Just in time for Remembrance Day, honour Canadian home front heroes with this Official First Day Cover commemorating the contributions of the farmerettes, who provided much needed farm labour in Canada during wartime.

Good to Know

The Farmerettes and Soldiers of the Soil issue is available in multiple formats:

Booklet of 10 Permanent™ domestic rate stamps
Soldiers of the Soil: Official First Day Cover
Farmerettes: Official First Day Cover
Pane of 6 Permanent™ domestic rate stamps
Permanent™ domestic rate is always accepted at the current domestic postage price.

About the issue

Farm labour shortages due in part to men leaving for military service in the First and Second World Wars led to national and provincial initiatives to maintain both the domestic food supply and Canada’s commitment and ability to produce food for Britain and the Allied troops overseas.

Teenage boys and young women recruited to work on farms through national and provincial initiatives is an example of how civilian members of society stepped in to help with the war effort at home.

This stamp issue salutes the young women and men whose labour through two world wars helped keep plates – and stomachs – full, both on the front and at home.

Farmerettes

During the First World War, the Ontario provincial government created the Farm Service Corps, made up of girls 16 years of age and older, to provide farm labour. The Corps ran from 1917 to 1918, and the workers were known as farmerettes.

During the Second World War, a similar initiative, called the Ontario Farm Service Force (OFSF), was put in place from 1941 to 1952. More than 20,000 girls signed up to join the OFSF’s Farmerette Brigade. (The OFSF motto was “We Lend a Hand.”)

Farmerette camps were established in locations such as old buildings, high schools and empty motels and sometimes consisted of tent encampments.

Living in camps and working up to 10 hours a day, the girls planted, tended and harvested fruit and vegetables in farms and orchards, and also worked in canneries.

High-school students in good standing who worked a minimum number of weeks could be exempted from year-end exams.

About the design

The front cover features an image of farmerettes harvesting cabbage in Ontario’s Niagara region, circa 1941-42. (Photo album of Barbara Murray, George Metcalf Archival Collection, Canadian War Museum, CWM 20160542-003_67a.)

The Official First Day Cover is cancelled on October 28, 2024, in St. Catharines, Ontario, which was the centre of much of the farmerettes posting in southern Ontario.

The cancel is inspired by the fruit farmerettes would have been tasked to pick.

Product # 414267131

Farmerettes: Official First Day Cover