Silage Making

Showing beautifully shaped mounds of silage being created by a skilful combination of men and tractors, this is one of a series of films made by or for Lady Eve Balfour, founder of the Soil Association for the promotion of organic farming. Lady Eve ran a farm in Monmouthshire for the Women’s War Agricultural Committee during WWI, training members of the WLA. She then bought New Bells Farm, Haughley and, with the neighbouring farm, established Haughley Research Farms Ltd.

Lady Eve Balfour [Evelyn Barbara Balfour – 1898-1990] was one of the first women to study agriculture - at Reading University – and is the author of ‘The Living Soil’, published in 1943 and considered a classic. It was based on the findings of the first three years of the ‘Haughley Experiment’, started in 1939 and involving the Suffolk farm owned by Eve and her sister, Mary (New Bells) and that of their neighbour, Alice Debenham (Walnut Tree Farm), one farmed organically, the other using chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. The farms, as Haughley Research Farms Ltd., were active until debts forced sales in 1970. [WLA = Women’s Land Army]