Home production of food

T H E O P I N I O N P A P E R glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Victory gardens

Letter to the editor;

Anybody remember the yard-gardens during World War Two? (Slogan: “We will win the war with food!”) Many American women took part in the war by digging up their lawns and planting corn and peas and beans and squash from the street to the front door. (Others worked long hours at defense plants.)

Every bushel of produce they grew potentially released truck-and-tractor fuel from the farms to the battle front. Every door-garden potentially released farm-raised food to feed the troops. Every dollar not spent at the grocery stores was potentially available to buy war bonds to finance the war.

We have a different sort of war going on now, and we cannot even tell who the enemy is. There does not seem to be trouble feeding the fighters. But somehow that I cannot tell, this war is tangled up with the constantly rising prices of food and fuel. We may need to follow the sterling example of out mothers and grandmothers, raising a significant part of our food right on our private premises.

Every dollar we don’t spend on commercial groceries is at least potentially available toward paying off our obscene credit card debts. Every trip we don’t make to the store is a gallon or a quart of gasoline not bought and burned. And, who knows? It might even benefit our children and grandchildren to bring food into existence from earth, water, seeds and labor.

Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona