As some of you know a couple Canadian Ladies are doing a great wartime challenge this year and I have been very much enjoying reading along.. We have finally gotten to a point that I felt I had the time to join in. I have been quietly keeping to the challenge in regards to the clothing for the past two months. I have only bought second hand clothing, I have been mending and making due.
I have also been losing weight and I have found it a challenge in this regards, something that I think would in fact have been reflected in the wartime itself.. with the limits in place, I know that folks would have also been finding their weight down and their cloths would suddenly be to large and wearing out in a different way.. Belts only go so far..
But now we are getting in food.. both eating in terms of rations and growing to feed your family and working with others to grow community food (example the community pig). As some might remember, I did a 30 day challenge in regards to War Time Foods and how they related to both N.A. and in detail Canada.
I am not going to write out each day, but I will put a link up here to the search form that will let you work your way back though the days.. So much information learned and shared in those day’s back in March of 2015..
That brings us to now.. The Culinary Historians of Canada are working on a program coming soon that I will joining in. I live very close to what is now a very tiny village but it was quite active as a training area at the time.
Join a WWII Research Group
With the 80th anniversary of the beginning of WWII upon us in 2019, CHC vice-president Samantha George is seeking participants in a WWII food working group. Open to all, it will likely be divided into smaller, more focused groups with interests such as the home front, field rations or naval fare. Samantha is in Oshawa, Ontario, but hopes to hear from anyone who’s interested. She invites you to contact her at samantha@culinaryhistorians.ca.
I normally really like to do a eating off the farm challenge and have for years in March as that was always the “starving month” when the food storage was getting lean, your birds are not laying, the milking animal is dried up and growing the new baby and forage is something you dream about when the snow finally goes..
But this year, I am going to be looking at doing more in line with wartime rations (for myself) and a combo of living off the farm for both myself and hubby. I have never done this type of challenge in the push of summer..
I am still working on the total rules but overall, I have the general worked out and will provide more details soon enough.. I just need to see what I want as a give.
Example, I know what give already.. If a crop fails me on the farm, I have the right to buy my replacement food to re-stock my food storage for my standard 2 or 3 year supply in my pantry. I refuse to allow a learning curve or a living challenge to deplete my food stores.
Having said that I am still trying to figure out if that means I don’t get to eat any of it until I end the challenge or if it means I need to try and figure out what “we/I” would be allowed per the ration coupons during the challenge..
I am still figuring the details out in the small tiny real life fussy ways of how it will work. I have a few things that I need to plant yet to finish off getting everything that I was to plant for the wartime garden. I would love to tell you that I have a single garden that looks as pretty as their picture but the truth is I have it scattered into a number of my different gardens but I am pretty close to getting the right size and amounts planted, so at least that is a good starting point..
If I wanted to be really there, I would have so much liked to have planted their garden and then planted “my” garden for what I would want for a wartime garden.. they are not the same, some overlap but not near as much as I would have thought.. this surprised me to be honest.
Well, I had better get back to my evening.. the bugs are biting.. but I have a few more things to do before the sun sets.. Have a great night y’all
Just another Day on the Farm 
Love this! If it helps, H and I decided that if we have to buy or eat something off the ration, we better come up with a good, historically believable story, like we bought it off the black market. But we needed to do a little bit of research on the role of the black market and the penalties we would face if we were caught. One of our goals was to better understand what was happening back then. I think that you can’t full appropriate what people of the time went through and the choices they made until you find yourself in a similar position. I know I’m exaggerating a little as I am unlikely to starve to death and there are no bombs dropping on me but it has given me some insight into the difficulties faced by women on the home front.
Good luck! I will be following you with great interest.
I have heard a lot of stories as my step dad ken lived though this and he talked about the fact that the butcher had been sweet on his mom and had at one time hoped for them to get married.. so he would slip her a little extra.. what was interesting was what he slipped her.. because he was careful to give her offal for her pregnancy and then for her child’s growth.
Also they had a black market deal for one extra egg for the baby as well. It sure sounded like the mothers were the ones that gave up as much as possible.. If the mother was expecting the father and children gave extra to mom, once baby born, extra carbs went to dad for work day, extra protein went to the baby.
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