Wipe off your lipstick, pull on your breeches: 60 years later, it´s back to the land.

Should women in the country wear make-up?  How many toes has a cow?  What is the right angle at which to wear your hat?  At what temperature are hen´s eggs incubated?  What does a truss of hay weigh?

If you´re female and answered all of these correctly you might have been just what the Women´s Land Army was looking for throughout the Second World War.  

The Women´s Land Army made a huge contribution to Home Front efforts during the early 1940s, carrying out a wide range of farm work such as feeding and milking animals, maintaining woodland and ploughing.  By 1943 around 80,000 women classed themselves as ´land girls´, with one third moving from towns and cities to the country.

As well as general knowledge quizzes like the one above, the monthly publication ran features on field and farmyard techniques such as tractor driving, best milking practice and ´timber measuring for women´.  There were also articles on fashion such as ´The Land Army Hat and How to Wear it´ and numerous adverts for breeches, jodhpurs and ´Two Steps Sport Shoes for Active Women´. 

In October 1940 the magazine posed the question to its readers, ´Should Land Girls use make-up?´ and concluded that while this was a matter of personal taste, ´Land Girls should be aware that make-up on the farm is much more conspicuous than in a town and that country people are less-used to make-up than town people.´

Lucy Fulton, Archive Awareness Campaign Officer, who has highlighted the pamphlets, said:

"This is exactly the kind of treasure that archives across the UK preserve for the nation and these Land Girl Magazines in particular are a great family history source.  There are articles about real women in these pamphlets - women who are probably someone´s grandma - and it is fascinating to read about their lives back then."