Not sure how it was that many families coped with gardens and allotments at that time, as Lyn says. Many younger men were of course away and so I suppose that it fell to wives and children to do their bit. In Birmingham, there were many reserved occupations and so men of military age were still around, together with older citizens who were too old to serve. But most of these had far longer working hours than would be acceptable today and, on top of that, all sorts of Civil Defence work in their spare time, such as fire watching, ARP and Home Guard. Toiling in the garden to grow vegetables must have been an additional burden on top of all this.
I remember our own garden well. Much of it was devoted to things which could be eaten. Potatoes, other root vegetables and the hated cabbages (loved by Cabbage White butterflies and under relentless attack by their caterpillars, but loathed by me). The heavy work done by Dad, supported by regular spells of hoeing by Mum. I must have been roped in as well but can't remember much about it - so the experience can have been neither joyous nor too dreadful. A few chickens, too, for a while. (The pig came later, after the end of the war but when rationing was still just as bad).
Dad's weekends and some evenings were taken up by Home Guard duties. The gardening was fitted in, in between. On Monday 29th March 1943, he wrote to my brother in North Africa. "Gardening is in full swing with beautiful weather and I was on Digging for Victory the whole of the weekend, planting early spuds etc." The rare weekend off, by the sound of it. The reason is explained later: "We had a very full weekend exercise yesterday week. We took over defence of the 'drome (Walsall airport) and had a very wearying weekend – no sleep and on the go the whole time. It was a big stunt with about 10-20,000 Home Guards engaged....." So, a weekend off the following week and the garden benefited.
Still, better than being in Burma or North Africa or the middle of the Atlantic, I suppose.
Chris
