Having grown up during that period no one needed to. You could survive quite easily on whatever you could buy in the stores. The diet you could get from growing

Having grown up during that period no one needed to. You could survive quite easily on whatever you could buy in the stores. The diet you could get from growing your own food was much better than what you get even in the west today. The one thing people who haven't experienced it can't understand is the taste of the food. I don't know what price I'd put on a breakfast made with fresh milk, eggs, home baked bread and salted pork but it would be at least a few hundred dollars. If I didn't live in a region where any rural property is expected to burn down once a decade I'd have bought a weekend farm a long time ago.