Heroines on the Farm Front, in North Carolina and England, 1943

“Heroines on the Farm Front” by Sallie Hill in the March 1943 issue of The Progressive Farmer

In the matter of patriotism, farm folk yield to no group. All through the South, it is our blessed privilege to meet heroic farm men and women who go quietly about their commonplace everyday duties with no decorations and no bright uniforms. Right to the head of the class we would send Mrs. W.T. Phillips, Lauderdale County, Alabama, who has sent five sons into our armed services. This is by no means all, as Mrs. Phillips writes me:

“Last year I canned about 600 quarts of fruits, vegetables, and meats. I do my own housework; look after the chickens, cow, and hogs; work the garden, and help my husband on the far. I also find time to read farm magazines.”

Another letter—one from enterprising Mrs. Eva Weddington of Cabarrus County, North Carolina—relates that she is going to her local schoolhouse two nights a week to take a course in poultry raising, in order that she may do her part in meeting Secretary Wickard’s request for production of an additional 20,000,000 chickens.

As for the home health side of the picture, Mrs. F.D. Wade, Copiah County, Mississippi, reports that she’s fully rewarded for the time and effort she spent in taking a first aid course. “I have had two opportunities after accidents to stop blood by applying pressure,” she told me, “once for a woman who had been in an automobile accident, and again when a little boy was hurt with a rock.”

No less heroic are the hundreds of enthusiastic enrollees in The Progressive Farmer’s home nursing course.

Buying Bonds

Bond buying is going steadily ahead, too. In fact, Miss Connie Bonslagel, Arkansas State Demonstration Agent, in speaking to the Mississippi Bureau Federation on the importance of buying Bonds, stated that Arkansas home demonstration clubs have raised $31,000 through their community activities and have invested it in Series F Bonds.

“These women,” she explains, “reason thus: by the time the boys come marching home from war, their home communities will be pretty badly run down for want of materials and labor for repairs. Their homes will need to have their faces lifted, so to speak. The boys will be restless, too, unless they have something to do around the place to make them feel at home again, and to make them know they are needed there. This cash—four dollars for every three—will seem like a godsend then. It will help take care of unemployment, hold the interest of the boys in the home community, and furnish a better place for all to live.

This seems like sound post-war planning to us.

An English Visitor Talks

There are plenty of unsung heroines in England, too, according to Miss Mary Grigs, Home Editor of the Farmers’ Weekly in that country. While visiting our offices, she gave us a clear and succinct summary of their rationing situation now. Feed for poultry is so scarce there, she said, that families who are not actually raising poultry on a commercial basis are allowed to keep only one hen per person. Naturally poultry meat is rare, and eggs are rationed to the tune of one egg per person a month.

“How about other meat?” I asked.

“Each person is permitted about ¾ pounds per week, or about 25 cents’ worth of whatever meat the butcher may have. In addition, there is also the possibility of 2 or 3 thin slices of bacon. Other weekly allowances include 2 tablespoons of butter, 4 tablespoons margarine, and 2 tablespoons tea. Coffee, which English people drink very little, is not rationed. For the most part, milk is reserved for children.”

Since England is short of wheat, Miss Grigs thinks bread may be rationed by the time she returns to England.

Gardening is the chief indoor and well as outdoor “sport” in England now, this Britisher remarked, for every available window box and spot of ground is planted with vegetables. Public squares and parks are plowed up and allotted to those who wish additional gardens. She also lamented the pathetic scarcity of seed, which adds its toil to the gardening problem.

Speaking of the English Women’s Land Army, Miss Grigs told us how 60,000 girls and women have voluntarily enlisted to work on farms. Their clothing or uniform is provided by the government, and they are paid about like English soldiers. Many women prefer the land to working in defense plants.

In our country, we predict cheers for a food-saving army,  particularly if it is designed to relieve the overworked farmer’s wife during the summer months when food preservation is at its peak. Here is an opportunity, it seems to us, for volunteer home economics-trained women and girls to engage in a patriotic undertaking second to none, except combat duty. The question is open to readers.

Straws in the wind indicate for us 2 or 3 additional ration books before 1943 is gone—one for canned goods, possibly one for meat, and another for clothes and other items. What with daily increasing inroads on our food supply and the needs of our servicemen, allies, and civilians, farm people will fall into one of the two classes: the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In other words, it seems we shall either do more food-raising or do without.

A new realization of the real meaning of our food program to people in service, comes with this message from a Texan, Miss Ruth Cooper, in a U.S. Army base hospital unit in Egypt:

“We are so happy to get American food and are thoroughly enjoying it. You will be interested in some of our innovations—dehydrated potatoes, which are delicious, and dehydrated butter, which is wonderfully creamy and rich. We shall have more dehydrated products as our supplies arrive. This morning we had a tasty breakfast of bacon and scrambled dried eggs.”