A honeybee laden with pollen sips nectar at the Vancouver City Hall Community Garden
Besides being morale boosters, Victory gardens in Vancouver gave people "pep and energy" for the war effort and provided food for forces and the people of Britain. After the war Canadians sent food overseas to nourish people in war torn countries. Today I chatted with John from Texas who has a community plot at Vancouver city hall. He said his mother grew up in a town that was called Victory Gardens, Texas.
One gets the impression that people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean ate a lot of potatoes. While Canada has "Bud the Bud," wartime Britain had "Pete the Potato" who was one of the personified tubers created to promote healthy eating during WWIII. I recently watched an episode of Foyle's war called "They Fought in the Fields" in which three Land Girls (women in the Land Army) struggle to plant a field of potatoes before dark. Members of Land Army get to wear snappy uniforms and their diet is supplemented by farm food, but it is back-breaking work and they must have ate, slept, and dreamed of potatoes. Not to mention the turnips, which were another war time staple, even in the gardens at Buckingham Palace.
The Canadian war artist Bruno Bobak remembers being invited in to a family's home in appreciation for the liberation of Almelo, Holland:
"We had a four-course meal, but every course was potato,'' he says. "We had potato soup, potatoes with gravy, potatoes with brown sugar. They had almost no food left."
Woolton Pie was a famous recipe named after the British Ministry of food made with simple, cheap, and wholesome ingredients.
"It was named after Frederick Marquis, Lord Woolton, the ex-managing director of a store chain called Lewis (mainly in the north of England) and ex-social worker, who was appointed Minister of Food in April 1940. Unglamorous his position may have been, but it was vital to the war effort. It says much for Woolton's personal charm that he was remarkably popular with the public, even when singing the praises of rissoles without beef, cakes without sugar and tea without tea leaves."
Those who have the will to win,
Cook potatoes in their skin,
Knowing that the sight of peelings,
Deeply hurts Lord Woolton's feelings.
--http://www.homesweethomefront.co.uk
To Make Woolton pie you cut up potatoes (with the skins on so as not to hurt Wooly's feelings), "swedes", cauliflower and carrots, and spring onions, cover with vegtable stock and a teaspoon of oatmeal and cook it. By this I gather they mean boil it to within an inch of its life. This is your pie filling. You put this in a baking dish, cover it with more potatoes or pastry and cook it in the oven. You can read more about the fascinating story behind Woolton pie at the World Carrot Museum website.
Today in France, farmers plant potatoes in former battlefields which is still hazardous. In 2007 A woman in Italy found a WWII grenade in a bag of potatoes.
"Police said the pine cone-shaped grenade, which had no pin and was still active, was the same type used by U.S. soldiers in Europe in World War Two. Authorities believe the mix-up happened at a farm in France, where the grenade was plucked from the ground along with potatoes.
To the woman's relief, police and explosives experts in the small town of San Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples, recovered the grenade and safely detonated it on Wednesday."
Check out this website from Dundry Nurseries where you can here Potato Pete's song and even order a reproduction of his own cookbook. You can also watch a clip of a British tv show where they show how to plant and store potatoes and grow squash on top of your bomb shelter. You can also learn how to make your own potash!(?)
The Numbers:
It was estimated that between 1917 and 1919, over five million Victory Gardens had been planted in North America, which had produced some $1.2 billion in foodstuff productions.
By the end of 1943, there were more than 200 000 Victory Gardens in Canada producing 550 lbs of produce.
A lovely victory zucchini grown at the Simon Fraser Elementary garden at the community garden, Vancouver City Hall.
Dig for Victory!
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