Digging Into The Victory Garden

With urban farming being the latest trend and home gardens becoming popular again, we remember a time when almost everyone had their own vegetable patch at home. In this episode, domestic historial Meg Grimsmo joins us to explore the World War II era Victory Garden and why they may be the perfect cure for what ails us today.

Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

 [00:00:15] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the get outside and get your hands dirty episode of The Open Door, presented on this pristine spring day by The Brown Homestead, in the heart of the beautiful Niagara Peninsula.

 [INTERVIEW]

 [00:00:31] AH: The snowdrops emerging here at The Brown Homestead and the serenade of the frogs across the street in the Short Hills Park, tell us that spring is well and truly underway and has long been the case in this old farmhouse. That means our thoughts are turning to this year's crops.

 Now, not everybody has a farm but everybody can have a garden whether at home or by participating in a local community garden. And today we're going to talk about one particular kind of garden that's making a comeback: the victory garden popularized during World War II and who better to help us dig into victory gardens than returning guest, domestic historian, Meg Grimsmo. Meg is a homemaker and has worked as a heritage interpreter at museums and historic sites across Canada for 20 years, most recently, at the must-visit Nelles Manor in Grimsby. Welcome back, Meg.

 [00:01:19] MG: Hi, Andrew, it's so nice to be back.

 [00:01:21] AH: Wonderful to see you again. Now, I refer to you as a domestic historian, maybe we should start by explaining what that means.

 [00:01:28] MG: Yeah, it's a term I've sort of coined myself, although I know there's lots of other domestic historians secretly out there, and while I have done lots of heritage interpretation in different topics, my heart and my specialization really is in domestic history. Basically, it's someone who studies everything that happens within or as part of the home sphere. So I sort of go to the micro-level, what's happening in the home, and then I blow it out from there to see how that relates to the wider world. If you'll indulge me, I'm going to give you an example that has to do with World War II.

 [00:02:04] AH: Please do.

 [00:02:05] MG: Within the house, butter was rationed during World War II, and you just go, “Oh, okay, so butter was rationed.” But what did that really mean in the great scheme of things? Well, it really meant that all oils and fats were needed for the war effort. And that's because oil and fat make glycerin, and glycerin made explosives. So your butter was rationed, and you were encouraged to use less fats, and any old fats, you were encouraged to donate to the government to then make explosives for the war effort.

 It also denotes the rise in the margarine, because you couldn't use a lot of butter. So people started using this new wacky thing called margarine, which was made out of highly processed vegetable oils. It was called Olio. And my grandmother had a great story, she clearly remembers getting this block of snowy white fat, this new thing called margarine, and it would come with a little tiny dye packet, yellow dye packet, because the government actually, you weren't allowed to sell anything that looked like butter. So no fake foods allowed. You had to then at home, snap your little dye packet, and mix it in with your marshmallow, not your marshmallow, your margarine, so then on the table, it looks like you were using butter, but you are really using margarine instead.

 [00:03:26] AH: The rationing is something that we have trouble relating to, and as I would be home cook, I have to cast my vote in favour of butter over margarine. It reminds me, I wanted to ask you about another project of yours. So I won't relate it to victory gardens, because you're something of a cook as well, but what starts in the garden often ends up in the kitchen, and you have a pretty amazing kitchen project underway right now at home.

 [00:03:49] MG: I do. I do. I'm taking a little bit of a break from Nelles Manor. I'm sort of focusing on my home. I live in a 1930 home, and it's very original in many of its rooms and features, but the kitchen that I inherited here was a complete remodel, as we like to call it. It looked like we were stepping into the modern times as soon as you walked into the kitchen. So I said, “This will not do in my house.” So what I've done is I'm basically turning back the clock, and I am making I guess an original 1930s kitchen. So it looks like when you walk in, it's always been part of the house. So the kitchen never left the 1930s house.

 I'm getting a company in Quebec to refurbish a 1927 Kelvinator refrigerator for me and I don't have it yet. It's going to take a few months to get here, but I am giddy with excitement over getting my fridge. So that just shows you how much of a nerd I am for this kind of stuff.

 [00:04:48] AH: Well, it’s an incredible project and you must be a true die-hard because most people who move into older homes, they like to keep a lot of the original character but the one thing people often do is update the kitchen and it seems like you're doing the opposite, which is pretty amazing. It shows that you are a die-hard. Now, with a kitchen like that, I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that you also have a victory garden. What is a victory garden anyway?

 [00:05:12] MG: I do have a small victory garden, not so much as it was back during World War I or World War II, though. A victory garden during World War I and World War II, in World War II, they were more commonly called it a victory garden. And I think that's probably what we'll use today during our chat. And in World War I, it was often called a wartime garden or a war garden, but you will hear the term victory garden as well.

 It was basically just a home garden that was put in by the householder, although it could be on vacant land, it could be in sort of an allotment of sorts, a community garden like you guys are doing, or even like on railway land. So any available space that was good to garden in, was fair game. The idea was you would put in this garden and you would grow your food, and it would be for home consumption. So you weren't actually giving it away in any kind of way, and the idea was this was encouraged by the government. So the commercially produced food, and the food that was coming from a way could then be sent overseas instead to the troops, the allies and the refugees. You'll hear in World War I, they often talked about the starving Belgians. Grow your own food, so you can help the starving Belgians, that kind of thing.

 [00:06:25] AH: The interesting twist on that is that when the war started, the government to a degree, discouraged unskilled gardeners from having gardens at home because they were worried about an increased demand for tools and fertilizers and things like that. But that policy changed later when the government realized the kinds of benefits that you're talking about. And also recognizing that people wanted to help whether they were good at it or not, and it was a way of harnessing the patriotic enthusiasm that existed at the time.

 [00:06:53] MG: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In Canada, definitely, victory gardens weren't vital to our – we weren't going to starve if we didn't have victory gardens, and the government obviously realized that. It's much different than setting in Great Britain where victory gardens were very much a, we need to produce a lot more food at home, because so much of Great Britain's food at that time, even during the 1940s was coming from away, was being shipped in. And that was all cut off during the war.

But definitely, it had to do with the idea of duty and patriotism, and there were lots of bits of propaganda, let's say, advertisements, and everybody was sort of – by the time the government decided it was a good thing to do, everybody jumped on board and started pushing victory gardens. It's so much fun to look through all of the posters, the newsletters, the pamphlets that were put out by sort of the usual suspects. I mean, you've got, obviously the government was doing it, but you had women's organizations things like the IODE, which is the International Order of the Daughters of the Empire. You had the Women's Institute, and for folks in Niagara and Southern Ontario, everybody knows the Women's Institute was very big here because it was founded in the area.

In fact, the very first, the home of the founder of the Erland Lee Museum is just up on the escarpment up near Wynonna Stoney Creek area. You can go there and visit and learn about the Women's Institute. Horticultural organizations, there were radio shows promoting this. There was a lovely lady that I discovered called Mrs. A, and she had an extremely popular CBC radio show that was called Your Good Neighbour. She was a real make do and mend kind of lady, and she was so popular. I think one year she got over 270,000 fan mail letters, just to show you like how big this was. And every week, she would actually have suggested weekly menus based on rationing and what was growing in your victory garden right then. So you can see this message was getting out wide and clear. Everybody, grow a victory garden.

[00:09:06] AH: You're right, it became a huge phenomenon. At its peak, it's estimated there were over 200,000 victory gardens in Canada and the country was producing over 57,000 tons of vegetables every year. As you touched on that, part of that was self-subsistence, and maybe more so than was needed. But that generation had pretty immediate memories of the Great Depression and World War I, and so preparing for potential food shortages was a big part of the thought process. And as you touched on, it became a big part of the story. You use the word propaganda which may be a little more accurate even. It also contributed to Canada's sense of participating in the war effort, to the degree that Canadians in polls at the time were as likely to say that Canada's contribution of food was its most important war for as much as they were to say its contribution of soldiers.

[00:10:01] MG: Yeah, for sure. How did they promote victory gardens? Everybody was promoting it, but how did they get people to do it? One of the huge, huge things was duty and patriotism. A lot of it was done in a military stick way. So through imagery, through slogans, it was very much a fight with food kind of imagery. You're doing your duty for the war, all you can, it's a real war job. So they were definitely equating growing food and saving food. So, commercial food could go across the sea as doing as an equally important job, as being able to go across the ocean and fight Hitlerism, fight Nazis.

One of the wonderful posters I found, I'll describe it to you. It's a garden bed, that's been all plowed up in rows, and it's got cartoon vegetables all lined up, ready to march off, and go punch Hitler in the nose kind of thing. The slogan on it says, “Help Canada, and have fun to grow these fighting foods at home, it's a job we all can do. The fresher food will do you good, and help your country too. Start your victory garden today.” This poster was done by the Health League of Canada. And not just duty and patriotism, but if that didn't do it for you, of course, you could have fun, it was a leisurely pastime, and of course, it was good for your health, as well to be out in the garden and to eat the produce from your own garden.

[00:11:32] AH: Now speaking of health, and speaking of the government, they also saw other opportunities in this movement. With the government taking control of the whole Canadian food production system during the war years. One of their goals was to transform Canadians’ dietary habits, and that I think, was probably the beginning of what I remember growing up a lot of those information campaigns that were out there learning about proper nutrition and so on.

[00:12:00] MG: We really think of nutrition and diet culture as a new thing, as an offset of modern society. But it is not so, Andrew. It is not so. In the early 20th century, with the science coming into its own, really, we saw science being involved in our everyday lives, like we had never seen it before, and even the housewife could look in her cookbook, and learn how to feed her family through science. I mean that in a way that – I mean, even girls went to college, but they took domestic science courses. So it was very much started to be involved in your everyday life. And so they discovered, like calories in food, and then they realize that well people need certain different amounts of calories. So there was a pamphlet during World War I that actually had all the caloric values of foods, common foods listed, and then they had a list of what kind of calorie loads per day different folks would need.

Not just like older women or children, but like, if you were a tombstone maker, here's how many calories you would need a day, and they would go through different professions telling you like how much you would need. By World War II, the idea of vitamins were becoming very popular and the idea of scientific feeding via not just calories, but vitamin content of your food was a big thing. So housewives certainly knew all of this information.

I've got a great cookbook and it’s the Purity Cookbook from the Purity Flour Company and the original is from the 1930s, but the copy I have is during wartime, it’s from 1945. They have a whole section called menu planning the vitamin way and they were encouraging to eat from the six food groups, but they are not the kind of food groups that we have today. So this is my quiz for you today, Andrew, if you're up for it to try and guess what these six food groups of the 1930s and ‘40s. These people grow on their victory gardens needed to know what to grow to help their family stay healthy and get the right nutrition. Okay, here we go. Some are easy, some are a bit harder, so Andrew, what do you think, six food groups?

 [00:14:12] AH: You're putting me on the spot here as the son of a doctor and nurse who was drilled in this as a young boy, I should remember. So the six food groups, are we talking about now or then? I'm dragging my feet here.

 [00:14:27] MG: Then. We're going to go the six food groups. What these housewives were trying to figure out how to manage with their victory gardens and feeding people their families during the war. So what would they have had to know?

 [00:14:40] AH: Well, when you say the food groups, of course, my first thought goes to Buddy the Elf and his food groups are candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrups. If I remember correctly. I'm assuming that's not right.

 [00:14:53] MG: Sugar was rationed. We cannot have this.

 [00:14:58] AH: Okay, so one I know for sure is milk and I know that one because I remember many tug of wars with my mother trying to get her — me to drink my milk and I wasn't fond of my milk. So that’s one.

 [00:15:10] MG: Absolute. Milk and milk products. It was one and a half pints to one quart daily of milk. So more way more than we drink today.

 [00:15:17] AH: That's way more than I drank this year, I think. Another one would be fruits and vegetables, or are those two categories?

 [00:15:27] MG: We're going to stick a pin in that because that is actually more complicated than it sounds. Maybe, try again some other –

 [00:15:35] AH: We’ll circle back to that. But for now, we'll circle back to that. But for now, we'll assume I was right. Another one would be grain. Grains and cereals.

 [00:15:47] MG: Yeah, you're right. Bread, flour and cereals, three-plus servings a day of grains, flour and cereals. You got two so far, you're good.

 [00:15:57] AH: How many are we up to now? One more?

 [00:16:00] MG: We've got two, and then fruit and vegetables, it’s not quite right.

 [00:16:06] AH: I'm going to quote Homer Simpson on this one meat and meat byproducts.

 [00:16:10] MG: Exactly. Meat, fish, poultry, and eggs. The suggestion was to have one serving a day. One serving, and then maybe three to four eggs per week. Alright, so you think they ate tons of meat back then. But in fact, it was a small dietary recommendation. Okay, so you got three. So we've got milk, bread, and then meat, and then fruits and vegetables. That’s four, six, and that's because fruits and vegetables was in fact, three separate food groups. That's how important the idea of vitamins were. You needed three separate food groups to cover all of your vitamins.

 The first was one food group was citrus fruits, solely citrus fruits. Although I would also include tomatoes in that as well. Because the idea of vitamin C was very important. They discovered vitamin C, and they knew that vitamin C was linked strongly to disease, right? Scurvy, they could see the connection. So they wanted to make sure everybody had a serving of vitamin C every day. When we think about tomato juice as being a drink, a morning breakfast drink, and I think to my modern mind that is very odd. But it was a serving of vitamin C. That was something you could grow in your victory garden. You can't grow lemons here, but you could grow tomatoes, and make tomato juice and get that serving of citrus, vitamin C.

 Your other fruits and vegetables was green and yellow vegetables. That's one more serving of that. Of course, again, that's for vitamins, vitamin A, of course, was very important. And then your last food group was other fruits and vegetables. It was two-plus servings of that. They really were aware and focused that fruits and vegetables should be a major part of a well-rounded diet within your household.

 [00:18:05] AH: Right. It's interesting because it does make sense from a nutritional perspective, and it's also intriguing how that worked its way into the patriotic discussion of the day. Circling back to citrus fruits, which are of course, among my favourites. You said that's one that was harder to access. But here in Niagara, you know, we're in the Canadian fruit belt, and I wonder if that was potentially different here and what were we growing in Niagara?

 [00:18:28] MG: Yeah, so people would have their home victory gardens here. But of course, we were the fruit belt, today we think of Niagara in a very much, a touristy or we think of wineries of course, when we think about Niagara. But back then, in the early 20th century, Niagara was agricultural and grew an absolute ton of fruit. So there were also a lot of businesses that were related to the agriculture. There were many, many canneries in the area. And of course, then, there were also businesses that related to those canneries and to the fruit growing. So there were basket-making factories.

 All of these industries during the war suffered because all the men who used to work in them, of course, went off to fight. A lot of women were then coming in to help out with all the labour. There's a great example, the Beamsville Preserving Company, in 1917 had a lot of trouble when they’d get a flush of fruit in. So a full train cartload of strawberry showed up one day and they had to scrounge around and they had to recruit 65 women and children to come in and haul a train car full of strawberries before they could then process it all.

 So a lot of women power and children power was used during that time to sort of handle the glut of products that were coming in. Things they were growing here, E.D. Smith Nurseries, and I'm sure some folks still remember E.D. Smith and you may have made yourself a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie or a cherry pie from E.D. Smith canned fruit. They were not just a cannery. They had orchards everywhere, but they were mainly a nursery. When I talk about the size of these kind of places, some of the big canneries employed over 200 people. E.D. Smith was growing trees to provide Ontario farmers and householders, and they were growing them in the hundreds of thousands. I mean, this was huge production here.

 In a 1930s pamphlet that was given to folks that wanted to purchase from E.D. Smith, it says every homeowner should have a few trees for his own backyard garden, and some of the things you could get from E.D. Smith Nursery at the time were things like apple trees, peach, cherry, crab apple, plum, quince. There's one we don't grow very much of today. Mulberries, the same. Blackberries, grapes, rhubarb, red and black raspberries, asparagus, currants, apricots, gooseberries and strawberries.

 [00:20:54] AH: You're very right, that whole aspect of canning and so on was a big part of it, especially here in Niagara, and even in Niagara homes growing up at our house, with my mother who did a lot of canning and my grandmothers as well. But here in an agricultural area, harvest and growing was a much larger undertaking. It was not a matter of suddenly having a garden in the backyard that the family tended. One of the interesting things you're talking about is that everybody was expected to pitch in, which led to some really interesting programs, one of which we talked about the other day, the farmerettes.

 [00:21:25] MG: Yeah, the farmerettes were actually officially called the Farm Service Corps, and they were particularly in Ontario, but there were programs across the country that would recruit farm labour because all of our labour was gone. They were overseas fighting. So just like women were entering factories, Rosie the Riveter kind of thing, to help build airplanes and other things for the war efforts. So, too, did women and men, younger men, especially that were ineligible as of yet to go overseas, they were encouraged to go into farm service.

 In Canada, there was something called the Soldiers of the Soil, or the SOS Brigade, and these were young men aged 15 to 19, and they were shipped all over Canada. A lot of them came from cities. They would go and they would board and they would work on farms, they would get exemptions from high school, and they wouldn't have to do their final exams or anything like that. And then in Ontario, we had the Farm Service Corps, but they were quickly dubbed the farmerettes.

 I once had an English teacher who was a staunch feminist, and she had said, “I will never be in any organization that ends with ette”. I of course piped up, “What about suffragettes?” She said, “Okay, I'll make an exception.” I think farmerettes would definitely also meet that exception rule because the farmerettes were tough, tough ladies. They were high school and sort of college-age women. A lot of them were from cities. So they did not know agricultural life, rural life, whatsoever. But they left school in many cases, and they came down and two – and this is during World War I and II. They came down to work in agriculture.

 [00:23:07] AH: Speaking of government messaging, I'm thinking about this messaging about nutrition and teaching people about nutrition, and it kind of connects for me with that earlier thought about the government discouraging unskilled workers initially from taking up farming. But when you look at that concern that the government had, they may have actually had a point because compared to the earlier generation, this generation was a little more disconnected from its early farming roads and had a lot less experience in that area. I'm wondering if some of the nutritional messaging wasn't also part of that understanding, that people had lost that traditional knowledge, that probably was a little more at hand if you grew up in a farm than if you grew up in the city working in the factory.

 [00:23:53] MG: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the 20th century is such a – gosh, it moves so rapidly from generation to generation, from decade to decade as far as modernization. So many folks, so many young people moved into cities, and they just lost that connection, their agricultural past. During World War I, having a war garden wasn't that far removed. I mean, most people still had kitchen gardens. One great example of this is there's a book called Rilla of Ingleside, and it's a fiction book, and it's by L.M. Montgomery. I'm sure you recognize that name. It's the last in the Anne of Green Gables series of books. But what's special about Rilla is that it takes place during World War I. While it's a fictional story, a lot of the details in it are stuff that normal people on the home front had to go through.

So the housekeeper Susan always had a regular kitchen garden, but then they also plowed up the beautiful old lawn of Ingleside and she made no protest even when her beloved Peony bed was sacrificed. So the idea of growing your own kitchen garden and then plowing up your lawn for potatoes, it wasn't so far removed, and you were canning that produce as well. By the time the 1920s sort of hit, people started really wanting to live more modern lives, and that sort of the rural roots they used to know.

 [00:25:22] AH: That's one of the interesting wrinkles to this conversation is the fact that what's old is new again, that victory gardens, not always under that name, but that sensibility is again becoming popular, and I was amused when you mentioned the other day, that part of your realization that that was the case came in a very modern form, in the form of Twitter.

 [00:25:43] MG: Yes. I'm a complex person when it comes to new and old technology. It's because the world is, I don't want to say it's quite on fire today, but it's certainly we certainly are dealing with this feeling of absolute hopelessness the past couple of years, and we've just – these are times we never thought we would see in our lifetimes, suffice to say. This tweet by somebody named Sketches by Boz, they said, “I've simply accepted that I can't focus on work right now. I have 10-minute bursts of being productive, followed by three-hour stretches of wondering whether I should plant a garden, in case society collapses.” Yeah, I feel that.

 [00:26:28] AH: There are overlaps in that sensibility, I think, similar to during wartime where everybody's looking for something to do. Everybody's looking for a way to pitch in and let's help them out here, Meg, and help people face some of this hopelessness. Let's bring them some hope. For people who want to start their own victory garden, where do they start?

 [00:26:50] MG: Where do they start? Alright. Okay, so the first is you need somewhere to put your garden. Where are you guys growing your garden in The Brown Homestead?

[00:27:01] AH: Well, it's a bit of a side yard area, a nice sunny spot that's easily accessible, whether we can get water to it, and so on. Also that people driving by can see it from the road because a nice vegetable garden in bloom is always a sight to see.

 [00:27:15] MG: Yes, absolutely. So you've put out some really good examples there. Find any spot within your yard, don't feel like you have to hide it in your backyard because vegetable gardens are beautiful, and they can be very beautiful. But I think growing any kind of food is a beautiful thing and you need some sun. My garden is at the front of my front lawn, and I've stuck it there and I've made it beautiful but also is very practical. It's the only sunny spot I've got.

 So don't be afraid to use whatever little patch of sunlight you have. Some vegetables can grow in partial shade. Nothing can grow in like total shade. I mean mushrooms, but that's a different topic altogether. So try and find a sunny, sunny spot. But don't be afraid, if you've only got a balcony or a front porch, you can still grow something in planters and pots. Vegetables are very forgiving in that sense. Some of them are extremely easy to grow. Stuff like radishes or lettuce or a tomato plant. Tomato plant is wonderful, just to grow on your patio or on your balcony.

 Find yourself a nice spot and make sure your earth that you're using is good. You want it to be nice and rich. You might need to add some compost to it. If you're doing it over a lawn, like I did, I ended up just doing a lasagna stack. I put cardboard and old rotted hay and old leaves and compost and soil, and I just sort of stacked it up into this great big bed, so I didn't have to worry about the lawn at all. And then I put my plants over top of that. So that's an option. Some people build planter beds. You can build raised ones if you have a hard time, buy raised ones, you have a hard time with mobility. So gardening is accessible for everyone. But grow what you like to eat, and grow what your family likes to eat. I think that's really important. Get your family or whoever lives with you in on it as well. It gets them excited to be part of the process.

 [00:29:10] AH: And the lesson is it's not as complicated as you might think. If it's new to you, it may seem daunting, but there are a lot of ways to do it, and it can be easier than you think. Now, since you've mentioned it, I'm going to take an opportunity to plug our project here at The Brown Homestead. We've recently put together what we're calling the Victory Garden Project. We're planting a victory garden at the homestead, begins on April 30th, just a few days from now and there's still time to sign up and join and you'll be able to work in the garden and learn. We've got a number of great workshops and presentations lined up. You can see the information on our website, and we guarantee by the time you're done, you will have learned a little bit something about how to do it yourself at home. You'll be ready to do your own at home. And also all of the produce is can be donated to local food banks. So you're in your hands dirty, for a good cause.

 Speaking of the idea of what's old is new again, and then tying it into COVID and some of the challenges of today, I don't think this is necessarily going to go away with COVID, either. I think that it's something that is here to stay.

 [00:30:13] MG: I really hope so. Before COVID, there was sort of this tiny sort of urban homesteading movement that had sort of sprung up, and it was the idea of bloom where you're planted. Don't wait till you get that big farm in the countryside. But like, you can grow things at home. You can be more self-sufficient. You could have backyard chickens, you can even have your own honeybees, and you can grow your own vegetables and have a fruit tree in your yard. I really hope that that is here to stay because I think it's – I think, as you're saying, we need some hope in times like these, and I think there is absolutely nothing more hopeful than a gardener in the springtime with a bit of Earth and a packet of seeds. I mean, that's really your ultimate version of hope. Let's hope this grows. Let's hope we see the fruits of our labor at the end of this season. I really hope that it will continue. I think it will, I really hope it does.

 [00:31:07] AH: Well, I'm going to put another spin on that, and I think that it needs to continue. Back in World War II, it may have been true that everyone had a backyard or a spot for their own little garden. That's not necessarily true today. One of the things I think that spurring this movement is some of the issues that we're facing today. They're not related to COVID. Things like food insecurity that we face in our community. The fact that a lot of young people are struggling to figure out how in the world they're ever going to buy a house with the housing market being what it is, and one of the motivations for having a garden at home is to be able to grow your own inexpensive produce. So if you don't have that opportunity, that's taken away from you.

 So, something that I'm going to encourage everybody here listening to this to do is look up the Niagara Community Garden Network, or if you're not in the Niagara area, there's got to be something similar in your area. But it's a project of United Way Niagara, they sponsor multiple community gardens across the region. They have over a thousand plots in multiple different sites, and it's all being done to help provide food security for our neighbours and the people around us and helps address some of the issues that we're facing today. It's not just COVID that challenges us. So please take a look. We're going to put some links on our website, on the page for this podcast. You can take a look at that. I very much encourage you to get involved with that project. Either pitch in, get your hands dirty, or make a donation. If you want to learn more, you can join us at The Brown Homestead for our Victory Garden Project. We'd love to see you out.

 I'm also going to give a little nod to a book by Ian Mosby called Food Will Win the War. If you want to learn more about victory gardens, that's been a great resource for us, as has been, of course, Meg Grimsmo who is extremely knowledgeable and simultaneously a lot of fun to talk to. So thank you very much, Meg, for joining us today. It's been a pleasure again, and we'll have to figure out what to do for next time.

 [00:33:07] MG: Yeah, absolutely. It has been wonderful talking to you again. I'm delighted as always to be here. And if anybody wants to follow me, I'm on Instagram, @meggrimsmo, and I'm also now on the TikTok, @thisoldfashionedlife and you can follow my garden and my kitchen projects, my old house stuff all there. So I hope to see you there. Of course, come to Nelles Manor. I'm going to be there kicking around this summer as well and I'll show you a nice big old stone house which is a very, very nice place to be.

 [00:33:38] AH: One of Niagara’s fantastic historic sites and I do encourage people to follow you on your social media as I do. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this kitchen once it comes together. So I'll be watching.

 [00:33:50] MG: The electrician’s coming today. I'm so excited. So close.

 [00:33:54] AH: These projects, you’re never done, though. You know there's going to be one more thing as soon as that fridge arrives. You got to think of that one more thing. I encourage you to do so. Alright, have a great rest of your day, Meg. It’s wonderful to talk to you.

 [00:34:08] MG: Yes, you too, Andrew. Lovely to see you.

 [END OF INTERVIEW]

 [00:34:12] ANNOUNCER: Thanks for listening. Subscribe today so you won’t miss our next episode. We’re celebrating the life and legacy of the Mohawk Chief Teyoninhokarawen, who you may know as Major John Norton. You’ll also know how his cabin by the Grand River found a new home and a new purpose at The Brown Homestead.

 To learn more or to share your thoughts and show ideas, visit us at thebrownhomestead.ca, on social media or if you still like to do things the old-fashioned way, you can even email us at opendoor@thebrownhomestead.ca. 

 [END]