Country Rationing and Ways Around It

This story was collected and transcribed by Mark Jeffers, with permission from the author. The author understands the terms and conditions.

We used to farm produce ourselves. My mother had turkeys, which was against the rules. Her customers were the army people and the soldiers though! They came over at night when it was pitch dark and quiet and they got their turkeys from my mother at Christmas time. I’m sure if my mother had been caught on she would have been fined or something but she tried it anyway and I’m sure she wasn’t the only one.

We got our rations, bacon, butter, sugar tea, everything was rationed and there was always queue as well. I hadn’t seen bananas for ages. I had a friend who had a daughter, she was about 4 or 5 and it was the first time she had tasted ice cream and she said “No mummy, its burny, its burny!” It burned her because it was so cold, she’d never had it and they got her a poke to try it. We told her it was lovely but she kept saying “No, it’s burny!” She couldn’t eat it.

You didn’t get fruit, we had an orchard with cooking apples and eating apples and in the garden we had soft fruit like blackberries and my mother always made jam. So we weren’t too bad, I couldn’t complain about it. Things were rationed. You just had to go very easy on the butter and the tea and sugar.

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