Hard days but great days for wartime Land Girl Barbara, 92
Barbara Jones of Baschurch has never been afraid of hard work, and at the age of 92, still isn't.
She walks slowly with the aid of a stick these days, but loves to spend hours tending her immaculate garden, where at this time of year the intrusion of wind-blown leaves vexes her.
But being a young teenager in her first job - as a live-in cleaner in domestic service at a posh Shropshire house - was more than she could stand.
"I hated it. I used to sweep the dust under the mat," she says.
It was not long after this though that she was toiling to help the war effort, as a member of the Women's Land Army - an army of over 200,000 girls and women who worked on farms, whose service was belatedly officially recognised.
"I loved it. I would go back tomorrow to it if I had the chance. It was a wonderful life. I made some lovely friends, and I'm still friends with them," says Barbara, who has a framed certificate of gratitude from the Government, signed by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008.
She kept her uniform for years, but now only has the badge left.
Mrs Jones was a country girl, brought up near Oswestry, but a significant number of the Land Girls, as they were called, came from the big cities, and this was a bit of an eye opener for her while she was at Llanforda Hall - since demolished - near Oswestry, which was being used as Land Army accommodation.
"A lot of them were Manchester and Liverpool girls, they weren't country girls like me," she said.
"There were a lot of us girls there, so many in a bedroom. We had bunks - I was on the bottom bunk.
