ounces a week I think it was, which didn’t go far.