Beltrami County Historical Society hosts victory gardens talk Saturday

Beltrami County residents looking for a practical way to stretch their food budgets will get a spring lesson in wartime self-reliance at the county history center. The Beltrami County Historical Society will host The History and Purpose of Victory Gardens at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 25, in Bemidji.

Executive Director Emily Thabes will lead the presentation on World War I and World War II victory gardens, the government campaigns that urged Americans to grow food in backyards and vacant lots for rationing and resilience. The topic connects old emergency habits to a modern question many households still face: how much food can be grown at home, and what does it take to start.

The program is designed to be more than a lecture. Attendees will also find seed sharing, gardening resources and information on upcoming workshops, giving local gardeners a chance to leave with more than a historical overview. For families weighing whether a garden can offset grocery bills this season, that makes the event as practical as it is educational.

The talk will be held at the Beltrami County History Center, housed in the restored 1912 Great Northern Depot at 130 Minnesota Ave. SW in downtown Bemidji. The building is home to museum galleries, a research library, archives and a meeting room, making it one of the county’s most visible gathering places for local history and public programming.

The Beltrami County Historical Society, founded in 1952, has used the center to connect historical context with present-day community interests. Thabes, who has led public programming there for about five years, will use that setting to revisit a lesson that once tied directly to food security and household resilience, and still speaks to anyone trying to make a spring garden count.