Many people complain these days about being hungry. Back in the 1930s, my mother had to feed eight children and three adults on only $35 a week that my dad made working at the paper mill. That was here in Maine.

We planted a large garden every year and my mother canned vegetables all summer when they were ready to harvest. She had only a wood stove; no electricity and no refrigerator. Her canning supplies were glass jars with rubber rings.

She would put up enough food for three meals a day — six months’ worth (to last until the next harvest). She bought only necessities, such as flour, sugar, etc., to make bread, pies, cakes, pancakes and such.

We raised our own chickens for eggs, meat, feathers to stuff pillows. The chickens ate corn we grew for them. We also had a couple pigs. They ate vegetable peelings, wilted garden vegetables, boiled on the stove with a handful or so of corn meal or oat meal to thicken the slop.

We would put corn for the pigs around tree stumps; all summer, they would root for corn. By fall, the stumps were out of the ground, ready for a bonfire.

In the fall, the animals were slaughtered and the meat was smoked for winter use.

There was no such thing as food stamps, welfare, etc., then.

To have money to buy food, pay bills and such, one has to give up all things non-essential for survival.

Gabrielle DeMoras, Lewiston