Rübenpflügen bei Slough ('Windsor')

By 1809 Britain had been at war with France for most of the 16 years since 1793, grain from the Continent was hard to come by, and pushing more land into production had become close to a patriotic argument. Turner painted a Windsor field in winter, with labourers lifting turnips out of cold ground. Turnips were the crop that kept cattle alive through the months when there was no grass, and they were the linchpin of the new rotation farming spreading across southern England. On the skyline sit Windsor Castle and the chapel of Eton College. The king inside that castle, George III, was nicknamed Farmer George, kept working farms in the Great Park, and had once sent his own notes on husbandry to an agricultural journal under a false name.