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I was very lucky to grow up on a 6 acre small holding in Kersey.

We kept hundreds of chickens and some we would eat. A man would come from Sainsbury’s in Ipswich to collect the eggs for sale each week. And some chickens, especially the cockerels, would be sent to Ipswich or Colchester markets.

You didn’t waste the potato peel and scraps — it would all be cooked up to give to the chickens. You didn’t waste a thing.

We had an orchard full of fruit (plums, redcurrants, gooseberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and loganberries, cherries, apples and nut bushes) and of course we went blackberry picking. We never had any trouble selling the fruit because there was such a shortage generally.

We also grew enough vegetables to supply the local schools for their school lunches. We kept 3 goats so we always had plenty of goat’s milk and butter which my mother made in a hand churn.

When my husband Stan came home on leave from the Navy, Mum would bake him a cake with the butter for him to take back and he’d have to hide it from the other boys, it was so precious.

We had a lot of pigs and Dad sold some at the market in Hadleigh — the markets carried on there right through the war. Sometimes Dad would buy small pigs and they’d be delivered by horse and cart. Mum used to pickle pig too. We always had plenty of bacon. She made a special sweet pickle with a vinegar base and a man in Kersey would cut up the pig into joints and then it had to be left to soak in the pickle in great big shallow dishes out the back for weeks. Lastly, it was hung up to dry in sort of white pillowcases around the kitchen.

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