From 1917 British food supplies were affected by the sinking of merchant ships, and so farming on the Home Front became increasingly important to the welfare of the nation. Here, men and women work together to plant potatoes. The Women’s Land Army was established in 1917 to support women in filling the positions of the men who had gone to war. On 15th May 1917, Rothenstein wrote to Ernest Jackson, ‘I hope to have the 5th drawing finished early this week and the last next week. I will then come up to town and do what is needful to the stones’. He was not happy with some of his early work, writing, ‘somehow the lines seem poor and thin’. He decided to print some in a red/brown colour rather than black. These works are simple and understated, a contrast to the busyness and modernity of war shown in many of the other prints in the series.