Organic Living During World War II

It was a hard way of life, but it was a good way of life.

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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by Adobestock/Wirestock Creators

This story is from Wendy Tressler Albright, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

My grandmother and grandfather practiced organic living long before it became a movement, and they didn’t even realize it. That was just their way of life. They lived on a small farm in western Pennsylvania and made a good living off of 60 acres. Grandpa milked 11 cows, raised maybe 10 or 15 pigs, grew soybeans, wheat, oats and corn and had chickens for meat and eggs. He didn’t use chemicals to kill weeds in the fields. There was a process called cultivating where they drove a tractor up and down the planted rows, plowing out the weeds. This was done periodically until the crops got too tall to cultivate anymore. It was a slow, monotonous job. Sometimes they even resorted to walking the fields with a hoe to get the stubborn weeds. No chemical fertilizers were used; only manure from the cows and pigs.

The chickens were in a large fenced in area and were fed ground up corn, oats and wheat with a supplement that Grandpa got from the feed mill down the road. I always loved going with him and sitting on top of the bags of grain that he brought to have ground for all the animals. There was always such a good smell when they mixed in the supplement. I remember smelling molasses. No growth hormones and no antibiotics. I believe they also got oyster shells to make the shells on the eggs harder. Table scraps (vegetable only) were thrown over the fence for the chickens to scavenge in and there were trees and grass and bugs for them to scratch up in the lot. There were two fairly good sized coops which had at least a dozen nest boxes apiece. I always loved going out in the morning and collecting eggs with Grandma. I was a bit scared of the hens still on nests though. They would squawk and fly off and I always thought they were going to attack me! But the warm eggs felt good in my hand and once in awhile you knew you had a “double yolker.”

They had a large garden which provided all their vegetables, and there were fruit trees; pears, apples, peaches, cherries for pie and wild elderberries that were also baked into pies and made into sauce to put over ice cream. Everyone had a rhubarb patch in their yard. Strawberries grew in the garden. Grapes for jelly, juice and even pie grew on the fence by the garden. What didn’t get canned went into the huge locker type freezers that Grandpa had gotten from a store that went out of business. The pantry was a large room containing the freezers, shelves of canned goods and a table that was always laden with baked goods. Grandma always had cakes, pies and cookies of all types on hand. Anyone who came was always offered a cup of coffee and some of her famous baked goods.

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