Rationing

I'm even older than some of you and can well remember rationing. Queuing at the butchers and the fishmongers with our ration books, Sometimes there would be an extra sausage if you were lucky. And the little square of cheese would be laughable these days.
My mum was a countrywoman who knew how to stretch the rations out. We almost always had meat or fish and potatoes and two veg. We kept chickens so had plenty of protein, and loads of eggs, some of which we gave to the neighbours in exchange for a cabbage or similar. We grew lots of veg and had many soft fruit plants which were amazing. I remember picking the gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, and loganberries which we never see these days.
All in all, especially with sweet rationing not ending until 1953,
it was a healthy diet.

Ooh.. who killed the chickens?
Needs must, I know, but I'm squeamish (and hypocritical) about that kind of thing.

MissAdventure

Ooh.. who killed the chickens?
Needs must, I know, but I'm squeamish (and hypocritical) about that kind of thing.

Uncle!

My Mum said she'd never seen anyone pluck and draw a chicken faster than her MIL (the grandmother I never met because she died before I was born).

Ah, good old uncle.
Was there a "black market", too?

I agree about the healthy diet Henetha. As you say, shopping back then entailed a visit to separate shops - no large stores around then, and supermarkets came much later. We had milk and bread delivered by horse-drawn carts and sometimes any manure deposited found its way to the rose bushes.
I think I prefer to hop in the car nowadays and get everything from under one roof.

My mother dealt with the chickens MissAdventure. I remember her singeing any feathers still clinging to the carcass.
Some were from our own chicken run. I didn’t get involved in the chickens’ demise, in fact I doubt whether I even thought about it. Ours mainly existed to provide eggs for the family.

I turned 80 this month and can certainly remember shopping with my mother who had a ration book.

One of my uncles had an allotment and he used to come around every week with whatever fruit and veg was in season. There was always a lot of rhubarb. After 1945, when my father was discharged from the navy, he too got an allotment and spent every weekend and several weekday evenings over there.

At that time some men used the allotment the way they use the "garden shed" or man cave now. Most of the allotments had a little shed with a gas ring and provision to make tea. It got them away from family life and parenting and gave them some quiet time alone. However they could claim that they were working on the land to provide for their wives and children.

Every Saturday late afternoon my dad would take my brother and I to the sweet shop to buy our sweet rations. I remember it as a special time with my dad.

I still have my ration book somewhere, everyone that could grew vegetables, I remember the roadside verges dug up to grow veg as well as allotments.
The wartime thrift persisted right through my schooldays, make do and mend, don’t waste anything, you ate what was on the table because there wasnt anything else. Society was far more equal, it was tough but everyone was in the same boat, the real step forward compared with pre war was the NHS.

I was born in 1945 and clearly remember rationing while I was young. My mother made all our clothes and was adept at cutting down other things to make us clothes. I remember the ration book, but the incident I remember most was the milk lady shouting to my mother that my little sister was sat on the front doorstep eating the butter ration for us all. My mother had just put her best coat on her and she was sat with butter smeared down her coat and on her face and my poor mum didnt know which was worse, she kept saying Oh the butter ration, the coat , the butter ration. Very limited sugar etc and we grew a lot of our own vegetables and swapped with neighbours I remember

Cabbie21

I can certainly remember rationing. We lived in a small village and got produce eg eggs, potatoes from the local farmers, plus Dad grew some fruit and vegetables. Later I can remember shopping with my Mum with coupons, and the last ones to go were the sweet coupons. My sister and I each had 2 oz of sweets a week and Mum sometimes bought a Mars bar which she cut into four pieces, one for each of us.
It was actually a healthier diet than now and you did not see any overweight children.

I certainly remember rationing, and my mum cutting a mars bar up so it would last me several days. Mind you, they were much bigger then! it took me a while after rationing, to realise they could be eaten all in one go 😄😄
Born in 1944, rationing was normal for me I knew no difference.

l wasn't born until 1956 so no direct experience obviously.however it did affect my family . My grandfather and my grandmother served in France in WW1. During WW2 he worked as an inspector or some sort for the ministry of food. They lived in a city which was heavily bombed so l guess food was even tighter. It came to his notice that my grandmother's brother's wife had far more butter than one could get for a children's birthday party. Further transpired she had stolen it. To this day that part of the family have refused to have anything to do with my granny or descendants. My gran would explain that grandpa had no option but to prosecute and it was made worse by being a relative. Imagine my surprise when l attende VE day celebrations in my Wiltshire village one of the farmers chuckled and said they did not have any rationing and "what the ministry didn't know wouldn't hurt them" l was totally shocked as l had always believed everyone was rationed and played by the rules.

MissAdventure

Ah, good old uncle.
Was there a "black market", too?

Good grief no!

I do remember my mother being very angry because one of our neighbours was a black marketeer (a spiv, she called him) and he was very rude about my Dad being in the Forces. Horrible man.

Apparently (before I was born) during the war years, my older brother used to breed rabbits for food for the family. He would have been about 9 when he started doing that. My mother grew vegetables, but she never did any gardening after Dad left the Forces.

The family of my best friend at the time (1950s) kept a number of hens so they always had eggs and chickens. Right upto the 1960s it was common for people where we lived (Liverpool suburbs) to have hens in the back garden.

Allotments were also a thing well into the 1960s when I left home. We used to call them "the plots".

My Cumbrian Granda kept a couple of pigs, as well as hens and turkeys and grew lots of fruit and vegetables. My mum said he had to declare having the pigs and give so much of it ( to where I’m not sure). However they had a small cupboard on top of the stairs, with a big hook in it. Apparently after the pig was slaughtered, it was hung in there and hidden. My parents were married in 1942 and their wedding breakfast was at my grandparents home. Mum always said it broke her heart to leave all the good food, coupons saved up for weeks, to catch the train for their honeymoon at my other grandparents home, where they had bought a trifle from the Co-op!

My mum killed the chickens, MissAdventure, I remember watching her go into their run, pick one up and wring it's neck then cut it's throat.
I became the chief feather plucker when I was a little older and still remember the smell and the dusty feathers.

My mum said one of their neighbours used to alter their ration book, and iron it flat.

Then it was mums job to go and present the book to the shop.

She used to quake at the thought of getting discovered

I remember my family and friends of the family used to give me all their sweets when they were on ration, there is no wonder I still have a very sweet tooth :-)

My mother worked for the Food office throughout the war, and having read the list of shipping casualties every day was relentless in pursuing anyone who tried to operate on the black market. For some years after the war she would point out various people who had been convicted and in some cases served time for profiteering. It wasn't a joke.

What lovely stories and memories , thank you. Can I ask , how were fruits such as blackberries preserved when sugar was rationed ? I’ve been telling my grandchildren that blackberry picking was a valuable way to prevent rickets .

Fruit may not have been rationed, but imported fruit such as oranges, lemons and bananas could no longer be imported, and the same must have applied to melons, and peaches and apricots.

In my 1950s childhood, onions were still sold by French "Onion Johnies" as we called them, and I believe onions had been hard to obtain during the war.

People living in cities had no particular joy of the fact that game was not rationed, and the game laws regarding when you may shoot game applied, so even in the country game did not contribute greatly to stretching the meat ration.

If you raised a pig yourself, you were supposed to declare it and wave good-bye to part of your meat ration.

Flour was rationed too, and fuel - so cooking was made more difficult. Older hand-written cookery books abound in recipes for "eggless cakes" "macaroni pudding" (Ugh) baked treacle pudding, that according to my grandmother could go into the oven on a lower shelf than the roast, as boiling a steamed pudding was impossible due to the fuel rationing.

Daffonanna

What lovely stories and memories , thank you. Can I ask , how were fruits such as blackberries preserved when sugar was rationed ? I’ve been telling my grandchildren that blackberry picking was a valuable way to prevent rickets .

I wondered that, too. Perhaps they saved up the sugar rations for jam-making.

Certainly only home-grown produce was available plus the food parcels sent by the good people of America and Australia, some of which ended up at the bottom of the sea.

My brother told me that American soldiers were billeted
nearby and they used to offer the children chewing gum and
sweets when they walked past.

I started nurse training in 1953, we had a ration of butter and sugar each week.They were stored in a cupboard in the dining room in old, handleless tea cups with our names on sticking plaster on the side. Heaven help any student who took someone elses ration!

Rationing ended when I was eight and I remember it; still have a Ration book.