I'm not British, but I do live in a former colony

There are many ...

I started visiting this board about 6-8 months ago and have found the
people here to be very helpful and informative. There's one fellow in
particular...forgot his name...who has a wealth of experience growing
garlic; he especially has given me tips on my own garlic crop.

That would be useful.

Speaking of your being English: I watched a fascinating show on
educational television a while ago about Victory Gardens in WWII.
They touched on people raising rabbits in backyard hutches, etc. Neat
stuff.

We don't have television (but we don't eat our young any more) but I do
remember WWII. Many people grew vegetables, rabbits, pigeons, pigs etc in
the tiniest of spaces. Larger areas such as parks and sports fields were
given over to allotments.

My mother kept rabbits, not in the back yard (we only had a tiny front
garden, living in what's called a two bedroomed back to back terrace house)
but they were for the pot. My husband's family did the same. I remember my
mother killing a rabbit with a blow to the back of its head, my husband
never saw that but said that one day the hutch door was open and he was told
that the rabbit had escaped. somehow he knew that wasn't true ...

During the war my father's father kept a pig in his tiny garden. You must
remember that this was very close to the centre of a large city in
Yorkshi Leeds, not in the country. His house was three storeys high but
it only had one room per storey. They lived in the 'cellar kitchen', it was
beneath ground level and was accessed by stone steps leading down to the
room. It had a shallow stone sink, a set pot, a huge mangle, a soft wood
table covered by oil cloth with two chairs, a large coal fireplace with an
integral oven, a dresser and a horsehair sofa. Oh, and a rocking chair and
rag rug, otherwise the stone flagged floor was uncovered. The lavatory was
under the stone steps which led up to the 'ground floor', used as a bedroom.
There was only cold water so the kettle was constantly on the trivet on the
fireplace.

The pig was fed on household scraps, such as they were, it must have had
something else but perhaps neighbours gave it their scraps too. We didn't
have much waste food but there were potato peelings. Right until I was about
thirteen people used to call at houses asking for 'pig swill', that is food
waste.

I could never understand why my mother's sister only had flowers in her
garden. We live in that house now and I know there was space enough for
vegetables. I suppose it was because she had more money than we had and
could afford to buy things we couldn't.

During the war our garden was too small to grow anything but a few
soot-stained flowers but when I was ten we moved and had a garden big enough
for my father to grow vegetables. I wish I'd taken notice of what he did ...

Now I grow many of our own vegetables but it's late in the day and I don't
remember everything I learn. But I persevere and we eat very well. Tonight
we had runner beans, tomatoes and cucumber and my own baked rosemary and
garlic bread as well as my own dry cured ham.

I reckon we eat better than most people!

And I love it :-)

Mary

Mark