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<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Economy calls for Victory Gardens By Linda Bryant Smith Herald Columnist An interesting thing happened to me last week at my neighborhood grocery store. Sale items rang up correctly. The other eight items priced out higher than shelf labels, most by two or three cents. A small bottle of red wine vinegar had jumped 35 cents from the shelf price and 25 cents from the price hand marked on its bar code. I pointed out the pricing problem to the clerk. "Talk to the manager," she said. "Food prices are going up, so fast he just changes them in the computer. We don't have enough employees to keep changing shelf prices." And the beat goes on. When fuel prices skyrocketed last year, higher food prices were as inevitable as a legion of ants scurrying across the picnic table to attack an unprotected chocolate cake. I hate being the chocolate cake in this sad simile, but here I am, struggling like most Americans against the assault on my budget by forces I can't control. It is war, after all, this struggle to survive when our cost of living grows faster than a young dandelion on a sunny spring day. Like many seniors, I remember the wartime food shortages of my childhood. In the 1940s, Americans, resourceful and united in a common cause, armed themselves with shovels, hoes and seeds to plant Victory Gardens. My mother cultivated a large vegetable garden, summer after summer in our back yard in Portland, Ore. Her hard work produced fresh vegetables and berries for our family as well as a little extra to share with our relatives who lived in apartments. She bought one of the newfangled pressure cookers that popped and snorted steam. It had the added attraction (for me) of a screaming warning whistle that scared even Grandma. They canned green beans, corn, peas, peaches, pears, jams and jellies. Mom had a small flock of chickens from which to get eggs. She fed them a few table scraps and grain when she could afford it. Those who failed to produce became stewing hens. I still have the scar on my leg from the axe she used to chop off their heads. It was my job to carry that axe back to the neighbor who owned it. Like any adventurous 6-year-old, I tried a swing or two on my way. The blade left me with a firm reminder of my poor judgment. Because of the war, many food items such as commercially canned goods, coffee and sugar were rationed. Meat was scarce. Along with food came other shortages. My aunts had no nylons to wear to work. Grandma couldn't buy rubber elastic to repair some pieces of her well-worn underwear. On one occasion, while shopping in downtown Portland, the safety pin she'd substituted for elastic failed and her undies dropped to the sidewalk. She calmly stepped out of them, picked them up, shoved them in her handbag and walked on. Few things ruffled my grandma's feathers, although she did not try the safety pin solution again, I've been told. Oops, I'm off topic, but if you didn't live through those years, it's hard to imagine a time and place when you couldn't go to the store and pick up anything you need, be it food or fashion. What's important in all this is to remember at one point in time there were nearly 20 million Victory Gardens across America that produced about 40 percent of all the vegetables we consumed. By the end of the war, the Department of Agriculture estimated these gardens produced more than a million tons of vegetables. As retirees, our small garden once was a place my husband grew tomatoes, a few herbs, zucchini and flowers he enjoyed. Last summer, and for sure this summer, it's an essential piece of our food budget. We're planning the use of that space very carefully. What can we grow and can or freeze? What do we always want fresh from the garden? What will we be able to buy at the local farmers market cheaper that takes a lot of space to grow? If we have a surplus, we can share with our neighbors or donate to the produce table at our church. In the fall, we'll buy apples, pears and peaches for canning and freezing from orchards a few miles up the road. One bonus of all this hard work is that my grandchildren have home-canned peaches, pears, applesauce and Grandma's special berry jam at their home as well as mine. There are only a few gifts I can give them they cannot get elsewhere and believe me, these gifts are treasured. There are limited means available to win this battle of the budget. Victory Gardens could make a significant difference, once again, in what's on the dinner table for many families in our state and across America. We're already looking forward to those first thick slices of tomato on a tasty BLT for lunch -- if we can still afford to buy bacon. Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.

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