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Sheds at Moonshine Gap

These two sheds at Moonshine Gap Farm were recently featured in the monthly magazine Vintage Tractor & Countryside Heritage in an article about the Huntingdonshire War Agricultural Committee by Peter J Longfoot. The article itself was about the area around this farm during the period up to and during World War II.
The land around Moonshine Gap had been left to revert to nature mainly because the price of wheat was so low it was uneconomical to farm the land. Agriculture was at the time all about rearing cattle, milking and growing barley, oats and grass. Wheat would have been grown on the kinder easier working soils. Moonshine Gap is Hanslope clay like most of the land around this area. It is cold and sticky when wet and at the time would have been difficult to farm with the kind of equipment available and of course horse power. With the outbreak of war self sufficiency in food supplies was top of the agenda and so agricultural committees were formed in the various counties to identify land that needed to be brought back into production, farmers who needed help to improve their farming practises and those that wouldn't comply were ignored and the land taken over and farmed by the War Ag committee. Moonshine Gap according to the article was a large area of land overrun with blackthorn, hawthorn, ash, brambles, rabbits and rats. The War Ag moved in and cleared the land using lend lease machine driven by contractors and men employed by the War Ag. The first crop grown was flax followed by wheat. At this time the Women's Land Army and local schools would have provided extra labour to assist with the growing and harvesting of these crops.
Coming back to the sheds, the Nissen Hut type was the first building constructed to serve as a workshop / store for the War Ag machines. The nearest village was two miles away so machinery was kept on site during the time it took to clear the land. The metal constructed shed was built slightly later to serve as a machinery store again for the War Ag machines.
The area brought back into production isn't clear but it is assumed that it added up to a few hundred acres in this area.
Today the price of Wheat is hovering around £150 tonne, the price of an acre of land could well be over £4000 just to grow crops on. In 1938 you probably couldn't get anyone to farm this sort of land even if you paid them.