Victory Gardens in Wartime Wisconsin and Today

Patriots plant plots and gardeners move grass to feed selves, community

Meatless Mondays aren’t new. Nor is eating less wheat or raising backyard chickens. One hundred years ago, on the World War I home front, the shovel became a rifle and the furrow a trench. “Every gardener in the land has a part to take in the fight! His duty awaits him just as certainly, and, if anything, more imperatively, in the rows of vegetables in his garden, as does that of the soldier in the trenches at the front,” proclaimed the Sheboygan Press in 1918. “The gardener who does not plan his garden well, who fails to plant the right kinds of vegetables, who neglects his garden after it is planted, is a Slacker.”

No one wanted to be a slacker.

Food was the principle weapon against the Hun, as Americans were urged to save wheat, sugar, fat, and meat to feed the Allies. In support of the war, Americans filled their plates with dogfish, sugarless candy, whale meat, rye and corn bread, and horse steaks. They learned to prize leftovers nearly as much as the original meal.

And Americans planted gardens. A war garden was a home garden that increased local food production and freed up resources for American and European soldiers. Growing vegetables became patriotic during the war and millions of Americans joined in, waving spinach along with their flags. President Wilson even grazed sheep on the White House lawn. Everyone was urged to do his or her part.

The outbreak of war brought tremendous shortages of food across Europe as farmers put down their plows and picked up their rifles, fields of food becoming fields for battle. By the time the United States entered the war in 1917, three years of fighting had seriously damaged European supplies. U.S. entry into the war only further disrupted the supply of food.

As an agricultural state, Wisconsin took a keen interest in the food crisis. State Council of Defense Chairman Magnus Swenson of Madison began promoting food conservation before Congress had even created the United States Food Administration to do the same nationally. In Wisconsin, Swenson attacked food hoarding, urged citizens to cultivate backyard vegetable gardens, and instituted “meatless” and “wheatless” days. Wisconsin was also the first state to form a State Council of Defense, the primary vehicle for implementing, supervising, and regulating war activities on the state level. So impressed with Swenson and Wisconsin’s efforts that when President Woodrow Wilson put Herbert Hoover in charge of the newly created the Food Administration, Hoover adopted many of Swenson’s policies. He also took to Swenson’s model of making women, gardens, and kitchens the first line of defense on the home front.

Swenson first tackled food waste. He reduced fire hazards at grain elevators, warehouses, and other places where food was stored. He worked with researchers at the University of Wisconsin to promote high-yield, disease resistant crops. He urged taverns to stop serving the traditional free lunch and commissioned scientists to study the health benefits of stale bread.

With so many men at war, farm labor was in short supply. Automobile squadrons transported older men and young boys out to farms to harvest crops so that nothing would go to waste. So they wouldn’t be a burden to farm wives, the men carried their own lunches.

With trucks and trains needed to transport soldiers and supplies, Americans were urged to plant gardens. War gardens were the brainchild of forester Charles Lathrop Pack and his National War Garden Commission. At his urging, gardens “sprang up as though by magic.” Gardening, proclaimed Pack, “came to be a thing,” with people from all backgrounds and no experience joining in. Americans planted vegetables in their yards but also in window boxes, vacant lots, and on rooftops. The Milwaukee Agricultural Commission gave away 11,000 packets of seeds, 9,000 tomato plants, and 14 bushels of potatoes. They distributed thousands of leaflets with basic gardening information. Women could also attend classes on canning and food preservation provided free of charge by University of Wisconsin Extension agents. Leftover produce was canned and distributed to people in need.

Women joined the war effort without ever leaving the kitchen. Meatless and wheatless days became the centerpiece of Swenson’s food plan. Soon, the whole country joined in.

In the kitchen, women learned to use corn and rye instead of wheat, chicken instead of beef, and to cook more vegetables. They signed pledges promising to reduce waste and conserve muchneeded war foods. More than eighty percent of the women in Milwaukee County signed on. The Women Students’ War Work Council and the UW Home Economics Department produced a wartime recipe booklet to show how easy it could be to cook with alternative ingredients. Recipes included steamed barley pudding, scalloped cheese, liver pudding, and something called “salmon box”—a loaf pan lined with rice and filled with cold, flaked salmon.

Meatless and wheatless didn’t just apply to home-cooked meals. Restaurants were also encouraged to adopt conservation menus. Many printed American flags under the section of the menu usually listing roasts and other main dish meats.

Even children were targeted with conservation messages. Children signed their own special Junior Soldier Flag Pledge cards, admonishing them to conserve and to convince their parents to do the same. In school, kids found posters proclaiming the virtues of potatoes while their teachers read them conservation fairy tales like the Fairy Story on Potatoes to encourage more potato consumption. Students in the Liberty Bread Club at one Waukesha school vowed, “I pledge my head, my heart, my hands, and health for the conservation of food to win the world war and the world peace.”

While meatless and wheatless days may have involved some form of sacrifice, it wasn’t all that bad. Meatless meant no beef or pork—chicken and fish were okay. In fact, Americans were urged to raise their own backyard poultry flocks. A meatless menu offered on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, for example, included a half a chicken and shredded crab on toast.

When the fighting finally ended in late 1918, Americans had shipped nearly 10 billion pounds of meats, fats, dairy products, wheat, and vegetable oil overseas. Wisconsin increased its food production by 25% while sending 50,000 farmers to war. The state led the nation in conservation of wheat and meat. Perhaps most remarkably, all of these conservation programs were voluntary. No one had to join in (though they faced tremendous peer pressure to do so) but millions did.

The nation again turned to conservation and gardening during World War II but this time, Americans received ration books limiting what they could buy. Many of the programs pioneered during the first World War were repeated in the 1940s. Gardening had never really gone out of fashion. During the Depression, community plots provided a place for the unemployed and poverty-stricken to grow food. At its peak in 1944, the United States had more than 20 million gardens producing 40 percent of all vegetables grown in the United States. Among the new vegetables popularized by war gardens were Swiss chard and kohlrabi, in part, because they were easy to grow.

Despite such momentum, though, backyard and community gardening lost steam when the troops came home. Many Americans associated victory gardens with deprivation and hard times, and they felt liberated by the convenience foods that made gardening unnecessary.