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josephkitchen0 · 6 years

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A Glimpse at Simple Homesteading Life in the 1800s

By Kathy Belt – In the September/October 2012 issue, a reader wanted to know what homesteading life in the 1800s was like. Here’s my reply. I am a bit of a history nut. I have spent many years engaged in accurate historical re-enactment. (Think Ren Faire but with no turkey legs.) So your question about what simple homesteading life in the 1800s looked like prompted me to write.

First—when talking about life in the 1800s, do you mean the early 1800s? Before the advent of canning, telegraph, railroads, and sewing machines? Or are you talking late the 1800s? If the latter—just talk to any member of an Amish community about their simple homesteading lifestyle. If you are talking about the early 1800s—that’s a completely different matter. I would recommend visiting historic Williamsburg, Virginia.

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There are numerous diaries that have been left behind by the folks who “traveled West” and the hardships of simple homesteading they endured; as well as diaries of those who “stayed behind” in the civilized world of chamber pots and chimney fires. Reading these diaries gives a very good insight into how people lived.

Are you interested in the day-to-day life of agrarian people as opposed to those who live in the city? If so—I recommend becoming a homesteader without electricity, power tools or indoor plumbing.

Also take away modern medicine, familiarize yourself with a healing herbs list and learn to recognize gangrene. Go to the grocery store for only flour, coffee, and sugar. Grow your own linen (hemp is preferable to flax for durability and comfort), and wool. Simple homesteading of this era means you learn how to knit, spin and weave, and use only your own feet (or those of a horse) for transportation. Dig your own well, do your own blacksmithing and starve in the winter when you’ve had a bad crop year.

If you truly want to try life in the 1800s, be expected to have 18-20 children, all born at home, and have half of them die before the age of five because of dysentery, typhoid, scarlet fever or measles. Be prepared to get up with the sun and read by the light of your drafty fireplace. (Yes, the Franklin stove was invented in the late 1700s, but it weighed so much, most folks who went west didn’t take it with them. Of course, if you stayed in one of the “big” cities, you would have access to whale oil or kerosene for your lights.)

Be prepared to slaughter pigs and use everything except the “oink.” (Think pickled pig’s feet.) And you had better spend all day Sunday at church.

Let’s see—what else—oh yes, hygiene. It didn’t exist. There was usually a pan with water in it (that you carried from the well in a bucket) for rinsing your fingers before meals and washing your face in the morning. Everyone washed in the same basin of water. There was one bathtub full of water that everyone used for their Saturday night baths.

And ladies—would you like to know the origin of the phrase “on the rag?” Just one of the many uses of the rag bag. I heard a nurse tell a story that happened in 1950. An old “bachelor farmer” came into the hospital and had to have both pairs of long johns cut off him. He had had them on so long, his hair was growing through them.

Babies wore cloth diapers (if they wore anything at all) and the diapers had to be boiled before hung on the line to dry. Yes, even in the winter. You’d hang them out so they froze, take them down and snap them so the water crystals would fly out, then bring them in and hang them from rope you strung from one side of the house to the other.

Clothes for the rest of the family? One dress for momma for church, and one dress for the rest of the week. One pair of pants and a shirt for poppa for church, and one outfit for him for the rest of the week.

The rest of the simple homesteading family— hand-me-downs. Clothes were remade and remade and remade until they ended up in the rag bag. Remember those funny pictures of baby boys wearing dresses? Yup! The ultimate in recycling. By the way ladies—there’s no underwear from the waist down—but there are chemise, corsets, corset covers, and then a blouse on top, and the skirts were multi layered—up to 16 layers.

Animal husbandry for simple homesteading? You’d better like being pecked by chickens, trying to solve mastitis without antibiotics, treating thrush (on your horses feet) with iodine, and trimming the hooves of everything that walks. Roosters need their spurs clipped, dogs need their claws shortened and so do cows, goats, horses, sheep and just about anything else you can think of except fish.

Don’t forget you should not drink water that is “downriver” from where the animals drink. And if you want your animals to work for you, they need to be fed before you are. You had better have good neighbors to swap seed and semen with. Remember, this is before artificial insemination and top seed companies. And animals are dangerous. Just because they are cute, doesn’t mean they are safe. Horses kick and bite. Bulls can gore you. A pig will eat you. Roosters’ spurs are sharp. I do hope you know how to sew up cuts and have alcohol (that you made yourself) to wash out wounds.

Housing. If you are living like a “pioneer,” expect a drafty cold house with snow on the bed, no glass in the windows and two rooms. One room is the bedroom, the other is for all other functions, including mending the harness, sharpening and oiling your tools, spinning, and weaving, cooking and relaxing in the evening.

If you were smart, you put in a loft (heat rises). Up there you will find two beds. One bed is for mom and dad and the baby, and the other bed is for everyone else. Half the heads on the pillows at the “head” of the bed and half the heads on the pillows at the “foot” of the bed. The bed will have ropes tied about every foot going across, and three or four ropes going from head to food. This is your “box spring.” Your mattress will be a piece of thick cloth (ticking) that is stuffed with straw or corn husks or something of that ilk. The featherbed (if there is one) goes on top to keep you warm.

If you are “city folk,” instead of simple homesteading you’ll have curtains around your bed to help keep body warmth in. You might be smart enough to make a house that has good chinking between the logs. In which case, you have to worry about “cabin fever”—which is really another name for carbon dioxide poisoning, because you haven’t opened the door enough to bring in oxygen after the fire and all the people use it all up.

Here’s something else you can do in your spare time—boiling the horns from the cows so they can be flattened and used to make into spoons and the “glass” in the lantern. That’s after you oil and mend all the harnesses, clean all the glass lanterns of their soot, and drop a live chicken down the chimney to break loose all the creosote. (Yes—I know folks who do it.)

Cooking. If you are living “out west,” you’ll be using dried buffalo dung for fuel. If you happen to live where there is plentiful wood, you get to chop down trees. As in, with an ax. There are saws, but most of them take two people. Look up bucksaw and “Swede” saw. Then you hitch up your horses to haul it out of the woods, chop it into smaller pieces, stack it and haul it into the house whenever you need heat. (Cooking, keeping warm, keeping the wool warm so it will spin, etc.) Ten cords of wood should last you a winter. A cord is 8′ x 8′ x 4′. With a chainsaw it takes me two weeks solid to cut 10 cords.

And the only food you have is what you grow or kill. If there is a drought or a flood, or the locusts hit your garden, or you get sick and can’t carry the water from the well to water the garden, you’re going to go hungry. By the way, you will probably only have two or three metal pans, a Dutch oven (or something that can be covered with coals), a frying pan and a boiling pan. (For 17 people, remember). In simple homesteading, lots of cooking is done in crockery or wrapped in leaves and stuck in the coals.

Expect to eat a lot of soup, especially for breakfast. And if it’s before the time of Napoleon, nothing canned. It’s all fresh, dried, salted, or fermented (think sauerkraut). Hopefully you have dug yourself a well wide enough you can keep stuff cool if you don’t have a springhouse or a root cellar. One of the reasons to make cheese is to use up all the milk you ended up with by milking by hand—after you weaned the calves. Another chore that isn’t fun—flour. If you grow your own grain, you’d better know the difference between a snath and a blade and how to sharpen the latter.

Have we talked about shoes yet? Before the American Civil War, there were no “left” and “right” shoes. Or rather, they weren’t made that way, but after wearing them often enough, they developed “left” and “right.” The country songs that talk about getting a “brand new pair” when the kids go off to school is pretty accurate—for the 20th century. Before that, you went barefoot most of the year. If you lived in the city and were a lady, you had satin slippers to go dancing in. Yes, satin material. No insole. No sole. Just a piece of satin material sewn into a slipper shape.

By the way, did I discuss disease yet? You know all those vaccines that are pushed on you as a child? All those were diseases that killed or crippled. Polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox, small pox, influenza, diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid, whooping cough, trench mouth, milk fever, goiters, warts, and worms. All those and all the “little” problems that we face such as arthritis, heart attacks, and diabetes, were out there with no cure. But there was opium!

Because of the high death rate among children, the “average” lifespan was 35. If you survived childhood, you had a good chance of living to be 60 or even 70. But by that time you were so worn out by all the work, you were ready. By the time you were 40 your skin was very wrinkled, you had lost most of your teeth, and every joint hurt—all the time.

Yup, life in the 1800s: the “good old days.” I’ll stick with homesteading today.

Two of my many sources are: America Eats, by Williams Woys Weaver, Museum of American FolkArt, Harper & Row Publishers, 1989 Everyday Life in the 1800s, by Marc McCutcheon, Writers Digest Books, 1993

Originally published in Countryside January / February 2013 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

A Glimpse at Simple Homesteading Life in the 1800s was originally posted by All About Chickens

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susalh-blog · 7 years

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Sure, Let’s Talk Health (Pt. 1)

I know that my children don’t understand my health situation. I know they expect me to feel all better - and wonder why I don’t. The concept of having a chronic disorder/disease is intellectually understandable to them, but I still get questions and comments revolving around “are you better yet?”. So let’s see if I can color in this paint-by-number topic to the point of providing clarity of subject matter.

I don’t remember a time when I was healthy - actually that’s not true; I remember being a healthish young adult.... but that’s much later and not quite true. I was a healthy baby, it would seem. I recall neither the reality nor family stories. Aside from accidentally swallowing a tinker toy when I was about 3, I don’t recall a medical thing happening to me.

That changed when we moved to St. Louis, when I was around 4. When I was 5, I had a horrid case of the measles. I lay in bed in a dark room, for days. My fever crossed 105 degrees, 4 days in a row, and my parents thought that was the end of me. I was too sick to transport to the hospital, so my pediatrician made a house call, hooking me up to IV’s in my thighs. (This, by the way, was the start of a terrible needle phobia. You don’t get IV’s, with people holding you down while you thrashed having fever dreams, and not have a resultant phobia.) I did survive but with my budding permanent teeth “fried” - I would have brownish teeth for the rest of my life. Yes, that is a thing - look it up.

As I said, I did survive, but was far too weak to go to kindergarten, so I was babysat by a lady up the block, while my mother worked on the 1960 National Census. A couple days into this arrangement, the lady met us at the door highly agitated. “Don’t come in! My kids have the mumps! Get Susan away from here!”

Mama took me home and called the pediatrician who, alarmed, brought us immediately into the office to begin a course of an experimental mumps vaccine. I can remember the terror of getting this shot after my measles experience! I shrieked and had to be held down - not once, but 3 times over the course of as many weeks. Talk about nightmares.

Since I now needed to be carefully watched (for side effects of the shots as well as my weak constitution), Mama bundled me into the back of our Ford Falcon and drove me around while she went house to house conducting her census surveys. I had a nest in the back seat: Blankets, pillows, books, paper, scissors, crayons and tape. I was given milk and snacks at almost every stop to build up my strength and weight.

After that, I have memories of constant sickness, but which I figured was normal childhood. Beginning around 3rd grade, I was sick (missing school) basically a week of every month. I had fierce sinus infections and miserable tonsillitis. I never had my tonsils out because my pediatrician (who had saved my life, so could do no harm in my parents’ eyes) was “nouvelle” and felt that tonsils had to stay in. I remember the feeling of a tonsil episode starting: A quivering feeling in the back of my throat - as though my throat were dry. So I would swallow and swallow and within an hour or so, the quiver had turned into t localized stab of pain. Fever would shoot up, and I was down for the count.

I also remember sickening sinus headaches, which often started at school and left me leaning against the bus windows coming home, letting the cool glass sooth my pain somewhat. I would sometimes have to sick down on the walk home from the bus stop because I felt so so sick. At home I went up to bed, using a Vicks inhaler and VapoRub on my face as a remedy. The Vicks burned mightily, but I stood it, believing that it was literally burning the pain out of me. As its pain ebbed, I usually fell asleep, and often work with the headache gone, but feeling rather groggy and stunned. It was a miracle when SinuTabs were invented. They would keep the pain down to a dull roar, and I could continue through my day. As an adult, I realized that I LIVED with sinus infections - heavy yellow snot, unable to breathe, low grade fever and all - and never thought anything of it (except the feeling of aggravation that ‘here comes another one’). It was not until I was an adult, and got my own adult doctor in Charlottesville, that I learned this was an infection, which needed to be dealt with, and which, miraculously! could be tamed with antibiotics!

What were my parents thinking? I don’t know. These two monsters of my childhood, tonsillitis and sinusitis, were ignored. I was told to get dressed and get to school unless I had a fever (which I did a lot of the time as my report cards attest!) and told to get more sleep. When I was sick, I was put to bed and basically ignored. I had my own personal bed table for when I was sick. I read a lot of books and made villages of cardboard on my bed. As an adolescent, I was allowed to watch TV. My mama would bring me lunch, usually soup and jello, but left me alone the rest of the time. I don’t know. Maybe they were more attentive than I remember, but I have no memory of that at all, which really makes me sad. I’m actually crying while writing this, because I feel so bad for that lonely little sick kid.

One distinct memory - and I am sorry at both the pathos and the pity this will engender. I remember one time when I had a stomach flu. I was expected to get up and go throw up in the connecting bathroom (no trash can for me!). But I had such a high fever, and I was so ill, that all I could manage was to roll to the side of the bed and throw up on the floor and then, basically, pass out, until I needed to vomit the next time. I can remember calling for my parents, but no one came. That was in St. Louis in our big house, so maybe they didn’t hear me. But no one came and I threw up several times. I don’t recall having that mess cleaned up or what happened next.

I also remember having fever dreams, where everything swelled to enormous size and I had to find my way out of a world of “balloon creatures”. I can remember the joy of breaking out in a deep sweat and knowing my fever was breaking. I can remember the odd, glassy, glowy feeling of stepping back into the real world where everything seemed fresh and shiny!

When our family moved to Washington, D.C., and I was in 5th grade (age 11), I missed my last month of school in St. Louis because I was violently ill with what I thought was tonsillitis, but was something more sinister -scarlet fever, perhaps? We had to move from our house while I was ill, and my father went on to D.C., while my mother and I stayed in a nearby hotel. I remember that the linens in that hotel felt awful, and the sofa bed I slept in was uncomfortable. I recovered enough to go visit school on the last day. My mother drove me there, and my classmates surprised me with a going away party! They had little gifts for me, and we had a cake. They couldn’t come near me for fear that I would pick up another germ. I remember waving to them, 10 feet away or so. I loved my teachers, Mrs. Wall, for doing that for me.

In Washington, my “worst case ever seen” of measles, was joined by a “worse case ever seen” of chicken pox. I had them between my toes, in my eyes, everywhere! My niece and nephew, roughly 4 and 5 years old, also had them. It was the March after my mother had died, and Dad and Anne had to work, so I babysat all three of us as we lived through the pox, then each developed secondary infections. I can remember painting pink calamine on ourselves for both fun and relief, and begging my father for a gun like toy and setting up a shooting range in my room for fun. Weird. Horrid and weird. Where were the adults?!?

I also got a case of German measles, which seemed like lightweight stuff after the other two. I never got the mumps: That experimental vaccine worked, it seemed.

In the year after my mother died, I missed school rather a lot with stomach aches. Frankly, I don’t think that was actually illness; I think that was psychosomatic illness due to depression. Whatever, I was home and binged on TV, days at a time. I don’t remember much else about that period.

As I got older, I managed my headaches better and the tonsils seemed to settle down. In college, I got a horrible earache, which the clinic told me was nothing, but which burst once I got home for Christmas. Our hometown doctor was furious that they hadn’t dealt with it more actively. That’s why my right ear has diminished hearing.

Through my young adult years, I was plagued with hard strong, irregular periods. At 22, I was told that I might as well get a hysterectomy, since I would never have children. A second opinion confirmed the first. Thankfully, I ignored them both. When Peter and I got married, we went to an OB/GYN to get me checked out. He told us that I looked fine “in there” and go ahead and try for kids - if nothing happened in a couple of years we could talk again. Little did we all know that I was actually already pregnant. With twins.

My pregnancies were dreadful. I couldn’t keep any food down with the twins, and lost 35 pounds in the first trimester. I was down to roughly 100 lbs. When I began throwing up water, I was hospitalized to get things under control. There, I literally almost died, when I had a severe allergic reaction to compazine, given to me for nausea. The nurse would not believe me that I couldn’t swallow and was having trouble breathing. She said I was just over reacting because it was my first pregnancy, but I was having an anaphylactic reaction. Peter wandered in and saw me in dire straits and ran out to the nurses station where they told him to calm down. He ran downstairs, across the street to the doctor’s office and got him to come in a rush. Dr. Vogel showed up at a dead run, called for Benedryl, which he administered, then sat with me while I recovered until I slept. He held my hand and kept apologizing. Apparently he then went straight out and got the nurse fired. We almost lost me and my beautiful boys that day.

It was also the first in a long, long sequence of allergic reactions to drugs. Thankfully, we had a friend who was a pharmacologist who helped us negotiate this crooked path. He gave us a list of warnings, starting with the compazine, which he says I should never have been given since I was allergic to aspiriin.

I regained the weight I had lost, handled a difficult pregnancy (which included PUP - or an allergic reaction to the babies’ placenta), and gave birth to gorgeous Paul and Daniel. Four years later I gave birth (after a pregnancy that was slightly less hard) to beautiful Mary. If you look at photos of this era, I was a stick - in fact, a friend said that pregnant, I looked like a cocktail olive on a toothpick.

Once these years passed, I was slammed with weight gain. I’ve never really figured this out. I went from a super skinny mother, who took and taught aerobics, hiked up hills, carried around my kids in backpacks, and cared for a large house, to an overweight Woman of Pain. In graduate school, I ran with a group on Columbia’s indoor track, managing several miles at a time while we talked about our readings.

But suddenly I could barely get through a day with out several doses of Tylenol for the pain. I gained an enormous amount of weight, while eating ‘normally’. By the time we moved to Portland, I was a fat, painful mess, and wondered what on earth had gone wrong.

This takes energy - more later.

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josephkitchen0 · 6 years

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A Glimpse at Simple Homesteading Life in the 1800s

Ready to Start Your Own Backyard Flock?

Get tips and tricks for starting your new flock from our chicken experts. Download your FREE guide today! YES! I want this Free Guide »

Are you interested in the day-to-day life of agrarian people as opposed to those who live in the city? If so—I recommend becoming a homesteader without electricity, power tools or indoor plumbing.

Be prepared to slaughter pigs and use everything except the “oink.” (Think pickled pig’s feet.) And you had better spend all day Sunday at church.

Yup, life in the 1800s: the “good old days.” I’ll stick with homesteading today.

Two of my many sources are: America Eats, by Williams Woys Weaver, Museum of American FolkArt, Harper & Row Publishers, 1989 Everyday Life in the 1800s, by Marc McCutcheon, Writers Digest Books, 1993

Originally published in Countryside January / February 2013 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

A Glimpse at Simple Homesteading Life in the 1800s was originally posted by All About Chickens

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