Episode 1 Wartime Kitchen and Garden

though the memories are fading of those days when the skies water [Music] Oh together we blow away that walls to let us [Music] [Laughter] [Music] this morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany I don't really know how I felt because I'd never had anything to do with anything like that before so you sort of expected something drastic to happen almost immediately I think but it didn't I was out walking when it was given out and I went back to find my sister in tears over the sink because she remembered the 1418 more so she wasn't very happy about things at all it was a lovely sunny day and I remember it was about 11 o'clock in the morning that war was announced it was a lovely day was a beautiful morning unwell remember the evening as well I know the fall would come busted into Boyd bedrooms at midnight he said well what do you think about it now Chum and I said I don't think there'll be a war I knew from one or two other men and that they said it was too - after throw away perfectly good plants plants which had been tended for years and to see them thrown away on the theory or on the composting it was it was a period of great sadness Harry Dodson head gardener at Chilton Gardens relives the moment of heartache that faced many gardeners in 1939 a few miles away in her country cottage cook Ruth mock prepares to cope again with the shortages of the wartime kitchen together they will show how the skills of the gardener and the cook fed the nation during five long years of war using the advice recipes and methods of the time they will return to the days when everyone had to make the most of what they could get [Music] at first people had no idea what to expect they feared the Bombers would come at once they didn't nor did the shortages as the troops left for France many people believed it would be all over by Christmas [Music] this unexpected reprieve gave people a chance to prepare themselves with government encouragement storing and preserving the autumn harvest took on a new urgency old skills were called up like drying apple rings now I'm cutting this into about six or eight rings this is a nice Apple because it's soft and so it will dry out because that's the object of the maneuver and now we can keep these for the rest of the winter or quite a long time we're going also to light a sulfur candle and turn the jar up over it so that will fill with fumes and then that will stop the Apple hopefully discovering they burn to go a little bit brown because of the drying out process put the jar over the top and leave it there to off the candle goes out I have a saucer ready so that when they can was gone out you can pop that over the top quickly to keep your fumes in and then we'll pop in the apple rings and give them a good shake don't use this method very much today because it takes core is quite a long process that's that's enough for that so we'll quickly pop the saucer over the top to keep the fumes in and get our apple rings ready to drop in we want them to go in as much as we can singly trying to do them like that so that I don't lose too much stuff and then just drop them in my time I'll be enough and put the lid back on and give them a good shake to make sure that they can enveloped with the fumes and then they shouldn't discolor too much and then we're going to thread them on to these little sticks and put them in a very very low oven to dry out well you want a very very low up and as low as you can get it just a bit below what we call milk pudding temperature or just about one or two just to keep it very low because they want to dry out very slowly which will take them about six to eight hours as a rule you know when they're done when they feel like leather because they then got no moisture left in them at all and then they'll probably of crinkled a little bit but you can when you get them out do your consult just straighten them between your hands and then you can let them you must let them cool off and then you can pack them into a tin it need not be airtight for using at a later date and then you will soak them then so that you put the moisture back in so that you should have had a nice apple in or they can puree or something of them if no bombers appeared over the skies of Britain u-boat certainly proud the coastal waters their presence brought home to the government and the country the fact that 60% of Britain's food was imported onions flourish in the warmer climate of France and Spain they were an early casualty of the restrictions on imports they quickly disappeared from the shops but the country estates had always grown and stored their own onions from now on it's fairly straightforward you want as near as possible a couple of onions the same size but you void the tops roads like that they they need really about three inches of pretty same the top well then you just put them arrayed twist them like that nice things it want to go quite where one wants them and then that often happens but it comes right at the end you want to keep keep the rope going even there the next one will come so that they fill in their home a lot of people have got the idea that these are toy dolls good garden fashion and sort of regardless I've never seen any of them ever tie them on it was always used for this better but be chatterin and not paying too much attention to what I was doing that wallet or the old boys would be very afraid of this string it's not so bad among those evacuated in the first days of the war were mothers with young children Joyce and her small son Paul arrived from London Ruth like so many others must learn to share her kitchen with the gardens depleted of young men a new workforce filled the gap Volunteers of the women's Land Army no private rooms or telephone straight from typing pools and shop counters the girls were interviewed given a brief training and sent wherever they were needed pleased to meet you one bit expected you good if you put your bicycle there I'll take you eight into the gardens where your Labor's will be required the girls had to go wherever they was asked to go the Boyle Corps handle it he had one or two very good words that he spoke only up though and I don't date that Betty Betty made and failed them extremely useful would it be very very hard pushed to have kept up with the gathering or crops and that sort of thing with a the aid of the bird girls we get a few summer crops off of it and then we crush up some autumn crops again the pool of tractors was created to help bring land into production at Chilton a derelict orchard is to make way for vegetables [Music] if you decided to be registered for food production or elected to turd your guard in the glass vases over the food production you were expected to turn a tab it was a 75% foodstuff I think it was pegged at that because it was understood that that would don't be the max above this some of these gardeners would be able to turn eight because the sizes are the powers of that sort of thing straight behind those that's right Chuck as the months of enemy inactivity dragged on the nightly blackout became a more and more irritating restriction I think we all like to draw our curtains the other side of the blackout so that your room looked cozy and it didn't look so dreary because blackout really was a dreary looking thing and then of course when you came up to bed at night you still had to have your blackout up so you felt so very shut in with it all the time the biggest grumble was reserved for the plans to introduce rationing within days of war breaking out a Ministry of food was set up it was given powers to control the purchase and distribution of all food supplies its main instrument was the ration book issued to every man woman and child in the country well first of all we were told where to go and collect your ration books and they were dished out in our local village hall and he went and collected them and then you brought them home and you decided who you thought you would like to register with you registered with whatever if your grocer you were to ask them if they would accept you possibly if you were a bad pair he perhaps wouldn't feel too happy about it taking you also you're registered with your butcher and you know then you just went to those each week and got what you're entitled to you couldn't if you didn't take your ration this week you couldn't put it off until next week and have a double ration the older people told you that how lucky you were that rationing was going to be introduced so early because in the first world war it wasn't introduced till 1917 and all the early part of the war they used to go all over the place to find things if it was in the shops because went in possibly to the town more than it did to the villages so this was a very equal way of serving out even if it was small [Music] well I think everybody thought they were are done by in the country we felt they did better in the town and in the town they thought you did better in the country I mean we had access to rabbits eggs and perhaps drop more milk various things like that in the town of course they knew the minute that the fish was in the fish shop they had the advantage of queuing for cigarettes which would only be in a very very small amount in the village [Music] in the glass houses of estate gardens like children thousands of ornamental plants had to be destroyed to make way for food crops but if like these climbing roses they took up little space they could be spared Harry digs the recently cleared bed to grow early cauliflowers glass houses were a great asset as they provided vegetables at a time of year when there was a shortage of fresh greens [Music] [Applause] with so many evacuees arriving in the country accommodation for land girls was a serious problem many had to put up with crowded hostels unsuitable Baathists and in sanitary digs and he's lucky she's billeted with a family in a nearby market town [Music] her lodgings have a garden which she helps look after in her spare time the house backs onto a railway line a target for enemy aircraft so it qualifies for an Anderson shelter named after the Home Secretary Sir John Anderson the shelter quickly became the but of wartime humor it was a simple effective if somewhat leaky protection against all but a direct hit a covering of earth was recommended as extra protection this also replaced the valuable growing space lost when the shelter was erected Annie spreads compost before planting trailing marrows the government condemned hoarding but encouraged stocking up the larder with homemade preserves Ruth Stores eggs for the winter we've had these eggs given to us because the chickens are laying well at the moment so we're going to try and preserve these so that we can use them for cooking they'll also make a good omelet and scrambled egg but they don't boil terribly well so we're going to pop them into here having made the water glass already and I was always taught to put them in the pointed end down and then the yolk stays fairly central into the middle if you do them the other way up it's not so easy and then we can put these into the water glass and then we can keep adding to them as we get the odd egg that we're not going to use and nice and fresh and we can pop it in so we hope to get the basketful eventually we should take the basket to the solution and lower in carefully from there with this little movement as possible so that you won't crack any of the eggs and that should be covered with water glass the bulk of Britain's eggs and chicken food was imported now with limited animal feed coming into the country it was the dairy farmer not the poultry keeper who got priority an egg shortage was clearly just around the corner [Music] the war was not over by Christmas and many people were spending it far from their families despite there being goods in the shops there was deep anxiety about what the new year would bring [Music] look that nothing thank you [Music] [Music] when we look back two years come to a dark and stormy sky [Music] do you remember how we survived come rain or shine it turned out fine though the memories of me of those days [Music] when skies would [Music] let's not forget [Music] Oh together we blew away the twirled - lettuce [Music] you

Channel: oldplaner

Views: 299,236

Keywords: WWII, rationing

Id: rLBRK5Tf1I4

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 22 2018