Beauty Farming Life

Save Kitchen Waste for Hens, vintage image courtesy of the UK Imperial Museum Sorry for delay in posting.  I thought I had this on automatic and then went to the farm and realized it didn't post when I got back. This one is another fun one.  I have posted a couple of similar posters with this same theme, but both of them related to saving scraps for pigs.  This one asks people to save scraps for hens (but mentions pigs in the caption).  It dates to WWII, the 1940's of course, and comes to us from the UK. The hens look excited don't they?  LOL. Residents could get a pail or bucket from the Council and just put food scraps and related waste in there and it would be picked up weekly.  Of course, it was for food waste only, as it says on the poster, keeping it dry and free of glass, metal, bones and paper. As you may have seen from yesterday's post, it's been record breaking heat here, so most of my activities have been limited to indoors...

Vintage Save Fats for Explosives poster, image courtesy of US National Archives During WWII, they somehow used waste fats in the creation of explosives, something I'm not going to "Google" for obvious reasons, ha. It was a great thing to do to help the troops and war effort.  Since they were already reusing as many things as possible at home, people were urged in this poster to take waste fats in to their meat dealer. The artwork on this one is definitely eye catching. Enjoy the trip down memory lane. We've been spending the weekend getting some projects done at the farm, yesterday, and today we are awaiting what they call "tropical downpours".  We'll see... Hope you are having a great weekend!

Vintage Plan For Winter Now poster, image courtesy of NY Public Library Well, with my post yesterday , and the cold weather encompassing much of the U.S., this one seems appropriate today.  It's a poster from WWII and urged people to conserve fuel that was needed for the war effort by winterizing their homes, and checking their heating systems. Wise words this Winter 2013 as well! Stay warm!

Vintage War Industry Needs Water poster, image courtesy of US National Archives Here is a poster, relevant today as it was then.  It's from WWII and was put out by the local "Philadelphia Council of Defense" and urged citizens to save water for the war effort (manufacturing, production etc). Of course, no war effort today, but the words on the poster are still important. Water, use it wisely!  True, true, true! Hope you are having a great weekend.  It's H-O-T down in these parts, it was 101 degrees yesterday (a new record for that date).  There is rain in the forecast this week, finally, but we'll see.  Last Sunday's 'tropical downpours' never happened and we are now over a month with no measurable rain.

Norman Rockwell Freedom From Want vintage poster Love this Norman Rockwell painting that was used during the war effort.  "Ours...to Fight For, Freedom From Want".  It was part of a series of works based on the "Four Freedoms" that President Roosevelt spoke about in the months leading up to our involvement in the war. Perfect for Thanksgiving, and always.  Don't we all strive to have freedom from want?  I believe the more self sufficient we become, the less we want. It's the last day of our long weekend, and I'm still sick.  It was a complete wasted of a good four days off, sigh.  I'm feeling a bit better.  Been doing the Vick's with socks and it works great.  I was out of it for one day, but got some yesterday and used it all day. It really works.  Weirdest thing. It's finally warming up a bit here but another blast is coming later in the week.  We'll see how it turns out. DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THE BOOK GI...

Vintage Canning Poster Always enjoy seeing these posters, and this one is really neat because it combines the gardening movement with canning.  The caption "...and ration points won't worry me" was to remind people that if you grow your own and can it and put it up, you'll always have more to eat than just what your ration points allowed. As always, it fits in with modern times...while we don't have ration points, food prices are going up and growing and canning your own makes just as much sense today! Remember, click on the "history" label on the blog and you can see all the vintage images I have posted here.  It's sort of a "Sunday tradition" now. Enjoy!

Pennsylvania RR Victory Garden Poster This is actually a very pretty poster.  It reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting.  I like the imagery of the two guys, each in their own way doing their part to fight the war.  What a great message. Hope you enjoy this little "Sunday trip through history"!

Vintage "Don't Waste Food" poster Here is an unusual poster for Sunday.  It's not necessarily for the Victory Garden campaign, but it shares a common theme.  The purpose of Victory Garden's were to conserve food for the war effort, and it only makes sense that a campaign to not be wasteful would make sense as well. Buy wisely (only buy what you need?), cook carefully (I would assume they mean don't mess it up or cook too much?) and eat it all, well, eat it all.  It goes without saying that this would be just as relevant today, we are a very wasteful society.  It would be nice to see people trying to not to waste food.  We conserve water, we conserve electricity, why not conserve food? Thanks and hope you enjoy!

DC Comics Superheroes Victory Garden Seriously?  A couple of the greatest superheroes working in a garden? How cool was THIS poster!? I don't know what else to say, it's just SO neat!  This was a comic book special edition from DC that featured Batman, Robin and of course Superman, working in their Victory Garden. How nice it would be today if they would use iconic images like this to start a new movement. I know one thing for sure, I bet Superman got his gardeing done really fast! Love the comment that LNL left: "In my eyes, anyone who gardens, takes care and gives back to the Earth is a superhero" So true!  Please visit her blog  HERE .

Women's Land Army poster, image courtesy of Imperial War Museum I've posted some of these Women's Land Army posters before, and I just love them every time.  It's neat that they empowered women to do things like this.  The image on this poster is really neat, though those crop dusting planes look a little unusual, ha.  I know they are war planes, to remind people of doing this for the farms and food industry while others were in the war, it's just a neat way of doing it. More rain today, hope you are doing well and having a great weekend wherever you are!

Courtesy of: BNU Fake Victory Garden Poster UPDATE 3/2012:  There was some controversy regarding this poster and its origins.  Apparently it was copied and adapted from some Nazi WWII propaganda posters.  So I'm replacing it with another poster honoring French soldiers during WWII.  It's not gardening related, but seeing as how Nazi Germany did harm to the French people as well, I thought I'd just put up a poster that honors their contribution.  I still love the message behind the the other poster, as it was very popular during the Victory Garden campaigns to remind people that growing your own food was the best way  to fight inflation. Once again, I think those words are just as true today as they were all those years ago.  There is no better way to fight the rising cost of food than growing your own in your yard, harvesting it, and eating it.  There are those today that want to eat "organic", but the cost of organic fruits and veggies ...

We Have a Victory Garden Window Sticker This is kind of a neat thing.  During the war effort, and the Victory Garden program, they tried to get more and more people to participate.  One way they did this, was to create a sticker.  It was so that those participating in the effort could put it in their window and show their neighbors, friends, family, and any visitors, that they "had a Victory Garden". Pretty cool idea, the ultimate in 'peer pressure' I suppose, ha.  As I always try to tie this into today's gardening efforts, I think it could be said that blogging is a sort of "virtual" way of letting people know we have our own modern version of a victory garden, don't you? Enjoy!

 Registered War Garden Poster  This is an AWESOME poster.  The information on it is so fascinating. They had to register their gardens.  Feed Yourself!  Be a Soldier of the Land!  Exempt No Land!  A War Garden Will do it! It seems they were certainly adamant about it, huh?  And not only were the gardens registered, they were apparently "protected" as well. Of course, trying to tie it into today, I'm not sure I'd want the Government  having us register our gardens, ha, but still, it's a fascinating glimpse into history and a time when this was done.  I love the bottom tag line too, "Food Will Win the War!"  Too subtle?  LOL! Enjoy!

Dig For Plenty Victory Garden Poster First off, I like the graphics on this one, very nice.  I think the gist of this one was that you needed to grow your own food, and if you didn't, then you'd have to eat the allotment of rations that you would be provided.  Of course, eating your own would be better (and you could eat more). I can't relate this to today, at least I hope we don't ever get to the point of having rations and allotments, ha.  But I guess we could say today that you could either "grow your own food or pay high prices at the store". We'll be at the farm again all day today.  Yesterday was a great day, we just ran out of time (got out there later than we had hoped) so today we'll have still more to do.  I'll have the updates soon, I promise. Enjoy!

Vintage Grow More Food poster, image courtesy of Imperial War Museum Love this poster image. It dates from WWII and the Dig for Victory campaign in the UK.  Here in the states it was called the Victory Garden.  Of course it urged people to grow their own food for themselves and that in turn helped with the war effort. I 'll have a weekend update later.

Donald Duck Victory Garden Sign Here is a really cool thing I hadn't seen before.  Disney got into the Victory Garden movement and licensed it's characters for use. This one was a sign, not sure if they were sold or given away, but it's a cute sign showing Donald Duck that you put in your garden, urging "Pests...Keep Out". It's nice to see this kind of involvement in the gardening movement.  Would love to see Disney get involved again and get kids interested in gardening. Enjoy!

 Fruits and Wound Healing vintage poster, image from National Archives at College Park, MD This poster is definitely interesting, if not a bit blunt in its message.  It was similar to others from the time that talked about how healthy fruits were, but this one tied it in with the war effort. Here it is the vitamin content that they are emphasizing.  It states that Vitamin C is an aid to healing wounds and building tissues and the Government urged people not to waste fruit because it could help soldiers who were wounded. Hope you are having a great weekend.  We have done some stuff at the farm and best of all, things are greening up again after the rain.  More later!

Plant More Sugar Beets, vintage poster image courtesy of NYPublic Library This poster image is unusual because they focused on a specific vegetable.  In this case, it's "Sugar Beets" because of course, sugar is energy. (though, this guy looks like he might have had enough, ha). I'll be honest and say I didn't know what a sugar beet was.  I thought it was just a regular beet, but I see after some research that it's completely different.  They were raised for use as a source of sugar.  Fascinating! Hope you are having a good weekend! edit:  I had already set this to post automatically today, as well as some others this holiday week, but came online to just let you all know that we appreciate your comments on the loss of our precious kitty Sydney. Thank you each and every one.  It means the world to us.

Vintage NEED MORE FISH poster, image courtesy of New Jersey War Archives Here is a poster that was pushing self sustaining food.  The same reason that the Government wanted people to garden and can food, was the reason behind this one.  Being self sufficient was the best way to make the most at home of supporting the war effort. Great graphics in this one too.  We need more fish! Hope you are having a great weekend.  It's H-O-T again here. 103 yesterday at the farm.  August is traditionally our hottest month.  It's also the first of the two busiest months for our Hurricane Season.  Here's hoping that both of those Summer routines are broken.  More later today!

Don't Shiver Order Coal Now, vintage poster, image courtesy of US War Archive OK, I'm guessing this poster was put out in Summer or early Fall. Still, a very cute method of reminding people to get their coal early instead of waiting until the middle of Winter. Makes me wonder, do they still use coal today in any home heating systems?  Or is it just fuel oil and/or wood? Stay warm if you are somewhere cold! Another post later today!