Family Artifacts

As the oldest of the oldest of the oldest, I have inherited many family artifacts (not monitarily valuable but certainly significant all the same.) One such item was re-found in a drawer of photos in my sewing room today. I've looked at it every once in a while thinking how families lived in days gone by. This particular item is a WWI sugar rationing card issued to my grandfather, Harold Coleman in Bingham Maine during one of the 1914-1917 years. It shows that the family of 6 was allowed only 3 pounds of sugar a week. Thinking that stores didn't offer pre-packaged cookies, cakes, and other sweet things, all baking was done at home. On 3 pounds of sugar????? Could we do that today given the same conditions (not available in stores)?

During WWII, I was a child of 5-9. I do remember rationing then. Shoes, sugar, meat, butter (and other fats), tires, gasoline, and other things that I don't remember. My parents had a big "Victory Garden" every year and my mother 'canned' quarts and quarts of fruits and vegetables. There were no home freezers so "canning" was the only way to preserve the garden crops. We had grape vines, apple trees, pear trees and the vegetable gardens. My father took a couple of days in the summer to head into Hocomock Swamp to pick gallons of blueberries. Again, mother 'canned' the blueberries and made jams. I seem to remember that during 'canning season' additional sugar was allowed.

My parents produced our own milk, made our own butter, raised chickens for eggs and meat, raised a pig each of 2 years, had ducks and geese. All families that I knew in our town did the same. Small subsistence farms were the norm, even on 1-2 acres of land. Providing food for the family was a monumental task that unfortunately I doubt any of us are capable of mimicking today.

This is "food-for-thought" during this uncertain and somewhat stressful economic time. A wonderful series of books that I have and love to read over and over are the Foxfire books. Written by English classes in southern Appalachian communities, they feature interviews with seasoned veterans of hill-living that describe the process of providing food, building shelters, herbal medicines and community/family support systems.