Mrs. Burr Williamson.
With most farmers eating a hearty breakfast, the women’ s work began before the light of day. They prepared eggs collected the day before, with ham or bacon from the family smokehouse. Plentiful biscuits were scratchmade and set on the table with maple syrup in the spring, or sop gravy from the meat. Dinner was started right after the breakfast dishes were cleared and was served by noon. Many women worked in the fields with the men, especially when threatening weather required many hands. Abe Martin’ s Alamanck pays homage to women’ s farm labor:“ Tilford Moots wuz exhibitin’ a wooden chain at th’ pustoffice yisterday that showed considerable genius. He jist carved it out with a reg’ lar penknife Monday mornin’ while his wife wuz plowin’.”
Livestock included a cow for milk for the family, as well as for trade. Pigs were butchered in the late fall when it was cold enough for processing outside and the meat not spoiling. Pork was salted or smoked. A separate smokehouse was set with a fire tended on the dirt floor, sassafras and apple wood providing the most favored flavors. Homemade sausage and hams were salted and cured for winter use. The fat from the hogs was rendered down in huge kettles set over outside fires, yielding buckets of lard that were a mainstay of the farm kitchen for frying and baking.
Autumn was also the season for making soap. Soap was made by mixing fat with homemade lye on the big outdoor fire. Lye is the result of taking wood ashes and placing them in an ash hopper. Water was poured over the ashes and lye drained out the bottom into a bucket. Lye water was boiled in a huge kettle with meat fat after butchering. The soft soap left after meat disappeared from the batch was poured into long trays, scored, and broken into cakes when it hardened.
Winter provided a seasonal Sabbath from the heavy work of farming. Men hunted, tended animals, and had to keep wood chopped. But women made all the family clothes, cooked all the meals, and often fell asleep while holding a child on her lap after the evening meal. •
Dave Percifield.
March / April 2017 • Our Brown County 21