Cooee, Louise here!
From the time war was declared the goverment encouraged people, as we know, to grow their own fruit and vegetables via the Dig For Victory campaign but alongside this were initiatives to help the public not waste ANYTHING food related. They were, for example, to use every bit of a piece of meat they bought on ration, to preserve any glut they might have from their growing space and much more.
I've just started watching The Wartime Kitchen And Garden on YouTube; there are masses of interesting films and documentaries there covering the war years including real life experiences of those who lived through it and Jon bought me for Christmas the book of that series.
To start with let's talk fruit.
The Womens Institute was instrumental in ensuring the plum glut of 1940 did not go to waste! The women offered to help with preserving any fruit grown by members of the public and the government took them on board and released 600 tons of sugar (this was pre rationing) for the project and preserving centres began to pop up all over the country in school halls, empty properties and garages.
The use of the sugar had to be monitored along with production data and records of who it was passed onto, be it schools and canteens or into the grocery/shopping supply chain.
Fruit was also canned using a Dixie, shown here being used by Ruth from The Wartime Farm.
Canning needed less sugar than jam which was important because of rationing. (Sugar was one of the first things to be rationen in January 1940 along with butter, bacon and ham.)The Dixie equipment was sometimes donated by Canada where the WI originated during WW1, read more about that here, or the groups had to fundraise for their own.
By the end of 1940 3,000,000lbs of jam had been produced plus150 tons of canned fruit and 160 tons of pulped fruit and chutney; small village centres could produce around 70lbs a day.
Things were a little different in 1941, as with the advent of rationing the ladies of the WI could not buy the jams and chutnies for wholesale prices as the preserves just went to the war effort.
But of course soft fruit was not the only thing that could be preserved. Here you can see Ruth from The Wartime Kitchen And Garden showing how apple rings were dried using sulphur fumes. Also if you lived in the country and had chickens, or were lucky enough to keep them if you lived in an urban environment, eggs could be preserved by the waterglass method and you can see that with Ruth, too.
Talking of eggs, anybody who kept more than 50 chickens was under orders by law to send all their eggs to packing stations and were paid more than if they were sent to a retailer. This subsidising of egg prices was to help reduce the cost of living but some farmers decided not to follow the rule of law feeling eggs could be more useful as part of the developing black market.
Next time I'll be looking at kitchen economy and how housewives, and it was the women of course, coped with rationing and feeding themselves and their families.
TTFN,
Louise
