As always, click on the picture to enlarge for easier reading of original. Feel free to contact me with corrections, additional information, or comments. NEW --- I've added a map link that will help you see where things are in the neighborhood where this story takes place. Click on the Map link to the right of the title of each page. Zoom out to see where Naples is located in New York State. Zoom in to see Ingleside and exactly where the Grange Hall, and the Church were. I'll add pictures and more locations as I can.On Wednesday Henry finishes up some steps in preserving the meat prepared last week, including "pickling". Pickling is not a vinegar process like we do with cucumbers, but involves, salt, sugar, salt petre, and water to cover the meat. Click here for a civil war era recipe that is probably similar to what Henry would have done.
Henry also cuts a board for a wagon seat. This may have involved cutting a board from a section of log? I'm pretty sure they didn't just buy lumber the way we do now. Waddamus came to visit at night. No idea who this is? Not sure if this is a first name or a last name? Henry usually uses full names or at least initials. Henry still has a lame shoulder - several days now.
Thursday, Sarah is still working on Jen's dress. With all the day to day activity of feeding and caring for 13 people with no "modern conveniences", there probably isn't a lot of extra time in the day for projects like this? Henry is working on the seat still - for the lumber wagon. Omar harnesses up the horses to go to prayer meeting (Thursday nights), but they don't go because of heavy rain. Grange meetings are Saturday night.
Friday the weather cools off again, but there isn't much snow for using the sleigh. Sarah finishes Jen's dress!
Saturday they draw manure.... a process of hauling manure from the cows, horses, and pigs out to the fields and spreading it around. They go to Christian Fellowship Meeting in the afternoon, and draw a load of firewood to the woodhouse at night. Cutting, gathering and storing firewood is a big winter time activity. There aren't crops to tend to, and the trees will dry much better when cut in the winter when they aren't growing, and there is a much lower moisture content.
2 comments:
Strangely enough, one of my very favorite things to do when I was about 4-5 years old was to ride on the manure spreader with my dad - it was pulled by our draft horses, Bob and Jim (named after my uncles).
I would sit up on the seat with my dad, and we'd talk to the horses, or to each other. Things were a lot quieter when there were no motors to drown out voices.
I can remember my grandparents complaining from time to time about having a lame this or a lame that...but it's a term no one at all uses anymore.
Somewhere in this house I have an antique pitcher that came from a Grange hall in NE PA...one that belonged to the group communally, and they used it at all the Grange suppers to serve water or lemonade or tea. For many years it was my theory that the Granges came undone because of this: the pitchers were all made out of aluminum, everyone was drinking from them, poisoning themselves in the process!
I think in this part of the world the conventional wisdom is you should have half your wood left by Groundhog's Day (even though it sure seems like winter ought to be way more than half-gone by then. At least it seems that way if you're me!)
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