I love these series. I have watched them all several times. Such nostalgia. I wonder what it would be like today if we found ourselves in the same situation.
This is how we are running our home, by choice. Nothing goes to waste. My grandparents raised my mother and her older sister during the Great Depression, and WW2. My grandma taught me how to neatly save everything salvageable. Wear and repair. I'm 50 years old, have raised 5 children with my husband, and we have passed our ways down to our children. I love videos like this!
Good for you!! My Grandmother taught me the same. You learn by trial and error. I still have a little jug in which I put any buttons, bits of string etc. I'm fair clemmin just looking at the food!!
This is also how our family live here in the states. Even learned about wild edibles and some of them we have cultivated in the garden(guess they are no longer wild if cultivated, are they?). Though there are certain animals we do not eat due to Biblical convictions, there are plenty of other wild animals that can be eaten and to health, it does work since we never get sick. I learned a lot from my great grandmother as she lived through the great depression, WWI, and WWII. She passed on just before my teen years and I do miss her so. Greatly indebted to her.
Thank you so much for posting this. I have watched it with total delight and with a large amount of sadness - I grew up with that generation. They were practical, ingenious, thrifty, often stern and full of stories…and now they are gone. I learnt a great deal from them and didn’t realise how extraordinary they were till it was too late.
watching this just makes me appreciate the abundance of food we have these days - we should never forget the hard ship everyone went through during the war time. Thanks for this! :)
Such a delight finding this in my feed. I now rank this right up there with the "Townsends" videos of living in the 18th century. But in watching and seeing how they were limited in fuel for travel and cooking, too bad they knew nothing of "rocket stoves" back then as they could cook whole meals with twigs and sticks. Sure would have saved them a lot of money. We do all of our cooking and heating with wood and even use the rocket stove for running the pressure canner. For those interested, type rocket stove in the youtube search and be amazed.
Wonderful video, shows us the sacrifice the WW 2 generation paid in self sacrifice and of course the lives of thousands of young men in battle and the civilians that lost their lives, we should be ever thankful.
@@MAEURASTAR God bless you. My uncle was wounded in the Ardenne Forest and walked with a limp after the war. My dad served in the Navy in the Pacific. They made it home, but my younger uncle was killed in Korea.
Thanks for sharing these John, I remember watching them when they first came out. Harry is the double of My sister's late father in law, same hair, glasses and clothes, he was a gardener before and after the war.... the produce he grew was amazing, just like Harry's. I have laughed at a few of the comments about Ruth and people thinking she was a bit stern... I think she is typical of most ladies of her age and most British people will relate to her being just like their own gran, reliable, hard working and warm.
Finally Victory Day in Europe arrived ... but rationing didn't end. Some rationing continued until 1954. Until fairly recently, people said that British food was bland, but after years of privation, substitutes, scarcity (of sugar, spices, chocolate, fresh eggs, tropical fruits, etc.), ... people had become accustomed to bland food. They didn't have any alternative.
You know, I have heard that all my life and I literally never thought of it that way. Thanks for enlightening me. That was such a contributing factor I am sure. I am American (Texan) , but I just swell with love for the people of this country (the British) and all that they went through and just the way that they adapted to what the war brought to them. It is just amazing and just makes me look at all the GOOD in human nature. Especially, in times we are in now (2021). God Bless Great Britain and God Bless us all!❤️
I absolutely Love these series, it's history and is a window to how things were prepared. I sure wish "youtube" hadn't sensored the rabbit piecing as it would have been so beneficial. Awesome series, thank you to the creators, please do more!!
I'm a Yank. Born in 1967. But I find this superbly lovely and charming in its attention to every-day post-war detail. Not a lot of Brits alive yet to say if this is a correct representation, but what do others think?
Gosh! I must of been about five or six, but l remember my mother using vim to wash her cooker etc Also l remember thanks to your video! My mother had a water heater like that over her Belfast sink. Also l remember helping her put the washing though the mangle, wich l used to love. Plus watching my father in the garden was a treat! We always used his fresh grown produce from our little garden. And it always tasted wonderful! No chemicals, just good old food. Thats for the memories! I have subscribed, and lm looking forward too more. Moira From England.
I found this very interesting !! I had to laugh as the little bot disappeared after the cod liver oil in episode 5 and then reappeared for the Christmas cake! LOL.
I see these and think what a hearty, resourceful & tough breed the UK was then. 'We will never surrender..' (ok, not proud that I first heard the speech in my teens from the Supertramp song) :)
Women did a full shirt in the factory, queued for rations, washed for the family with poss stick and dolly tub. No labour saving devices. How can women today say they 'Don't have time to cook a meal?
The privations of ww1 and the following great depression were trial runs for my grandmother in feeding a family well throughout the war . But is was hard on everyone.
Salty Cowgirl Liked your comment about the hard times and rationing during WW 2. Americans and Europeans in the last two generations do not know what" Hard Times" are like, this video would be good for all to see so we would appreciate what we have. When the electricity goes out we all are lost, cannot watch television or the Internet, how can that happen.
@@fasx56 I agree, but I'd certainly extend that to beyond just the last two generations. The post-war generation of 'boomers' had it far better than anyone from 'generation X' or the so-called 'millennials', and I doubt that the newest lot are going to have much luck growing up through another recession.
Like you I love 'Queen of the Night ' tulips, not least because I always hear Mozart in my head when I look at them! Feeling rather dispirited as have only 3 plants of sweetcorn this year, out of 30 pots, sown in the usual way and at usual temps! What is it this year with the gappy germination? Even my peas are not 100 %. We are desperate for rain here on the south coast of UK, forecast rain did not come! My friends and I also seem to be more than '1 degree under' at the present. Hope you feel better soon. I am reading 'The gardens of the British Working Class' by Margaret Willes, so interesting. Thanks for another encouraging video.
I'd love to fund that book to read it too. It would be so interesting. I have to say, I never thought I'd live to know that the UK isn't getting rain! That is almost un- English! What's to become of us, Australia has lost over a million hectares of land filled with native animals plus domesticated animals, all with recently born spring new Born's, all gone before they had a chance to lived. Breaks my heart, the cruelty that life endures. 😔 I hope we arent remembered as the generstions of mass consumerism, timber felling & water polluters from factories & businesses who let the planet dry out & suffer intolerably from all our excesses. I especially wonder how the Politicians of our times will be remembered.
I've seen in many docs that the UK was the healthiest during rationing. Mostly veg and little meat and fat; and exercise tending garden. No one was fat, that's for sure. Do we need a re-set button that makes 80% of fast food places disappear? I think the US is the worst, but too many here in Canada too.
One of the saving graces of war time food conditions was that the lack of the "real" enabled the substitute and the innovative to last as long as it could in order to have food. It would be interesting to learn if acceptable taste of food changed from pre-war standard to post war acceptability. It is like when you have what is best described as unlimited quantities you can be very extreme with the taste of food but when your standard changed and that was what was available did that new taste survive into the diet post war? It would be like having so available sugary milk chocolate did people return to the same post war or was there greater appreciation for less sweet chocolates? Personally, I just cannot handle milk chocolate and instead eat the "dark" chocolates in order not to get that distorted look on my face of being overwhelmed.
I've been fortunate enough to have grown up surrounded by my long lived female relatives. My great grandma's brother served with Kitchener's war in the Sudan against the 'Mad Mahdi and the Fuzzy Wuzzys'. The one and only thing they all liked, including my mother, now almost 90, was the powdered egg from the U.S. Something she would still happily use today.
We had a neighbor years ago who would just burn the top part of her garden before planting every year. She would put some small branches and leaves on top. This would be called added potash to the soil.
Thanks for posting this. Hope you'll be able to upload all the episodes as it was the only one of the 4 series that was never released on video or DVD.
In a lot of ways, this is how our family live. We waste nothing, grow a lot, and forage to fill the bill. We cook and heat with wood fire. The only more modern form of cooking is still done with wood but is outside in the summer with a "rocket stove". We do our canning on it too as there is no sense in heating the house. Now with much of the world in lockdown due to this virus and the mass shortages of goods, knowledge like this is needed more than ever.
I've started swapping food with my family stuff we wont eat after trying it. and shopping at the butchers again. Local walking and shopping has found me places to shop. There is only two things I miss from tesco is there soya milk and bread. Other wise dinnae need them
Very good video. I come from Germany and I think my government will fuck up again so that I will have to apply in the future what these people back in WW2 have had to learn.
@@kejobo Actually many people in Europe blame General Persching for WW11. The old European countries had been battling each other for Centuries. They knew how to let everyone withdraw with nobody losing face. BUT NO!! In steams Persching for the U,S (aka 'Tail End Charlie') U.S only been in the war since May 1917, 3 years late, and thought he was still in the Wild West, fighting the Native Tribes..By demanding abject surrender he drove the German people to give credence to Hitler's National Socialist Party. Ie Nazis.
Hi John Black, I wish there was a way we could keep the video downloads in case the links get taken off. It would be such a disservice & shame for people not to be able to remember the ways of their grandparents or parents ( my Dad was born in 1915 so I was bought up by a boy who lived through really hard times & he made us remember just how lucky we were). It makes me feel such memories seeing these videos, touches a place in my soul that kids today would just not be able to comprehend. I really hope those people who decide whether to let a few older people have emotional reminiscents don't take these sad/happy indulgences off us. I still miss my Parents so much & I'm old myself now - we are all still those hungry little kids, wanting love more than rules. Who remembers, "Children should be seen & not heard" & "I'll give you a belt around the earz" or "I'll knock your bloody block off" Heck, kids today don't know how hard some of us had it! 😂 😍
I think downloading this is a good idea. British history is being actively re-written. This programme shows the true demographic of Britain in the past, but there are active efforts now to erase that past, and the BBC are very much part of that. Any re-make of this programme would almost certainly be made with only black actors, as we are now told that only black people built Britain.
Does anyone remember one where it showed how the kitchens where in the big houses. I remember watching this as a kid. Same production company that done the victorian kitchen garden ect.
@18:58 slicing the wholemeal bread and Mrs Bridges' jam (or is it marmalade?) on the table? We have no actual stout brown wholemeal bread here in the US, or if we do, I'm unaware.
Will check for you. Can you get Irish stout ie Guinness where you are? That's a heavy beer and seems to be available wherever a couple of Irishmen come together. LOL
@@thebigrussian Maybe not the oldest but Great Britain is by far the toughest and most resilient. France beat Enland once in 1066. Even THAT is a bit iffy as Edward is said to have, at different times, bestowed the crown on both Harold and William the Bastard. Willy Conq won that round. HOWEVER, then came AGINCOURT, TRAFALGAR (the culmination of many naval engagements, WATERLOO, 2 World Wars where the French Governments rolled over and said, Tickle my tummy to Kaiser Wilhelm and failed Austrian painter. Who would you want on your side when the chips are down, I ask myself? ????
@@karenblackadder9446 damn, this comment is the truest statement I've read or thought about in my 63 years on the planet! Thankyou for telling it like it really is & let's not ever forget it! ;)
Actually it was a NATION effected by the Balfour Agreement. And I quote "THE WHEELBARROWS ARENT BIG ENOUGH" but you probably dont understand that part of history.
@@BridgesDontFly The Banksters destroyed Germany after WWI and caused WWII. They couldn't let Hitler's economic model survive as he had turned a 4th world country to a world superpower in 5 years without the Banksters loans. "Dam, what if other countries did that?? We have to stop him!".
Bridges Dont Fly - All artists are house painters; failed ones eventually begin to realize that fact. A.H. was particularly well suited to the task but he never quite caught on...
If the wealthy had country places how did the government determine if additional amounts than what was rationed was not common especially with the estate workers? I know that there is patriotism and patrols etc but there is always the possibility of being sneaky. And I do realize that there is a way to use less tan desireable parts of the plants such as older vegetable leaves but why not as the plants grow plucking the bottom leaves until the lettuces/cabage ripened. I know that refugees were sometimes located on farms during the war but were there any programs to transfer whole families that had farming experience removed to the big estates where housing and land were readily available for cultivation? I have seen the program about putting down the pets in Britain when war came. Was it common for those with country estates to secret their work dogs etc on their country estates away from the eye of inspectors? What level of shortage were there for spices and herbs not native to Britain? I know that in the US with the rationing of sugar the use of soda pop was in place of sweetener. Just how did they do it and did it happen in Britain especially where US troops were located and thus more likely have accessability to goods meant for the troops but of course shared or bargained with the locals? Was tin foil a common item in Britain before the war and if so hw ws its absence replaced during the war?
@Sheila T.Soda pop in the USA was not regulated if you could afford it. It was a ready source of sugar as they did make it with that then instead of the corn syrup of today, unless you get your Coca Cola from Mexico where it is, according to the label on the 99 Cents Only Store bottled Coca Cola soda pop.
@Sheila T. Remember that different countries have different standards about what is and in what condition are things consumable. Not every government has outlawed DTT or other chemicals used in agriculture or that seep into agricultural areas. Sugar in Mexico's cola may not be of the same quality as that used in other countries like the USA. Who knows what conditions are experienced in mexico's sugar production industry. Have you ever been on a cruise of the carribean and tour the liquor production factories? The US government probably would have a few things to say about that step used elsewhere when nature and thr human hand are not separated from production in less than sterole conditions.
@Sheila T. If your food production system is not in order it does not matter what the laws say. It does not matter where the food originates. The outbreaks of ecoli poisoning have been long documented in food systems. Maybe, food systems have not been of too much concern for many people because so many people have benefited from systems managed by safety laws. But if the food that you feed into your food production process is contaminated, it does not amount to a hill of beans that there is exists a law to ward against that of those that are in the process do not follow the law. If you take to extremes what is happening politically in this country we very well may have a situation where the government and the corporations may find it far more profitable to pay fines and penalties than to keep food production safe? WE have a minority coalition in the USA that are in control of systems that others feel should safeguard us instead of leaving it a game of chance to not die from what you eat thinking that it is safe. Our society is controlled by people that in whatever pursuit they have has little of no care for others, maybe because they think that how everyone is subjected is not to what they may be subjected. Somehow they have the magic pill. Our annalysts have shown to what extent a company can produce, introduce harm and still make a profit? There is not one bit of concern for general society crossing the line of no return.
@Sheila T. I am more of the do as much for yourself as possible so that when the time comes to deal with what needs to be done and what conditions are you roped by that you know whether you can get ti done without having to rely on what just might not be available out there. It does not matter how much money you have. What matters is that you have some idea about just when it is best to call in an expect and to do what you can of all the little stuff. My family has never been in a financial situation to do many things that people of higher incomes could do. If you did not do it for yourself you probably did without. It did not make our lives any less enjoyable and gave a sense of accomplishment at getting things done. Hiring someone to do something just because you can afford it is the illness we suffer.
My parents reported soldiers would gift British girls stockings and chocolate. My mother reported the Americans were described as "over sexed, over paid and over here!". She joked the British soldiers thought that have Americans an edge in dating!
I'm used to cheap plastic food steamers they have now. I never knew you could steam food rapper in a cloth. What makes me feel really sad is thinking all these lovely people are dead. Time killed more people than the war it's self.
There's a general presumption of everyone working together as a community & country, and it was usually true. But if a mean person wanted to make trouble for someone from spite or whatever, all they'd have to do is report to the gov't that the person was involved in the black market, true or not - making the person appear unpatriotic - then sit back and watch the trouble. Not everyone was a nice person, then or now.
i disagree, previous generations adjusted to rationing and changes in availability of resources, assuming people cant adapt to social change because of age is ridiculous.
I couldn't believe she poured off all the cooking liquid for her beans!!! She literally poured half the nutrients down the drain. Make it bean soup or dip the beans you want immediately out and leave the rest as bean soup. That was just crazy dumb.