As always, click on the picture to enlarge for easier reading of original. Feel free to contact me with corrections, additional information, or comments. Click on the map link to the right of this entry to see more about where places are. Other information can be checked out with the links to the right, including a great family picture of everybody circa 1886!Sunday -- Omar brought Susie (Conley?) home last night, and she and Jen are going to go visit Hattie in Wayland later in the day. Sarah and Henry went to choir practice last night - Henry calls it "singing school". I think this is the first mention of music at church. Note - I keep thinking I'll run out of interesting or new things, but I guess not! Sarah, Henry, Omar, Bart, and Mills all to to church - Mills must be feeling better! Elder Hibbard preaches. Sarah stays to dinner at Mrs. Polmateer's. I'm thinking maybe she is the wife of George Polmateer who passed away back in Janaury? He mentions Aunt Abbie - probably Abigail Polmateer - daughter of Henry Polmateer. She got married back in March... no mention of her new last name?
Monday - Omar goes to Bloods with a load of 17 bushels of potatoes, and picks up a load of plaster that he then sows in the afternoon on the oat and barley fields. Plaster is a source of lime to adjust the pH of the acidic soil. Sarah and Mills are painting and whitewashing in the house. Whitewash is a sort of low cost "paint" made of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and chalk. A chemical reaction with carbon dioxide from the air, forms calcium carbonate which protects wood and other building materials and has some antimicrobial properties. I remember whitewashing various surfaces in the barn when I was a kid.
Tuesday - Omar spreads plaster on barley and corn fields - about 300 pounds! They also mulch the berries with oat straw. Sarah is still on the decorating detail, and paints the kitchen floor, and papers the sitting room. Frank Marsh comes to visit in the evening.
Wednesday - Omar cleans out the cellar, and goes to Nickleses to get some wood. Henry makes a "splatter board" for the well sink. I'm thinking some sort of sink in the kitchen with a hand pump? It seems like an outdoor sink would not have needed a "splatter board"? My grandparents had a sink in the kitchen with a handpump... the well was directly under the kitchen. An electric pump was added many years later! Henry works on the Delaware grapes. Grapes vines are attached to wires strung between posts. In the spring the posts and the wires are checked for damage, and repaired as necessary, and then the vines are "tied" to the wires with smaller wires. Spring is the best time for this before the foliage makes seeing what you are doing difficult. Sarah continues fixing up the house - she went to Naples in the forenoon to get wallpaper border for the sitting room. She also picked up some wire for the grape tying process. I remember my grandpa Drake working for other farmers around the Naples area tying grapes. Nate Polmateer drops by to visit. Picture of grapes trained along wires and posts below.
It looks like one of the younger kids may have gotten to these pages to do some scribbling?
