A Farming Year in 1955 is a fascinating glimpse of a world gone by - a year in the life of a Fenland Farm at a time when horse-drawn carts brought trays of seed potatoes to a field where a gang of a dozen men planted them by hand, while a tractor driven ridger closed the rows behind them.

We see grain crops harvested using a binder and a combine, muck spread by horse and cart, five different types of working tractor, a full range of working machines, and chemicals applied to crops by helicopter - a very modern technique for its time. Some corn was still stooked, stacked and threshed in the winter, although the new Massey Harris No 21 combine, fresh from the United States, was about to render such skills, and those of the stack thatcher, completely obsolete.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeFW01ANpUM