Elna Senecal Butterfield

Living Off the Land Elna Senecal Butterfield

One could say it was a time of hardships. The Great Depression had hit the lives and pocketbooks of so many. It was so with my parents as they began their marriage and little family. It was so in 1935 when I was born. I don't remember those hardest times. But then came World War II, when I was six years old. I remember those early 1940s-the war-time food rationing and gas rationing and "making do or doing without." We survived those years quite well. Money was still tight after the war, partly because of my father's poor health then. But my parents lived frugally and taught us to do likewise. We didn't know anything different. Children as well as adults worked to put food on the table. We grew much of our food. In "Country Kids and Critters", I told about the animals that were part of my childhood years, not just our pets but also those that were raised to become food on our table. In this little book, you'll see how our home gardens provided much of the food on our table as well. We lived off the land. Throughout our growing-up years, my siblings and I were involved with gardening and harvesting our food. I have given detailed descriptions of some of those tasks, because one of my goals in writing this series of little books is to tell what life was really like then. Sometimes home chores and surroundings in childhood take on a different perspective when we grow older. We may have grumbled about those everyday activities then, or simply taken them for granted as routine expectations of normal household responsibilities. But such chores interwoven with a happy, loving family life are the foundation of character-building and family togetherness. Likewise, the environment we grow up in shapes our childhood. My playtime was that of country kids, mostly out-of-doors. We didn't have lots of toys, but we had Grampa's farm, the country meadows and the woods. That rural Vermont countryside enriched my life in a special way. But I did not think of all this as special then. It was just the way life was for me and my siblings and cousins. This little book describes work and play as we "lived off the land," as it was in the life of a girl growing up in rural Vermont in the 1940s. It describes my life then.