They Dared to be Different - sneak preview
The story begins in 1879 with Bessie Brown the daughter of a hard working tenant farmer on the Glamis Estate, Scotland. As a woman, Bessie had no prospects of a farm tenancy in her own right, but an absolute passion for the land and dairying led her to becoming one of the earliest female university students of agriculture in Glasgow and Reading.
In 1900, Bessie travelled to West Wales to become the first Dairy Instructor at Aberystwyth University. There as a young woman she transformed local dairy practices, cycling miles most days to remote farms, tackling ignorance about animal diets and husbandry, not to mention ancient superstitions about TB and witchcraft cures when the butter ‘turned’!
Marriage to a fellow lecturer cost Bessie her job, but saw her handsomely augmenting the family salary with a flourishing model farm and dairy. In 1916, with three children under eight, Bessie led the war effort by organising the Women’s Land Army for Wales. Finding herself suddenly widowed in her early 40s, Bessie lost her husband’s farm tenancy and had to start all over again – but by now there was no stopping her!
