Digging for Victory

My dad (b.1921), was one of nine children and he used to tell us great stories about helping on the family allotment and keeping hens in the outdoor privy at night when there were foxes about!

During the war, in Derby, all nine children were still at home. Grandad and my dad worked shifts at Rolls Royce on aircraft engines and cared for the allotment between them, always managing to put fresh food on the table for the family.

Grandad always grew special treats for grandma, like early strawberries or dahlias for her birthday. He taught me lots of things when I was little, neither of us realizing that 50 years later I'd be using some of his techniques!

Thanks for mine too. Will look forward to finding it on my return home next week.

Thank you so much, I am really looking forward to receiving it.

Looking forward to getting mine too - as long as they are willing to mail it to here, Australia.

I have only just caught up here and see I am getting a book - I look forward to reading it.

What a fascinating book. I would love to read it. I have a huge interest in that period as my mother was in the FANNYS in Kenya during the war.

Most unexpected - rarely win anything - perhaps this is the beginning of the BIG TIME! Look forward to receiving it. Thank you.

What a lovely surprise!

Thank you! Lovely.

My grandmother was a professional dressmaker and my mother was very good at sewing and knitting. I must have been 5 and needing school uniform like a gaberdine raincoat before I had clothes bought for me. By that time the war was over and clothes were off ration and more freely available. But I do remember DM & DGM making my pleated school skirt and blouses and knitting my school cardigans.

When my father returned from India he was posted to Carlisle and our house only had a back yard. However another officer at the depot bought some turkey pullets to raise for Christmas and the one allocated to my father ended up weighing 26 lbs. My mother had to dismember it to get it in the oven.

It was a warm Christmas, we didn't have a fridge and my father went away on army business the day after Boxing Day, leaving my mother, who always had a tiny appetite, and three children aged 7,5 and 1 with an enormous cooked turkey that was barely nibbled at. She ended visiting the neighbours, who she hardly knew, begging them to take cooked turkey off her rather than having to throw it away. I can remember having turkey instead of bacon or sausages for breakfast, turkey samdwiches for lunch and turkey casserole for supper for about a week.

My underwear was all parachute silk as well.

I lived in south-east London and my maternal grandmother lived with us after her house was bombed in the blitz. She and my mother had a productive veg plot and kept about six chickens. If they didnt lay we ate them for Christmas. DF was posted to India in 1945 and used to send parcels of food and fabrics home to us. He was only meant to send one parcel per month b ut he used to send one parcel pepr person per month and I and my baby sister used to get a parcel and I could never understand why the tinned salmon and sausages that came in my parcel werent exclusively for my consumption.

He also sent home surplus small supply dropping parachutes, all my underwear was made from parachute silk until I was about 5, also army blankets, made into dressing gowns, carpets and saris to be made into dresses etc.

Nans were bright colourful abstract things.

Galen I still do

My gran used to make rag rugs.

Hope Gransnet has a means of archiving some of these accounts. My parents were very much make do and mend,my father building radios and repairing them during the war. In the fifties I remember him building Tvs from scratch in time for the coronation. Nothing was ever bought if it could be made. I couldn't wait to buy a ready made dress from c&a when I was about sixteen.my father even repaired shoes

my grandmother raised 4 children alone after her husband took off and started another family.She grew her own veggies,made clothes and took in a army soldier as a border in a very small house during the war.She never complained and was the bravest women I have know.

They were so clever, our Mums, weren't they? Dad was foreman spinner in a blanket mill. He used to bring home 'blanket ends' which Mum would sew together to make full blankets. Once, during the war, she boiled some up to shrink them, dyed them, then brushed up the pile to make them into dressing gown material. She made such dressing gowns for my two brothers.

They were dressed in these, and their home made pyjamas when the boss came visiting when I was born. (It was usual practice back then for the mill owner to visit when a long-term employee had a baby - there was usually a gift involved. ) Mum nearly had a fit - she wasn't sure if the blankets ends had been OK to take. However, he had no idea; the material was unrecognisable by then.

Those were the days of paternalism of course - we might sniff at it now, but that small c conservatism was a lot better than the rampant, devil-take-the-hindmost laissez-faire capitalism of today.

Years later Mum and I were walking home in the rain when that boss's son saw us and gave us a lift. I was at grammar school then, aged about 11 or 12 and we were doing the Industrial Revolution in History. I gave him a long talk about the evils of that era, while Mum quietly despaired. He took it well, and arranged for me to see all their historical exhibits, mainly photos, of the era.

I saw it all as history of course, and I think he did: Mum thought I was having a go at him. I was too naive to see that.

My mum made all our clothes, some of them cut down from my older cousins' cast-offs. A man used to come round with a big suitcase full of remnants of nice materials like Viyella. Mum was very good at smocking which adorned most of our little dresses. For VE day, we had white Viyella dresses embroidered with union flags. Well, two of us had those - no 3 was born a month after the war ended.

Joan . Me too!

My Mum was the same, Gally, with the 'make do and mend'. Now I'm the same - can't help it.

My Mother's mantra was 'make do and mend' which lasted until the day she died. She was brought up in a poor family of 5 children, her Dad was a jobbing gardener and her Mum had been a cleaner at the Big House. They grew all their own veg, kept chickens and gathered berries from the hedgerows which they sold locally to help make ends meet. They all had one 'good' dress and one for every day all of which were recycled to the next one down the line. Although my Mum's life change dramatically as she became older, she never forgot her origins,as I can well testify. She saved everything and reused everything - paper bags, string, wrapping paper, clothes, wool, foil (!) .............. Not a bad legacy for her grandchildren and theirs

I grew up on a croft and the fresh vegetables from the garden were wonderful with the sunday roast. Not a scrap was wasted as all the trimmings went to the goats and pigs and probably became part of the sunday roast in a different way! My Dad was very inspired by the self sufficiency of that the war gave people. He was always reluctant to make a purchase of anything when it could be homegrown, made or adapted.