Years ago, many people, including my grandparents, were self-sufficient, an outcome that is next to impossible for many today and for many makes food stamps a saving grace.
My grandparents were raised in the hills and hollers of southern Missouri, and by the time they married in 1917 living off the land was pretty much a given.
Picture this:
After moving to East Mulberry Street in Humboldt, their home was comfortable and neat and had most of the daily nutritional needs at hand. About the only things they had to buy were milk, flour and sugar, and a few spices. In earlier days, Meme (Ada Oliphant) milked a cow that meandered near her girlhood home next to a bubbling brook.
She learned to churn butter at an early age and among her chores were taking fresh milk and butter to a spring along the creek where cool water oozed from a small rock formation. That was good as refrigerators are now.
A steer or hog, along with all sorts of wild game, provided her family’s protein needs, along with chickens and ducks. Eggs, of course, were plentiful. They had a smokehouse where meat was cured and kept. Wild greens, berries and nuts put her on a life-time course of making do.
Granddad Sherman was the same, though when he was growing up, son of a Mississippi River fur-buyer, household duties were strictly divided according to gender. He and his brothers raised crops, including basic garden vegetables, and did the hunting.
When they moved to Humboldt, so he could work first at the brick plant and then Monarch Cement, one full lot east of the house was devoted to a garden. A large pen was rigged with a hen house and filled with chickens, and at one time a number of big, black Muscovy ducks. Don’t ever ask for two duck eggs for breakfast unless you’re really hungry.
Mom and I moved in — to stay, it turned out — when Dad left for Europe during World War II. When garden produce ripened it was a busy place. Mom and Meme filled dozens of quart jars with green beans, pickles, pickled beets, and anything that struck their fancies. Potatoes were spread on old window screens and lightly sprinkled with lime; they kept well into winter. Wild greens were a treat in the spring.
Rabbits, squirrels, fish and even a coon now and then filled the center spot on the dinner table. But we also had as much beef and pork as we wanted. Coon, by the way, when cooked in the oven like roast is hard not to mistake for beef.
I have no idea how much of our disposable income was spent on food each month, but I can’t imagine it was much.
World War II brought about social and cultural changes. Rosie gave women vocational avenues unheard of before. Halcyon days of the 1950s magnified the change.
Even so, a judicial approach to daily nutrition, illuminated by the SNAP series of stories we’re offering, can make a big difference, financially and in providing your family healthier fare.
