Within a few months of the outbreak of war in September 1939, 50,000 men had left the countryside, mostly Territorials called up or into better-paid factory work in the towns. As a result, there was a desperate need for agricultural labour to maintain domestic food production.

Formed in June 1939, the Women's Land Army filled this need, providing between 80,000 and 90,000 farm workers at a time when female agricultural workers rose from being less than one tenth of the rural labour force to, by mid-1941, well over one quarter. The East Lothian Land Girls were housed in hostels at Eaglescaimie and other places right across the county.

Most of the land girls were from the countryside or rural towns, but nonetheless had a romantic notion of what the work involved, and were in for quite a shock. They were often surprised to find that it meant very early mornings, and hard, back-breaking, dirty work. What made the problems worse was that many, especially in the early part of the war, received little or no training, and were put to work on their first day. Rural conditions were generally primitive, with very little mechanisation, even after the flow of Lend-Lease agricultural equipment began. As late as 1943 the minority of farms had piped water and less than a quarter had electricity.

However, before long the girls and their hosts acclimatised to the culture clash and many ex-land girls look back on their wartime service as a time when they learned about the annual cycle beginning with seeding and ending in the harvest. Many enduring links were made in the small tight-knit rural communities, in the time off, the land girls enjoyed dances in village halls and helped in fund-raising events and many romances blossomed with local lads, resulting in many land girls settling in East Lothian to this day.

Another aspect of the wartime rural scene which is less well known is the collection of herbs, for which there was a great demand for medicinal purposes. Wartime restrictions limited the amount of herbs which could be imported and therefore native wild herbs became viable to collect. As a result members of the Whitekirk W.R.I, set off in bicycling parties to gather what herbs grew locally. The village hall was used to dry the herbs, a wide variety of which were collected, from dock, coltsfoot and nettle, to elder, poppy petals and sunflowers. Once a quantity of herbs had been dried they were packed separately in sacks and then weighed and labelled, before being sent by rail to a London firm, which paid anything up to perhaps £12 per consignment, the money always being donated by Whitekirk W.R.I, to the Red Cross.

East Lothian also saw other agricultural activity in the form of the collection of sphagnum moss from the Lammermuir Hills which, once cleaned and dried, could be used in medical dressings. Also gathered were rosehips, the syrup from which was a very good source of vitamin C for children.