#farmerettes

Land Girls and Farmerettes By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

When Mrs. Louise T. Roberts of the New York State Food Commission proposed it in the spring of 1918, people were skeptical. College girls working on local farms? That’s crazy talk. There was no way they could work as well as men. Luckily for area farms, the skeptics were wrong.

It’s National Farmers Day, and we’re remembering the Mount Holyoke ‘farmerettes.’ The farmerettes were students who assisted local farmers and tended the college’s farm during World War I and World War II. Students would often stay in ‘terms’ during summers to do this work.

In 1918, a student typed up a summary of a World War I era farmerette’s day of work, which included:

waking up at 5 a.m.

two hours of work before breakfast (directed by a graduate of UMass Amherst, then known as Massachusetts Agricultural College!)

‘a real farmers breakfast’

six hours of work on the college farm

activities such as hoeing, weeding, transplanting, pest control

local farm work in the afternoon: at their midday meal the town’s needs would be announced, such as ‘someone to mow the Croysdale Inn; two people to hay at Mr. Taylor’s, five people for spraying on our own grounds [...]’

taking down their hours at supper-they were paid 20 cents per hour. Even in the 1910′s that wasn’t a large amount of money, but it was enough to pay their board and to save some too.

occasional appearances at local town meetings to show their farmers’ outfits, sing college songs, and perform skits

Of their visits to town meetings, a student describes, “We like nothing better, whether it is a Fourth of July parade or a Sunday-school picnic, we go in a bunch to convert the country-side to the shocking idea of girls, in men’s clothes, farming.” This quote and the above information comes from the document A Farmerette's Day, written by Charlotte E. Wilder (Class of 1919).

Farmerettes leaving a barn :: Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections Compass Digital Collections :: circa 1942

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