Jean McBryde was born in 1924. After attending Nottingham High School for Girls, she left in 1942 and came to work at Wyn Lodge, Wysall, before going to the Midland Agricultural College at Sutton Bonington. She lodged with Mrs Hallam at her cottage on the Wymeswold Road.
She married John Anabel-Cooper and came to live at Annabells Farm, Thorpe in the Glebe.

Farming at Wyn Lodge: I came to Captain Ferreira, and lodged with Mrs Hallam, and worked there for a very happy six months - doing absolutely everything. He was, I suppose, a forward farmer, and he had a lot of different sorts of machinery, and he actually had a milking parlour with holding pens and pipeline milking. The milk went along the pipelines straight into the dairy, where it was bottled, and was then delivered on the milk round in Nottingham.

They had the farm between Keyworth and Bradmore, on the lane there. The cows were kept in an enormous shed at the back of the milking parlour, and they just came - it was very streamlined - they just came through. The fields there were very large. I was sent hoeing my sugar beet, and you couldn't see the other end of the row - well I didn't think I could. Out there all day with nothing but a bottle of cold tea and a bacon sandwich. Before I cycled back to Mrs Hallam's, up between the trees and Windmill Wood.

Farm work: He was still using binders and threshing... We did have an elevator...but when Jack Baldock was building a stack, and he liked me to help him... the stack got higher and higher, until it was beyond the length of the ladder. So nothing for it but we had to come down on the elevator, which, of course had some - rather a lot of -splinters and things in it - not a bit comfortable - but still. One went between the spikes. And Jack Baldock said one or two things - which aren't repeatable. But still we got down to the bottom.

One did everything there. Like when we lifted the sugar beet. There was no sugar beet lifter. It was all done by hand. And I chopped the tops with a knife; then came down with a cart later on to pick the tops up for the cows. Nothing was wasted.

He grew a great variety of crops. My first job was working on the land... at the top of the hill between Wysall and Keyworth, where Mr Akins is now - in that big field up there… called Fishy Flats…where I was sent to stub thistles. And there was so many thistles. I think it was two or three days before I got through them all. Somebody was living in a shed on there as well at the time. I think it was Mr. Hodge, who also worked for him.

Prisoners of war: We had two German prisoners of war when I was first married. One was a very, very nice man, a married man who kept in touch with my mother-in-law for years and years afterwards, and was really, really nice. The other one was a much younger man and not so nice… he did as little as he could.
… they helped with all the work... just general stuff. A lorry dropped them off at the end of…on the road each morning…

Horses: To begin with, before we had a tractor, we had a very large horse called Robin. My husband bought him in Melton Market and rode him all the way home - that was only way to get him home. After that we had a grey called Prince - more of a large lay horse. When I came to Wysall, the stallions were travelling through. A lot of horses were used in Wysall then. Jim Baldock had them…Emersons had horses…Tuckwood had horses…The stallions used to come round…a Shire and a Clydesdale…I think the Shire used to be put up at Mr Tuckwood's overnight before it went on it's way again.

Tractors: To begin with we had the Standard Fordson. And then we turned later to a little grey Ferguson, which I think are very nice tractors to drive. And we had plenty of groundwork of course. We used Humber fish manure, nitro chalk to bring the grass on in the spring. We tried to get early grass because by that time we were putting out the cows quite early behind an electric fence. Then later on, we had a request from a greengrocer who we knew, who was grumbling about his vegetables. When he got them on the market, they weren't very fresh and he wished he could find someone. So we ploughed the orchard up and grew vegetables for him - just for him alone. He used to come out at the first evening and pick them up ready for the weekend's market. And we grew - not a lot of stuff - and we picked all the…
The orchard is lovely [soil]. The orchard has been more ploughed up in the earlier times by John Annabell. And wheat was grown there. We know it was the last bit of ploughing. You could see the horse's hoof prints in the bottom of the furrow and we found a large horseshoe there as well.