Do you follow in Grandma’s footsteps?

Recently I bought a beautiful item for the princely sum of 30p. I found it in a second hand shop in a small village in Herefordshire, and I am pleased as punch with it. It is a glass lemon squeezer, a simple device that separates pips from juice, and it has already come in handy countless times. It is going to be a treasured part of my kitchen, I just know it. When I bought it, sliding three ten p's across the counter and feeling astonished that this amount yielded anything at all, something struck me. The lemon squeezer was exactly like the one that my grandmother used and very different from my mothers’ plastic version. She upgraded from glass to plastic in the Seventies when it was considered practical and hygienic. Lightweight and easy to clean, plastic was considered an ideal material for kitchen equipment.
This is not the first time that I notice my habits have skipped a generation, echoing those of my grandmothers. While my mother had no time for growing vegetables - with a job, children and a million of one commitments - my maternal grandmother tended her vegetable patch religiously, producing a glut of beans, peas and tomatoes every summer. She kept chickens for most of her life and not a scrap of carrot peel would go to waste in the house. Other memories of her domestic set-up are less rosy. The corners of her kitchen were not pleasant – a world away from the Jiffed-up, gleaming work surfaces we maintain. Joints of ham would sit for disturbing lengths of time in the larder, and often shrieks would be heard when a Christmas stilton was turned over in February and found to be, literally, crawling.
Maybe I’m dewy-eyed about it all because my grandmother is no longer with me, but I’m sure there is something in my skipped generation theory. Thrifty living, old-fashioned crafts such as crochet and knitting, good old tea and fruitcake, wellies and walks, are all part of the wholesome swing to green living today. I’d love to hear from you if you ever find yourself following in the footsteps of Grandma, or conversely, if you think you’ve picked up more domestic habits from your parents.

Comments

[Minum]

Always amuses me that we replaced wood and glass with plastic, supposedly for hygene reasons, and all the research now suggests the opposite is true.

I think the main things I have picked up from my grandmothers generation (although my parents were practioners too) is mending things, from clothes to furniture, along with line drying and not wasting any food. I dont use butter wrapping in lieu of greaseproof paper, but I should.

[Anna]

Thanks Minum. On the butter wrapping front, I don't do that either. But I do copy my mum (and probably grandmother) in folding up finished butter wrappers and greasing baking trays etc with them.

[Ian]

Funny how fashions change. Such behaviours were once seen as practical. In the 70s they became thrifty, in the 80s they were seen as stingy and now we call them green!

[Hannah Phillips]

I am ashamed to admit to being a 26 year old granny. I have done the exact opposite of my mother and my mother in law and become precisely what my grandmother was. A home-maker, with all the green trappings. I clean with vinegar and newspaper, I spend whole afternoons baking with the children and every packet or piece of rubbish is reused in one way or another. The vegetable front garden and container garden out back is one she would have been proud of. I campaign and run charity events. But above all the single thing that I have found is that I finally understand what she said about money. We might not have much but when you have love you don't need much. What started out as a green passion became much more a labour of love when I worked out all the rewards I got from spending time with my children. It is a frugal and stingy way of living I agree but is far more fun than any other lifestyle I have tried.

[anna]

Ian - quite right - i wonder what we'll call them in the 2020's?

Hannah - never too young to be a Granny. You're a young mum, though. That must keep you very busy. Isn't it a struggle staying green with pint-sized carbon criminals running riot?

[Hannah Phillips]

We make being green something the whole family does. We make all our food at home, including bread. We grow what vegetables and edible flowers as we can. What we can't we buy locally. We walk almost everywhere. When we can't we tend to lift share. I am hoping if the children grow up green, they will be green as adults. It certainly isn't easy on them. My eldest was bullied for having home grown sprouts in his lunch box. So we learnt to compromise.

[Karen Pullen]

Dear Anna, I think you are missing the point. My granny did all those things because she had no choice ! She was working all day farming then returning home to feed 4 children with her home grown and caught food. She simply had no money to be anything other than 'thrify' or 'green'. She would have had no trouble with your wardrobe challenge as the only new items she ever bought were children's shoes !

Walks were not recreational but to collect hedgerow items and wood. Her carbon footprint was minute because she walked by necessity and never went out of her local area. She never took a flight and regarded Glasgow, an hour up the road, as the fleshpots- too dangerous to visit.

My mother couldn't wait to escape in the 1960s to a nice modern house with mod cons. She remembers a bag of sweets as her only Christmas present.

No, I may choose to use my granny's things and to live a life where I grow veg, keep chickens and avoid consumerism but my life is nothing like hers. Thankfully !

My grandmother was always known as Nanny Chick, because in spring she would often have small chicks keeping warm in her apron pocket while the others hatched out. I ended up doing the same, as broody hens are sometimes a bit clumsy and tread on them. I was amused to hear my 3 year old grand daughter say "Can I go and stay with Nanny Chick?"... meaning me.
My mother never had pets. She had a lawn and flowers.
Like my grandmother I have chickens, cats and a dog. I have a greenhouse and polytunnel, cold frames, and raised vegetable beds. My Gran would have loved them. She taught me how to snare rabbits, and how to bone out and cook cheap cuts of meat like breast of lamb, and belly of pork. They aren't so cheap now. I do make my own bread, but use a breadmaker. She would have liked that too. Fresh bread for breakfast cooked overnight without the hard work. She used to cook 7 large loaves on a Saturday for the week.

[Candy Spillard]

My grandparents' house had no central heating! One open fire, one multifuel stove, one small 'space'-heater, in a 3-bed detached house, that was it. But we (kids) never seemed to feel the cold when we stayed there, even over New Year (Perhaps because the house was in tropical Devon, and we lived in Leeds). If/when peak oil happens, we might find ourselves living like that again!

[Heather]

I think we define ourselves relative to our parents, who in turn defined themselves relative to their parents - so it's not surprising that we sometimes end up doing the same things as our grandparents. I get particularly sentimental over having afternoon tea with flowery bone china...

[Claire]

Some of my parents' habits haven't skipped a generation for me: I now have a compost bucket, as they did, although mine is plastic and subsidised, whereas theirs was homemade out of wood and wire. The thing I can't do but would love to is get milk in glass bottles. Although we have a plastic collection in our area, I would much rather have the milk deliveries of my childhood.

[Julie]

I altered a navy and white flowery A-line dress of my Grandmas and wore it to Notting Hill Carnival once (I made it a bit straighter..) and I even found a photo of her wearing it in her back garden! My Grandma's scones and tea loaf recipes go down a treat too...