The Women’s Institute played an important role on the Home Front during the Second World War. In The Mother’s Day Club, the village’s WI is at the forefront of welcoming and helping the evacuee mothers settle into the village.
Julie Summer’s brilliant book, Jambusters, was a brilliant research source for discovering the many ways in which the WI rallied round during the war years.
Soon after war was declared in 1939, the women of the WI began their work of increasing food production for the country. Thinking that food supplies would probably become rationed, as happened during the First World War, they started by harvesting the abundant supply of blackberries and turning them into jam. Extra sugar was obtained by the WI from The Ministry of Food, to make the jam and this was distributed to local WI’s who requested it. The jam they made was sold at WI markets.
I love blackberry picking each year and making jam with the berries. The colours and smells as the jam cooks are glorious. The taste of blackberry and apple jam with its delicious mellow, fruitness, is wonderful on toast on a winter’s day.
Coming up soon, exclusively for my newsletter subscribers is a special competition to win a signed copy of The Mother’s Day Club and I will also make the winner a pair of handknitted socks, in true 1940s style. There is still time to sign up for my newsletter here and get a free copy of my ebook of short stories too, if you’d like to enter.