“JAMMING”

A door wide thrown; and down the path to the wicket
The children run, they’re off to the blackberry thicket;
And, dear, what haste, to judge by wicket’s slamming;
True, for they’re gone to pick for the Institute jamming.

I wouldn’t say that no little lips will colour
With sweet crushed fruit; still, the baskets grow steadily fuller,
And soon from the aching sprays they take such levy,
That the burden on little arms seems woefully heavy.

They reck not, and now they are racing back to the village,
Proud of themselves and their brimming purple pillage;
And whose fruit first, Teddy’s or Peter’s or Lucy’s,
Shall bring to the Institute’s pan its delectable juices?

(Anon,1943)
                                          

Olive Mellett gave me the Wrington perspective on jam making:

“ In the summer the W.I. used to get people to go out picking. I used to take the children and go out blackberrying. That field up behind the mushroom farm was the best place. I had a big basket and when we’d picked that one full and two others, we’d have fourteen pounds. Then we would have the Reading Room and go there and make jam. They could get extra sugar to make jam so that the local shops could sell it. Gwen Organ bought a canning machine so we would go to people’s houses, after she had taught me how to do it, and we used to take the fruit, put the syrup on, then you’d put them under this machine and seal the top. Then you’d boil them in the boiler for about twenty minutes or so. She would do anybody’s and we used to pay about 3d. for the tin. She’d do tomatoes, carrots or any sort of vegetables. We also used to bottle – had eighty Kilner jars that I filled every year with whatever was going.

When I was preparing for my wedding (in 1944) my auntie suggested we should make some wine. We were teetotaller but she told me that blackberry wine was not alcoholic. So we picked the fourteen pounds and put them in the big white washstand bowl. I stood it on the boiler in the bathroom and it had to stand there for so long. One day Barry came out and said, “I’m ever so sorry.” And I asked him what the matter was. He was black all the way up and said, “I was only doing a Mr. Twiddle.” Mr. Twiddle was a character who used to have the soap and see how far he could shoot it through his window. Barry had done this and the soap had flown into the wine and he couldn’t find it! The wine was covered in froth so it went down the sink - my one and only attempt at making wine.

I even tried boiling lettuce when there was no cabbage. It was all right but a bit slimy. When broad beans were young, we’d take them out and then slice up the pods like runner beans. For Christmas fairs we used to use dried milk sugar to make sweets and if you put bicarb in it you made it like honeycomb toffee. We also made lemon curd that lasted about two weeks. On one occasion we painted up some sweet-filled tins to sell, which looked really good, but by the time people came to leave, the heat had made the paint run!

I used to ice the kids’ cakes with finely mashed potato mixed with raspberry jam. I remember I had my cousin over from Wales to work on the farm for a month. I made some tartlets because his mother was coming over. I made two dozen pastry cases. I had one egg, so I separated it and I beat up the yolk and put some milk and sugar with it and put a spoonful in each of the cases and that made little egg custard tarts. Then I beat the white up into a meringue and put a spot of jam in the bottom and the meringue on the top. They were only little but they looked lovely. My cousin came in from the farm with his cup of tea while they were cooling and he ate half of them before they were cold. He was only fifteen and couldn’t help it – bless him!”

Fuel was also in short supply:

“ When coal was short we would borrow a pram to go down the coal yard to fetch coal. One winter when it was very cold, we’d go to bed early. Clifford Marshall gave us an apple tree that had come down. I went over with my dad and with a crosscut saw cut up the apple tree so that we could burn the wood. Lighting fires could be a nightmare because you couldn’t get the sticks so we’d cadge every bit that we could. So much of the coal we had was slag you could hardly ever get it to light. I use to dip the rag in an oilcan and use that.”

Dennis Owers also told me a special story about rationing:

“ I remember when we had the ration books. We used to go to Langford and get oranges with them. The chap up there used to mark it in pencil. So we used to come along the road rubbing it off! We’d then go back for some more. I can remember when I was still at school I helped out the local baker, Sullivan’s and we used to go on the bread round, when the bread coupons came out. We used to have a big box by the side of the driver’s seat to put them in. We went to Ubley one day and there was a lovely old lady up there. She would ask if we had any traffic lights, which were made of sponge and three-coloured like traffic lights, with cream and jam in the middle. We used to let her have one and told her to keep her bread coupons for another time. I told her “That’s between me and you.” The bread coupons never used to go into the office so I thought the old lady might as well have them. I went with Jack Vowles and used to hide one of these traffic lights for the old lady and tell Jack that I’d sold it.”

All of the Owers children ate well at Mrs. Ansons’s house in West Hay. Their chauffeur’s wife, Mrs. Markwell, used to do a lot of home cooking and Eileen, who stayed with her, recalled:

“ We’d have bacon in the morning and a bacon roll for dinner. She improvised with a lot of things, so I ate quite well considering things were rationed. The only thing she made which I didn’t like was curry and I couldn’t eat it. She was very strict but very kind with it. We can all remember egg powder. Butter was a luxury and we had syrup in our tea as a substitute for sugar, which was rationed and scarce. We also had porridge for breakfast and we’d do toast on a fork in front of the fire. We ate a lot of rabbit but chicken was a luxury.”

Gladys Brough also remembers the peculiarity of wartime food:

“ We had dried eggs and that was lovely. You could only really scramble it but you couldn’t get real eggs in the shops. Pam’s father had a couple of chickens. We used to have chickens at the bottom of our garden, and an old cockerel and we had pigeons and Gladys’s father always had a couple of ferrets, for rabbitting. Pam’s father worked at the waterworks and used to bring home eels. There was never much fish from the river but when the Kirks had their fish shop down in Station Road, we used to go down and ask Mr. Kirk for some of the crackly bits of batter. As kids, we’d have a few chips and then we’d sit down on the railway lines and eat them by the gate.”

The Hatching for Victory campaign gave practical advice on keeping chickens:

“ Light breeds are genuine egg machines under clever management, and prove successful under intensive or semi-intensive conditions. Either of the Leghorn family will do with April or May hatching, whether white, black, brown or the increasingly popular Exchequer Leghorn. Theses varieties, being very active, do not become so fat as heavy breeds when kept intensively; they are prolific layers and can be made docile with attention.”

And ducks:

“ The keeping of ducks for either egg production or table purposes can be a very useful and profitable sideline to the general farm. The duck is an excellent layer. A flock of ducks will invariably lay more eggs than will a flock of the same number of laying pullets. The English climate is peculiarly suitable for duck culture, as rain, fog and winds laden with moisture seldom affect their health or egg laying.

Ducks do not require good land, but will do quite well on the rougher type of grass land; and moreover, they will often improve the herbage to a marked degree. Farmers with orchard land available will find all breeds of egg ducks remarkably active in clearing the pastures of pests in the early stages.”

Gladys explained that the shops never minded if kids called for sweets on a Sunday, when they were actually closed. Although sweets were rationed, they used to go to Mrs. Parsley’s shop. Her friend Pam could always get them by using her mother’s “Puritan” soap coupons, which were worth a farthing each. Mrs. Parsley didn’t mind and used to accept them for sweets. Sullivan’s the bakers used to do marvellous cakes but half the time, even though they were only a penny each, they couldn’t afford them. Later on, when the soldiers came up from Churchill, they’d bring up their sweet rations.

“ When we got a bit older we used to go out to the nursery opposite the White Hart, where they used to grow tomatoes and lettuces. The cockneys were really on the ball with it all. We used to go to a field at Hewish and cut the cabbages for money. We also used to pick blackcurrants and hops. It was the very first time I went down with Mrs. Tyson and Mrs. Owers. We went down in a cart pulled by a tractor. After so long, I’ve never forgotten it. They said, “Let’s go over and see if the gypsy lady has got any cake.” I said, “I’m not going over there – I couldn’t imagine eating cake with gypsies.” They said, “Come on, they be all right.” I shall never forget when they went to the caravan door and the gypsy opened the door and it was the most beautiful caravan you’d ever seen in all of your life. I couldn’t believe it. Then she brought out this great big fruitcake that they’d made and chopped us all off a slice. It was a real eye-opener. We really had fun.

We used to go up to Mathlins the butchers once a week and queue for faggots, because they made them there. The chemist shop used to be occupied by “Calico” Biggs (Howard’s father) He used to come round on a three-wheeler bike selling ice lollies and ice cream. He’d come up the lane and tinkle his old bell and you’d go out.”

Of course, the foundation for providing one’s own food, or at least some of it, was the garden or allotment.

“ Authorities tell us that in this lovely island of ours we can only produce enough food for the population for about one hundred days. All the supplies for the other two hundred and sixty odd days have to come to our shores by ship – beef, mutton, grain, vegetables, fruit and eggs. We know that our ships are fully employed in carrying munitions of every kind to our armies overseas, as well as bringing in essential raw materials such as rubber, timber, oil and metals from abroad. Therefore in Somerset we must assume a special obligation to do our part in producing food.

We have plenty of examples before us. At Weston-super-Mare an excellent garden was made a few years ago from a derelict piece of ground covered with nettles and brambles, and although it was wrecked by a bomb about a year ago the owner, quite undismayed, filled up the crater, levelled as much as he could, and produced a fine crop of vegetables last year.

We should look after our vegetables first and then our flowers. No-one wishes flower-beds to be destroyed, because their flowers help us to bear our present trials. Somerset people are said to need as much vegetable food as could be grown on a quarter of a million acres, which is about the area under the plough in the county at present. Farmers must provide the milk, meat, wheat, etc, from the ploughed land, so we must grow the vegetables.”

The County Council established demonstration plots in a number of places, where correct vegetable growing, as advised by the Ministry of Agriculture, could be seen. Many useful hints were published by the government in a series of coloured leaflets like Dig for Victory Leaflet No. 1.

In Somerset, the County Gardens Produce Committee was started, comprising representatives from several interested bodies, including the W.I. and National Allotments Society. This was designed to encourage people with small gardens and allotments to grow their own vegetables and people in each area were approached to set up local food-production clubs. By 1942 the county boasted forty-five of these, with just over 1800 members paying 6d.each per year.

Membership was open to anyone and advantages included discounts on purchases of seed-potatoes and fertilisers, free expert advice from the Farm Institute at Cannington and help in delivering and selling any surplus produce.

Wrington formed its own Produce Association in January 1943 and membership grew rapidly. The Ministry of Information held regular film shows and, amongst the special deals on offer, Henley Quarries in Yatton were offering to supply lump lime in two-ton loads! In addition to this, the Memorial Hall hosted special exhibitions on horticulture and animal husbandry, including talks and demonstrations for children and adults on poultry-keeping, rabbit-keeping, fuel-saving, wartime cookery and gardening. There were also stalls on goat, pig and bee-keeping, vegetable and garden produce and make and mend.

In December of 1944 the first of a series of meetings by the Village Produce Association took place in the Reading Room, at which the county instructor in horticulture gave a very interesting illustrated talk. Other talks included the preservation of surplus fruits and vegetables.