Our Chores

I

In the fall you always had to spread the manure all over the garden and then in the spring Dad would have someone come in and dig it up and then you had to make the furrows and plant the seeds. I imagine that garden was 200 feet long and 100 feet wide. We grew everything - corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, peas. I know we grew enough tomatoes and we would pick them and I'd take them in the wagon to the cannery which was by stinky springs to Caroll Heaton who would buy the tomatoes from us.

We also had a cow and you have to milk it twice a day. I'd let the cream rise to the top of the milk and then take a spoon and slide the cream into a two quart jar which we would shake to make butter. I'd take the cow on the highway and let it graze. I'd tie a rope to a fence and let it graze in a circle and then later on I had to go and move it.

The chickens always had to be fed and the eggs gathered. I hated the chickens. We mowed the lawn with a hand mower which I hated, and then there were extras like helping with the wash or making soap. Mother would make lye soap. She would save all the fat from anything we had and then when it had accumulated, she would cook it over an outside fire and add chemicals like lye and wood ashes and then boil it until it looked like soap. She would use it in the washing machine to wash the clothes. I can't remember how often she would do this but I remember helping.

We did the wash outside on the back porch. You would fill the washer and rinse tubs with hot water and then agitate the clothes until they were clean. The clothes had to be fed through the wringer into the rinse tub and then through the wringer again to be hung on the clothes line to dry. It took all day.

Our Cow

Nathela Wood (Del's wife) doing wash at her house

Mother and Arlington doing the Wash