I am a farmer's daughter, and this is what I observed or heard of my mother's life as a farmer's wife. The time span is late 1950s to the present day (my mother is in her late 90s).
My mother and father are from deep rooted farming families. They met via the Young Farmers' events, dances in the village hall and cricket matches.
The families knew each other, and my mother thought my father was a good catch (eldest son of a farm owner) and my father was happy with my mother (she knew how to do all the jobs around the farm). I think there was romance involved as well.
My mother had worked for her father for over a decade (from the later years of the War) and saved up enough cash to start having a house built on the land my father would inherit. The house was built before my mother and father married. I do not think my father could contribute to the building of the house because he worked for his father for half a crown a week.
After a magnificent row involving my uncle and aunt, my grandfather ordered my mother, father and my brother and sister (I was not yet born) out of the new house and into the run down, dump of a house across the fields. My mother never forgave my father for not standing up for his family, but the situation was really complicated. A family feud began that resulted in the families going 'no contact' even though my father worked in partnership with his brother (the uncle), as I said, the situation was very complicated.
My mother spent the last of her savings getting hot water and electricity installed into the house. She was utterly depressed, but managed to work on the farm, bring up three children and, later, took work at the local factory to make ends meet.
The life was one in which we were asset rich (the house and land were worth a lot on paper), but lived in poverty (there was no money to spend on anything). The house was cold, damp and falling to bits.
My sister and I were encouraged to seek a trade and prioritise education because there was no future for the us on the farm. My brother inherited the farm. My mother stills lives there.
My mother is 97 and still has all her faculties. The farm work she did involved digging ditches, lambing ewes, milking, harvesting (including driving combines and tractors), hoeing for hours (I can remember playing in the hedgerows as my mother spent hours hoeing sugar beet. I was about four years old), herding cattle, shearing sheep and entertaining us with all sorts of activities and stories. She is a strong woman, but her life was hard in so many ways. I think the life of a farmer's wife is still incredibly hard and I have total respect for them. However, there are things about the farming community that are hard to understand unless you have been raised in it.