As I mentioned last week, boys and girls up and down Kenyon’s concession roads did their part during World War II by purchasing War Saving Stamps. But, in researching this wartime item, I also discovered that farm kids also contributed to the war effort in another important way: by gathering milkweed pods. Apparently the wispy floss inside the seedpods was used as a substitute for kapok in life preservers. During World War II, the first choice for the stuffing in lifejackets were the delicate strands of cotton-like fiber that carried the seeds of the tropical kapok tree wherever the wind blew. Unfortunately, the kapok tree was native to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the supply of kapok was cut off when Japanese troops overran the region. So the light and buoyant seed fibres of the milkweed plant were identified as a viable replacement.
However, there was no time to grow milkweed as a commercial crop. So, in 1944, the call went out to across rural North America to harvest wild milkweed plants. It was a task that more often than not fell to the schoolchildren of farming communities. They spent countless hours searching fencerows and roadsides for this important weed. In the United States, children were given onion sacks in which to collect the pods. They received fifteen cents per bag… or twenty cents if the pods were dried. Two bags of pods contained floss for one lifejacket and the U.S. military called for two million pounds of floss, enough to fill a million life jackets.
I’m not sure what Canada’s target was for the collection of milkweed seedpods, but if we apply the usual one-tenth rule, the goal might have been in the 200,000-pound range. A gentleman I spoke with who grew up locally and participated in the milkweed hunt, doesn’t recall any bags being provided. As he said, they had any number of jute bags on the farm. He does remember the pods being spread out to dry on the floor of the granary… and that the Canadian milkweed drive was a volunteer endeavor without any remuneration. As the former milkweed harvester told me, “We were patriotic, and our country was at war. Volunteering was the thing to do!”
Belated b’day toast
Otto von Bismarck is reputed to have opined, “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” The man was obviously unfamiliar with the humble haggis. If he had been Scottish, he might well have swapped it out for his reference to minced and seasoned meat encased in a skin. The making of the keystone dish for ‘Rabie Burns’ dinners the world around is not a pretty sight, as I discovered nearly 50 years ago when an Educational Technology graduate student chose to feature it in one of her class assignments. I was in charge of the television production facility at Sir George Williams when the young lady, with strong Scottish roots, arrived in the studio and proceeded to prepare this traditional Scottish sausage from scratch.
My mind turned to haggis again last week, when reader Ken McEwen reminded me that Monday, January 25th would be Robert Burns’ 262nd birthday, were he alive today. Traditionally, it’s a day that, in non-Covid times, is marked with the piping and cutting of the haggis as the poet’s famous Address to a Haggis is read, including the stirring last verse. If your Scottish slang is a bit rusty, “skinkin ware” refers to a “watery soup,” “jaups” is a verb meaning “slops about,” and “luggies” are “two-handled soup bowls:”
Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o’ fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinkin ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a haggis!
As Ken and his wife Chris discovered on a trip to Scotland, haggis in the Old Country is not a dish reserved just for Burn’s suppers and St. Andrew’s Day. It can be found year round in the “land o’ the leal” on restaurant menus and in butchers’ display cases. As with everything else, not all haggis is created equal. Ken reports that he best he’s ever had was in the Globe Inn in Dumfries, Scotland. Opened in the 1620, the Globe is a mecca to all things Burns. “Their haggis was not served as a dollop,” Ken recalled wistfully, “but was firm and served in a slice, similar to meat loaf.” And, of course, a dram on the side was obligatory.
So let us all raise our glasses (or, in my case, a frosty can of Diet Pepsi) to the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns. Happy belated birthday.
Whey wrong
In last week’s item on the impact of WWII rationing on local farm families, I surmised that the whey produced from on-farm butter making was used as slop for pigs. While this may have been the case for Dunvegan-area farmers shipping milk to cheese and/or butter factories, I’ve subsequently learned that rearing hogs was frowned upon if one was supplying milk to the Borden’s plant in Maxville. Borden’s had strict protocols on the raising of pigs in close proximity to a dairy herd. They were concerned that the milk might be tainted. So, as a precautionary measure, they insisted that pigs be housed at least 100 feet from the dairy barn. On most farms, this just wasn’t practical. As a result, in the early 20th century, many local dairy farmers raised sheep.
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