"Get a farm going, darling!" was the last thing Barbara Paynter's husband said as he boarded a train at Paddington in August, 1939.

Written nearly sixty years ago, compiled from letters to her husband stationed with the RAF in the Middle East, this is the remarkable story of a young woman who knew nothing about farms or animals, buckling down to 'do her bit' for the war effort by turning her well-ordered home into a farm.

In this journal of the farm's first year, Barbara records her delights and disappointments: the difficulty of transporting pigs in the back of a 1933 Ford Eight; how Julia, the farm's glamour girl Jersey cow, sparked rumours of an invasion when she escaped in the black-out and was finally captured by the Home-Guard; how the friends who arrived expecting high tea found themselves harvesting hay; and how Barbara dealt with the ducks that refused to leave the kitchen and the geese with a taste for herbaceous borders.

CONTENTS : The Seed is Sown; 'Mr' Todd; Butler; The Egg is Laid; Three Little Pigs; Betsy; Enter the Nuisance Value; Bitter Butter; A Pleasant Potter; 'Cockie'; A Wedding at Christmas; Death in the New Year;The New Poultry Maid; Another Wedding in the Family; July; Milking Made More Difficult; A Week's Leave; A Crime is Committed; Julia Makes her Farewell Curtsy.

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