Commercial companies exist to sell their products or services. The Farmer’s Guide was really an advertising magazine produced by Carters, the seed company. It was quite lavish back in 1925 with a colourful front cover designed to imply that you’d get prize winning crops if you used Carter’s seeds.

The Farmer’s Guide – a Carter’s seed catalogue for 1925

That’s a fine picture of Carter’s pedigree roots – awarded the premier prize at the London Dairy Show of 1924.

Inside the pages are all black and white, but still well illustrated.

One of the joys of this 90 year old farm magazine is the reminder that farming was very different back then. In 1925 the horse still reigned almost unchallenged and the scene of the farmer loading his trailer with enormous cabbages seems like something from a near forgotten country idyll.

Apart from the reminder of just how many horses there were, modern people would do well to realise that grass is a major farm crop and may have cost a considerable amount to plant.

One more page – the autumn harvest!

Here we have horses and children at work, harvesting the oats

This is a lovely item. Sadly it is a tad fragile and so doesn’t come out on display very often.