Written by Bonnie Sitter.
     World War 2 began in September, 1939.  By then, most crops in Ontario had been harvested or were close to it. Farmers though, looking ahead to spring no doubt were concerned. With most of the young men in farm labour enlisting, who would do the work on the farms?
     Something had to be done immediately to ensure a steady supply of farm workers or there would be no fresh food the next year. The harvest was not just for people in Ontario, but a good deal of it was destined for other countries at war, particularly England. So the provincial government stepped in and organized the Ontario Farm Service Force to recruit workers from all levels of society, except men of fighting age. The motto was “We Lend a Hand”
     Working with the federal government’s Dept. of Labour and the YM/YWCA, a volunteer force was organized into seven brigades to cover the provincial population from age 12 up to 85.  These groups covered not only farm families but also urbanites with no farm experience whatsoever. It was a massive undertaking and it worked.
Of the seven brigades organized, the largest by far was the Farmerette brigade. that is, girls 16 to 18 years of age. From 1941 to 1952, 20,000 girls from cities, towns, villages and farms across the province volunteered to do the job, working both in fruit orchards and market gardening farms in such crops as celery,  onions, cabbage, cauliflower, asparagus and cucumbers. In the Thedford area there were also fields of peppermint to be hoed, weeded and eventually distilled into oil for manufacturers such as Wrigley’s gum.
     The government sought volunteers of girls through the high schools. Speakers travelled to the schools to explain the need of volunteers.  Posters were distributed. The biggest inducement by far was an offer to exempt those with good enough marks to forego their final examinations if they promised to work a 13-week stint through the summer. Most girls thought this was a great idea.
Once girls were accepted as volunteers, they were provided tickets to travel to their particular camp. A labour secretary in each camp was the liaison with farmers; the farmers ordered the number of workers required and the secretary assigned girls to specific farms. Camps were staffed by the YWCA with a house mother, a cook and the labor secretary.

Here is a collection of stories that have been compiled for your enjoyment:
     In 1952, my girl friend Marlene Mallinson and I journeyed by train from North Bay in Northern Ontario to Thedford in Southwestern Ontario. Neither of us had ever worked on a farm.  We were 16 years old.  We boarded the train at night , arrived in Toronto in the morning and rushed to catch another train to Thedford and arrived  at the camp about 4 p.m. in the afternoon.  Our train ride wasn’t the longest. The journey for girls from places such as Geraldton or Timmins took even longer. For many it was their first overnight train ride. Once a Farmerettes arrived they encountered a wide range of accommodation. Some was basic – such as tents, some in motels or Quonset huts, some were boarded in high schools. Our Camp was an old renovated flax mill, covered in wood slats with a large room on the main floor which included an eating area, a small lounge with a jukebox and piano, a kitchen and bedroom accommodation for the staff. In back was a shower room with laundry facilities. The loos were outside behind the building. About 100 girls were in this camp, one of the larger ones and we slept in bunks in a large open room upstairs. Today that camp is occupied by Thedford Legion. Because it was wartime, there were some restrictions on food in the camps just as there was everywhere. Girls brought their ration books from home and submitted them to the housemother. There was a suggestion in a few letters we received from former Farmerettes that the housemother planned and purchased all the food. Some of the money for the budget probably came from the board the girls were required to pay each week  which ranged from roughly $4.50 up to $7.00  a week each, depending on the camp and the year. The work was hard, often grueling, especially for inexperienced teenagers. But because we were young we adapted quickly. Some climbed ladders for cherries and peaches and learned how to hang on to the ladder with their feet, particularly when a breeze blew and the trees swayed. At first, most girls were scared stiff of the height; by the end of the summer they were calmly eating their lunch about 15 feet in the air. Many farmerettes worked on market gardening farms where weeding was often done on hands and knees. Being from Northern Ontario, the land of rivers, rocks and bush, I had never seen a large farm field. At my first sight of green onions marching in rows seemingly to the horizon, my jaw dropped. I thought those rows went on forever. Other girls from the North, and there were hundreds, mentioned the same reaction. We weeded those onions on hands and knees, three rows at a time, straddling the middle row. By the end of the first week, we had adapted to the work; by the end of summer, our muscles were toned and hard. We developed marvellous tans. We became very healthy.

     Freda Oughtred from Chapleau in Northern  Ontario, remembered that before going to Normal School (Teachers’ College) in the fall, she went for a physical and the woman doctor was so impressed with her muscular back she called in another doctor to see it. Other Farmerettes remembered weeding or planting rows of tomatoes with 250 plants in a row. The pay was 50 cents a row.

     Beryl (Dusty) Becket remembered her first working day at Goodwin’s farm . “We cut asparagus, “ she said. “No sitting at that place. It was bending over and moving right along in the morning. Switched to strawberries in the afternoon.  Again, no sitting or scooting along on your butt. But all stooped over. “Anyway, I really hated asparagus. Couldn’t get me to eat it at home. So what did we have for dinner that night?  Asparagus soup, creamed asparagus on toast and strawberries for dessert. I was starving so it was either eat or perish by starvation. By the time I finished dinner I found I really did like asparagus and I still love it. To this day I think of that first meal at Goodwin’s whenever I have asparagus.”

     Shirley Riddell described her experience at the Charlie Hammond farm. “I hate Harry Horne's Custard. I've never been a picky eater but that custard was terrible. What made it worse was the frequency that it was served. “Every day of the week at supper time it was Harry Horne’s custard served with the fruit in season. There might be strawberries, cherries, peaches or raspberries served with it. Not one of the Farmerettes liked the "stuff " but they did eat it because they were always hungry at the end of a workday. “We did the evening dishes and cleaned up the table. There was always an ample amount of food but we were always starving by dinnertime. The farmer himself served the dinner to all of us. We had to wait until he dished up every plate before dinner could officially start.”

     Bag lunches were carried by the girls to every work site. The makings were set out at camp either in the evening before or next morning and the girls either made up their own or it was organized in teams. Janet Howes and friend Dorothy Livermore, who were at Thedford camp in 1943, said organizing into teams might seem like a fine idea, “but those girls suffering from procrastination were last at the table and most of the sandwich fillings, cookies and fruit etc. were gone. Surprise next day, just pieces of bread and butter, no egg salad, no tuna fish, no peanut butter even, nothing but slices of bread.  Naturally, the guilty person got a lot of flack from the rest of her team.”

     Many farm wives supplemented the bag lunches the Farmerettes brought with cake and cookies, sometimes lemonade. And the girls were surrounded by food as they worked in the orchards of peaches, cherries and plums or in the fields of strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries in the Niagara area. Most girls snacked on the fruit as they worked. Some ate so many cherries that as one girl reported “we all got the trots.” Like the meals themselves, the offerings for lunches differed from camp to camp. Some places offered the usual cold cuts, cheese, carrots and celery with fresh fruit and cookies. At others peanut butter and jam were staples.

     In a few camps, offerings were not so imaginative and some girls reported the choices were limited to pork and beans as sandwich filling or even mashed potatoes.
Mary Fountain was a Farmerette for three summers. “We were fed well,” she remembers “and were encouraged to eat meat twice a day. The farmer provided drinks and clean toilet facilities.”  In most cases those drinks were water from a hose, although at some Thedford farms water was in large glass bottles sunk into the ground to keep it  cool and which were passed around with no one thinking about germs. During the time of extreme heat in summer the girls were given salt pills daily. Mary Fountain also remembered that the 14 girls working at the Scrivens’ farm during ration times agreed to each bring a bit of sugar from the breakfast table so the farmer’s wife could bake them a chocolate cake. A few days later they had their cake.

     Some girls were transferred from the fields or orchards to the local canning factories to can peaches. As they prepared the fruit for canning, they put the pits into a pail so the supervisor would know who was working by just counting the pits in the pail. Olga Culbert and two friends from Geraldton in Northern Ontario were at Camp Clarkson in 1951 and decided to bring their families a souvenir of farms in the south. Each carried a huge watermelon in a paper shopping bag and to save money decided to hitchhike to Toronto to get the train home.  Hitchhiking was common among all Farmerettes.  It was safe enough in those days and the girls took care to go in groups.       

     Some girls made a game out of work. Ardyss Daniels remembered the little brown bags in the camp johns for sanitary disposal that she and other girls took to work to fill with cherries. As she described it, “when nature called we would sit in the john and eat cherries and shoot the pits over the partitions. I guess we made our own fun.”

     And fun they had. Mostly that’s what the girls remember. Decades later they still recalled their time as Farmerettes as the best summers of their life. There was the camaraderie that developed when they chatted and sang as they worked. There was pleasure in working with others for a common purpose. There was the joy of seeing a different part of the province than they were used to. There were visits to Niagara Falls or hitchhiking to the U.S. where they toured the shops and if you were from the North, you marvelled at the tall buildings.  They swam in the Welland  Canal , 50 feet deep and forbidden but they did it anyway. It was being chosen with “the best legs in the camp.” Or voting to bestow a Mr. Farmer title at the local fair, based on size of feet, tan, and the size of calluses on the farmer’s hands. And it was the fact of being away from home, enjoying the camaraderie among new friends and making up camp songs.
It was adventure.

     It was 1939 & the Second World War had been declared. My father was with the RCMP & enlisted in their Special Investigation Branch assuring my mother that the war would be over in 6 months. I was 11 years old while my brother was 13 & we were living in Sault Ste. Marie.
It's now 1945 & my Dad is stationed in England, my brother is in the navy & Mom is only responsible for me, a lively 16 yr. old. Her watchful eye was determined to keep me pristine & pure.
     My girlfriends & I heard of the farmerettes. You needed to be 16 yrs. old, have good grades in school & have parental consent to qualify. We all qualified for the first two criteria. Since we were going to be working with other girls on farms, would be living in a communal setting with a "camp mother" & strict rules to go by, our parents gave their permission for us to go & 'give a helping hand' for the war effort by harvesting food for the nation. None of this patriotic rhetoric was meaningful to me: I was getting out of writing my chemistry exam & escaping the watchful eye of my mother.
     The train ride with all my pals from the Soo to St. Catharines was great fun. We were looking forward to a spring & summer sharing this exciting new adventure. Instead we were all sent to different locations; I ended up at Camp Gregory up on a cliff overlooking Lake Ontario knowing no one. My fellow farmerettes came from far & wide & were formed into teams; each team was picked up by a farmer & driven to our work site each day.
     Our team worked for Horace Troupe. He had a wife who tended to her chores & kept a watchful eye on three little ones. Arthur was the oldest, about 4. I can still hear Mrs. Troupe hollering across the field: "Arthur git out of them thar strawburries, they aint no good if thur squished!"
     Our first crop to harvest was long rows of asparagus. It was back-breaking work in the sun with no letup until noon when Mrs. Troupe came out with a pail of cold water from their well; we all shared the dipper for a welcome drink along with our lunch which we had prepared after breakfast. Because our lunches were in brown paper bags & had been lying beside the field,
     I seem to remember my sandwiches were peanut butter or cheese with a piece of fruit for dessert. Meat was never an option as there was no refrigeration. After lunch it was back to the row upon row of asparagus with all of us working in unison each on our own row but working parallel to each other. We all got along well with no arguments or complaints; we were too busy thinking of when 5:00 would come.
​
Lesson #1: Team effort makes any job run more smoothly.
We were responsible for doing our own laundry. After the first week of adjusting to routine I discovered I had no clean clothes one morning. Digging into the dirty laundry bag I pulled out some underwear, turned it inside out, tugged on a smelly shirt & headed out for the farmer's truck feeling absolutely disgusting. I'm sure my team-mates thought the same.

Lesson #2: You are responsible for tasks to be done. Don't procrastinate.
Between the asparagus & strawberries there was a gap which Horace filled by having us paint the barn so he could retain our team. Through negotiations I somehow I ended up on the highest ladder with the most sore insteps at the end of each day due to standing on the narrow rungs all day.

Lesson #3: Democracy isn't always fair but it works for the majority.
After the strawberries were over we went to another farmer's fields to work. As usual he came to pick us up with his truck which had no back or sides so we had to hang on as best we could. I sat at the back with my feet dangling until he hit a pothole & I went flying up & over hitting the road with my head! Apparently I spent a couple of days asking repeatedly: "What happened?" over & over until my mother came down from the Soo to take me home so I could recover from the concussion. I have no memory of this but I do know that I succeeded in convincing her that I was fine & wanted to finish the job I had been contracted to do.  I stayed on for the rest of the season.

Lesson #4: If you want anything badly enough, learn how to present your case logically with conviction to succeed.
Our free time was mostly on weekends when we would hitchhike into St. Kitts on a Saturday to hang out or see a movie. On Sunday we could go into town to church. We had no trouble being picked up off the side of the road as everyone knew we were farmerettes & welcomed us into their cars. We never hitch hiked alone, always in two's or three's ( more than that was too many). The exception to this was an invitation from my best friend, Diane (who lived in Toronto) to spend a weekend at her family's home. From some of our conversations I realized that her father had a high position in the government & so I would have to be on my best behaviour. As we pulled up to their lovely home I knew I was being challenged not to besmirch the Denton name. All went smoothly through dinner with the correct use of the cutlery, polite conversation until bedtime. The next morning as I was walking down the hall to go down for breakfast Diane's 18 yr. old brother came out of the bathroom naked as a jaybird & with complete nonchalonce, walked past me & said: "Good morning." I was too stunned to reply as I had never seen naked person before.

Lesson #5: When in new situations, always be prepared for surprises & accept other people's lifestyles.
The day the war ended a farmer pulled into Camp Gregory with his huge stake truck announcing that as many as could fit while standing up could climb aboard & he'd take us into town for the parade. I remember feeling the thrill (my Dad was coming home!) as we drove along the main street of St. Catharines waving at all the cheering crowds.

Lesson #6: Wherever life takes you there are decent, thoughtful people you encounter. Appreciate the moments & pass them on.

And that's a wrap.
Betty-Lou (Denton) Clark

My name is Cathryne L. Horne (nee Karst) and I was born and raised on a farm just outside of Kenaston, Saskatchewan in 1930. Years later, my family moved to Fort William, Ontario, due to the depression and farming being no longer viable out west.
We heard about the Farmerette program through our high school in Fort William, Ontario. Our parents thought it would be a great opportunity to live and work in southern Ontario for the summer. Our Aunt on the other hand, couldn’t believe that my Mom and Dad would be allowing us to spend the whole summer miles away from home on our own. Dad was not looking forward to cutting the lawns and not having our help in the vegetable gardens but our Mom, a school teacher, thought it would be a great experience.
So, in the summer of 1947 myself, my older sister Sheila (Karst) Warren and our neighbour, Elaine (Knickerboker) Carpenter received our train fare from the program and we were off on our adventure and on my first train ride ever. My Mom packed us lunches for the trip along with decks of cards to keep us busy. A couple of soldiers nearby us on the train kept bidding on our cookies but I don’t remember selling any.
The next morning, at first light, I was so amazed at the changed countryside. Our birch and fir trees and rock cuts around Lake Superior had changed into open fields with the occasional large spreading oak or maple tree, so picturesque and so different from what we were used to.
We arrived at the train station in St Catharines and assigned to our camps. Elaine & I to Tregunno camp on Carlton Street which was in Grantham Township (the northern part of St. Catharines) and my sister Sheila and her friend went to a camp nearby in Queenston where they worked for a Mr. Fischer I believe.
My summer home became a Quonset hut which we shared with two girls from Toronto. It was not roomy but as far as I can remember all four of us got along just fine. The small cots must have been passable because I really don’t remember not being able to sleep.
The first day we were awakened early, had a good breakfast, made our lunches and were supplied with salt tablets. We were picked up by our farmer, Mr. Troup, and rode on a low flat bed trailer pulled by an old converted farm car. We sat on the trailer with our feet hanging over the edge. Later on, we found out that this large low flat bed was very well suited for transporting the many baskets of fruit or vegetables we picked, all in a single layer and dropped off at a nearby cannery or the co-op.
Our first job was cutting very, very, long rows of asparagus. It was a back breaking job and unfortunately new spears can grow overnight so, for what seemed forever, each day started with asparagus cutting and only ended when its growing season came to an end.
Our next job wasn’t much easier on my back either. The transplanting of new tomato or cabbage plants. We would follow behind a farmer who made a cut with a spade into which we dropped a seedling plant and then secured the plant with our foot, but not always too accurately. We were paid twenty-five cents an hour doing that.
We also picked strawberries and we were paid two or four cents a basket depending on how plentiful the berries were.
Another job we had was thinning peaches so that the peaches remaining on the tree would grow larger. During the thinning the peach fuzz was terrible and the more that you tried to rub it off, especially from your neck, the worse it got. We eventually learned to wear kerchiefs around our necks. But that only helped a little.
We picked tomatoes too. They gave us nail polish to wear to show us the colour of the tomatoes that were ready to be picked and I remember that after thinning tomatoes all day when we showered the water coming off us was literally green.
Cherry season was great! I enjoyed getting up into the trees where there was shade and sometimes a breeze. The cherries even seemed more plentiful the higher you climbed. This was possibly due to the fact that some of the girls refused to get too far off the ground. I don’t know what we were paid per six-quart basket but I know I made $10 a week clear after paying my room & board ($4/week) whenever picking sweet or sour cherries. When we missed a day’s work because of rain we could come up short.
We also hoed between grape rows (I hated that) and did some grape tying but the grape season really only started in the fall after we had gone back home.
Some days after a hot day of working we complained bitterly about how tired we were but after a shower and a good meal our energy level renewed. We would walk down a tree lined road (Carlton Street) for a swim in the Welland Canal (strictly forbidden these days).
On Friday and Saturday, we could take the street car to Port Dalhousie to swim or go to a dance at the pavilion. One Saturday we went to Niagara Falls to an arena where there was a big orchestra playing. I don’t remember how we got there or what it cost but I had never seen so many musicians with such a great sound. Even today, when I hear a big band like Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman on the radio, I can still visualize that first time.
If we ventured out anywhere, we always hitch-hiked in a group of three for safety and if there was a service man thumbing nearby us, we would try and hitch with him because a man in uniform always seemed to be able to get rides right away.
In late August the peach crop was not quite ready and there wasn’t any other work with Mr. Troup so when Elaine’s aunt asked if we would like to visit her and help out on their chicken farm, we set off for the Orangeville area.
We enjoyed our time there doing odd jobs but mainly we helped caponize (removing the testicles and neutering) young roosters, something I found quite interesting.
On Saturday night when we were there we went into a small town and found that everyone knew everyone and all we met were very friendly. After our time there we back to St Catharines to pick peaches for Mr. Troup before returning home by train for another year of high school.
The summer of 1948 saw my sister Sheila, June Hare and myself return to the Farmerette program and this time went to a camp at Grimsby Beach. We did much the same work as the previous year but as old hands now, we tried to take in more sights and activities on our free time. We went down to the beach most days after work and even managed some boat rides with some of the local boys. We even went shopping in Niagara Falls, New York a couple of times for clothes.
We were told that some of the local girls hated Farmerettes because the local guys would drop their regular girlfriends to go with Farmerettes for the summer.
My Mom wrote Sheila and I saying that our Grandmother was visiting relatives in Strathroy, Ontario and that she had suggested we visit her if we were looking for something to do on a weekend. We showed the letter to the camp housemother and got her okay to take the trip out to Strathroy.
The three of us headed out hitch- hiking Friday night after work and we made it as far as Paris, Ontario where we decided to stay at the YWCA. It was located in the centre of town next to the Police Station with the noise of cars and people coming and going at all hours. We didn’t sleep to well that night!
We got several short rides on Saturday before a man who lived in Strathroy stopped and picked us up and then drove us right to the address. He then waited for us to make sure the people were actually home.
A woman answered the door and when we told her we had come to see our Grandmother she said that our Grandmother wasn’t there and that she had gone to visit other relatives, then she promptly shut the door.
All three of us stood looking at the door for a moment in shock before our ride asked us what had happened. He knew our situation and he said not to worry, that he could take us home to his wife who would love to have us over.
He told us that he and his wife had raised two foster girls who had just aged out of care at eighteen and that she was missing them a lot. When we arrived at his home his wife was delighted and made us a lovely chicken dinner. We helped with the dishes, then they suggested a short drive out to Grand Bend on Lake Huron to see the sights there and we accepted their offer.
What a lovely spot with such a huge expanse of sandy beach, lots of people, a midway and a roller rink. We enjoyed walking around taking in the sights and activities then they drove us back to their home and put us up in their guest room for a good night’s sleep.
Sunday morning, we were driven out to the highway in order to start our thumbing trip back to camp. What a great welcoming couple our hosts had been. We actually kept in touch with them and later on when our parents toured Southern Ontario they stopped by and thanked them personally for showing us so much kindness.
Summer ended and we returned to Fort William where my sister and I both started our training to become Registered Nurses.
I met David Horne from Port Arthur, Ontario and later married him in 1952. We decided to move to St Catharines and my husband who was an R.C.M.P. officer at the time joined the local Grantham Township police force and I worked at the hospital as a Registered Nurse.
In 1959 we decided to build a house for our growing family and decided on a lot in north St Catharines at the end of a subdivision with a peach orchard next door.
We were one street west of Bunting Road which was lined with house on both sides but we still had a good view of the large ships going through the Welland Canal. Unfortunately, we could also hear the canal workers during the night on their loudspeakers (no cell phones back then) calling out the number of metres left to fit the ship into the lock (at lock two).
On a lovely spring day in 1959 I decided to take my two sons on a walk down Scott Street to watch The Queen Elizabeth Launch make one last trip through the Welland Canal. As we walked east on Scott street from Bunting Road, I recognized the farmhouse, between newer homes, where Elaine and I had worked as Farmerettes in 1947. A nice brick home now stood where the Troup’s cow pasture had been and where the picture of Bessy (the cow) and I had been taken in 1947.
I couldn’t believe that twelve years later we had unknowingly built a home so close to my original introduction to Southern Ontario.
In 1952 my young sister Geri and three friends also decided to spend their summer in the Farmerette program. Geri worked the summer for Mr. Nelles out of a Grimsby camp and did most of the same work as I did. During her free time, she also enjoyed the local attractions, hitch-hiking wherever they went. With four in their group it was sometimes a little harder to get rides so they devised a plan. Two girls would thumb and the other two would keep in the background until a car stopped, then all four would pile in. It worked well and none of the driver’s ever verbally complained.
Geri also went shopping in Niagara Falls, New York and she thinks that they stayed overnight in a hotel there. She bought a nice jacket for $2.95 and wore it back so she wouldn’t have to pay duty on it. Cathy Graham, Gloria Senerchuk and Phylis Kline were the girls in my sister Geri’s little group.
Geri enjoyed Farmerette Camp very much and planned to return the following summer but before finishing high school in 1953 she was offered a permanent secretarial job locally so she did not return to the program.

​Our mother Dorothy (Dimps) Irene Chantler was born on October 21, 1928 in London, Ontario. In 1946 she and her best friend Carmen Benedict successfully applied to become Farmerettes and both were sent to Kingsville, for work that summer. We believe she and Carmen stayed at the Casino residence as we have pictures of this building in our family photos.
At the same time our father Stanley (Nats) Russell Gregg, born in Toronto January 21, 1926, had applied to work at Camp Harrow for the summer of 1946. On the morning of July, 3rd. 1946 he and his team were assigned to work for the day at the same potato farm with our mother and Carmen. Both girls noticed two good looking boys working together, and Dorothy said she wanted to meet he tall handsome one!  At 7 am. that day Mom and Dad met of the first time. Dad described the meeting as two sweet potatoes in a bag. I am sure their meeting made the hard tasks for the day, just a bit easier.
They have many happy photos from the Kingsville Lakeside Park and they spoke about  attending dances on Saturday nights. Their favourite song was Day by Day by Doris Day and the song would help keep them connected when apart. They wrote to each other several times each month, during the fall of 1946,throughout 1947 and till June 1948.   I am not sure when the engagement happened, but they so valued  their original meeting date of July 3rd , that it became their wedding date in 1948.  They could only afford a small wedding, with a reception at the home of Montague John Gregg (Stan’s father) in Toronto. They stayed one night at the King Edward Hotel, a wedding gift from our Dad’s brother Victor Gregg. Of note in 1989, 50 years later they booked the same  hotel for a one night stay, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They brought in the original receipt from 1948 and were given the same room at a special rate with champagne and a cheese and fruit tray to celebrate the special occasion. 
We believe Dad worked on a farm in 1947 in the St.Catherines area for a total of three years of service and Mom was involved with the Farmerettes in 1944, 45 and 46.   
In later years , at the time of my brother’s wedding in 1982, it was discovered that his new mother-in-law, Pat (Dewan) Wilson was the Dietitian at the Kingsville Farmerette residence in 1946, while Mom was in staying on site.  Dad credits her for the quality of the meals the girls were served! My four nephews know about this dual family connection and will help share this Farmerette story, and the broader historical importance.
As a retired Dietitian my early interest in cooking and food may have been influenced by the stories that Mom and Dad had told us about their service at the Boys' Brigade Camps and Farmerette camps, which led to my future Healthcare career. 
​After more than 70 years together our parents both passed in 2019 ( 6 weeks to the day apart) and in preparation for their funerals and reviewing household collectables we found many items tied to the Farmerette story: