Farming For many generations the Essex countryside has been farmed extensively and the rich local soil, coupled with large fields, a generally kind climate and a flat terrain has led many Essex farmers to concentrate on grain production. Until the 1950s most Essex farms relied on a large workforce to carry out this work, ably assisted by teams of heavy horses and fairly rudimentary machinery. Gradually, however, horse power gave way to mechanisation and technology, rendering many traditional skills redundant, and requiring only a few men to manage a large farm, where only a generation or two before, dozens were needed. This section of Essex Life in Archive film takes a look at a film of Boxted Farming Scenes, which was shot in 1925, and new video produced by students of Thomas Lord Audley School and Language College, when they were invited to film a modern harvest at Peldon Hall Farms in 2005.