by Don Malcolm
Probably the most frequently asked question throughout the world on any given day is, “Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?” At the moment of birth, a child’s first priority is to fill its lungs with air, establish a voice, and then to eat. After finding the mother’s breast and satisfying its hunger, the next priority, for the baby and the mother, is to drift off to sleep. They have both worked hard. Throughout their lives food will be a major consideration for both mother and child.
Through the lean times and the fat, throughout North America, children rarely went to bed hungry. Wild game such as venison, grouse and fish, along with wild fruits,nuts, lamb’s quarters, (also known as pigweed) provided many country meals.
In December, after lakes and streams were frozen over, a hog was slaughtered to provide meat for a family over winter. Before electricity became available, meat was frozen in wooden barrels in sheds outside the houses. A hundred pound bag of Keynote flour stored in a secure place, yeast, two pounds of salt and five pounds of sugar, rolled oats and powdered milk for porridge, five pounds each of butter and lard, and water from a clean creek, or a dug well, could easily see a family through the winter. A small flock of hens produced eggs and a chicken for the pot now and then.
In the spring, brooding hens increased the flock’s number, if the rooster managed to avoid the stew-pot over the long winter. A cow to provide milk and butter was a blessing. Having access to a mixed forest with maple trees was an exciting adventure for children and a boon to a family’s food supply. Staying up late at night boiling down maple sap until it became syrup, with some set aside in a cast iron pot for additional boiling to produce taffy on snow and maple sugar, must have left a sweet memory ingrained on the hearts and mind of many Canadians.
Those who shunned the major cities and established their homes, instead, in the rural areas, found themselves better-off in the lean times than did those who chose the shifting, fanciful benefits of the cities.
Life was considerably less stressful for country folk.
Once the gardens were established and harvested, the root-cellars and wood-sheds filled, and the preserving done, winter in the country offered considerable benefits. Parents knew where their children were. In winter they may be, along with their parents, skiing or sleigh-riding on a local hill on moonlit nights, skating on a local safe pond or just gathered around an outdoor fire on the dark nights, singing or just talking and dreaming their dreams of the past and their own future, as young people have done since the beginning of human awareness. The long days of summer when children were let loose from school were filled with chores in the family garden, fishing for trout or bass in local streams and lakes, picking wild berries, and engaging in countless adventures, real and imagined.
Food produced in summer was usually more than enough to sustain a family through the winter. Farm gate sales provided some income, enabling rural families to purchase city produced goods, if necessary.
Looking backward, it might appear that we held our world in our collective hands. Did we let it slip through our fingers? Where did we go wrong? Were we worshiping at the alter of Mammon while our elected governments sold us out to multinational corporations? We no longer know where our food comes from, or if it is safe to eat. Pesticide residues are everywhere, even in mothers’ milk.
We must take back control of our food supply.
We need to aggressively demand that elected politicians forsake their shared beds with the multinational corporations, and that the Canadian Wheat Board remains in place. Perhaps we should resort to guerrilla gardening in the dark of night, planting food crops wherever possible, and especially on the lawns of provincial legislatures, and the parliament in Ottawa.
We are in grave danger that control of our food supply could be handed off to transnational corporations.
When our citizens are arrested and charged for growing food in their back yards for their own dinner tables, we will be very sorry that we didn’t try harder to gain the attention of our elected representatives.
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