Pioneers
I have been watching and very much enjoying a video series on
Amazon Prime entitled Pioneer Quest. It is a taped reality show
about two couples, one in their 50s and one a young couple-20s?
who are selected to attempt to live on a prairie site in Canada for a year. They arrive in a wagon drawn by a team of horses with basic
supplies such as their ancestors would have had, a milk cow, a
pregnant sow and some hens and roosters. They have to plow
with an old single bottom plow, heavy sod that had not been farmed
in many years. They had to build their barn and homes from trees they cut on the property. They dug a well through packed clay soil.
They lived for 6 weeks in a tent--two couples who had been strangers--learning to get along, to work together in rough conditions. It rained for days, flooded, the seeds they planted rotted before they could sprout. Mosquitoes and ticks attacked en
force . No repellents in the 1850s.
If you think you might have been born in the wrong century and would have loved to be a pioneer, watch this series. It is enlightening.
I have always read everything about pioneers. Growing up on a dairy farm where we began with old horse drawn equipment, loose
hay we raked up into windrows by hand. We had a tractor though
and milking machines, and a modern house. The only horse was my
saddle horse whom I doubted would ever have considered pulling a plow.
But as a young woman I still dreamed that if I met the right man we would journey to northwestern Canada and raise a family pioneer style.
In my late 30s I found myself a single Mom. I had a good job-two in fact-so I found a man who was willing to take a chance on me at a time when no bank would loan a woman funds to purchase a home. He owned an old farm house almost at the top of a mountain
with three barns-two of which were falling down, and 20 acres of
unkempt fields bordered by tumbling stone walls and second growth trees. I gave him a small down payment and he gave me a 20 year mortgage.
Many memories and stories I have to tell about the 24 years I owned the place I named Singing Meadows. ( Birds and insects
kept up a constant song in those sun-kissed fields) But in a way we,
my children and I, did live a pioneer dream. I did not build a barn, but I did remodel the interior of the best one to have a stall for a horse, pens for a goat and hens. I did not build a house. That farmhouse was over 100 years old, with a hand pegged log frame.
It had been modernized to have electricity (fuse box) and the water in the hand dug well at the back door had been piped into the house. We had a bathroom. The toilet drained into a hand dug cesspool. The sink & tub water ran out on the ground to a swampy area below the house. For heat there was a potbelly cast iron oil stove located at the foot of the staircase between the kitchen and the living room. During our first winter in residence, that stove became defunct. I went to the local hardware store and with the $100 my parents had sent for my birthday, I purchased a small
sheet metal wood burning stove. How well I recall the days my 12 year old son, Brian,our collie dog, Loki, and I cut wood to feed that little stove. I had a chain saw. I hiked through the snow in the back pasture to the old apple orchard and there I cut up some of the dead
trees. We fashioned a harness for the dog and as I cut limbs into reasonable lengths, I attached them to Loki's harness. Then I sent her back to the house, dragging her load to Brian, who stood at the front of the woodshed where he unhooked Loki, sent her racing back to me, and began cutting the limb into stove sized pieces, then
stacking them in the shed, with the help of his 10 year old sister, Margie.
We grew all our own vegetables, picked wild grapes, blueberries and raspberries. We had eggs from the hens and meat from the young roosters, which we butchered ourselves, milk , cheese & yogurt from the goat. We even tapped the 6 maple trees in February for making syrup. We not only survived, the children and I thrived.
So could I have been an 1850s pioneer woman? Maybe.
But this program is showing me how much I was NOT prepared to do. Now I have my own pioneering memories. Maybe a book?
Amazon Prime entitled Pioneer Quest. It is a taped reality show
about two couples, one in their 50s and one a young couple-20s?
who are selected to attempt to live on a prairie site in Canada for a year. They arrive in a wagon drawn by a team of horses with basic
supplies such as their ancestors would have had, a milk cow, a
pregnant sow and some hens and roosters. They have to plow
with an old single bottom plow, heavy sod that had not been farmed
in many years. They had to build their barn and homes from trees they cut on the property. They dug a well through packed clay soil.
They lived for 6 weeks in a tent--two couples who had been strangers--learning to get along, to work together in rough conditions. It rained for days, flooded, the seeds they planted rotted before they could sprout. Mosquitoes and ticks attacked en
force . No repellents in the 1850s.
If you think you might have been born in the wrong century and would have loved to be a pioneer, watch this series. It is enlightening.
I have always read everything about pioneers. Growing up on a dairy farm where we began with old horse drawn equipment, loose
hay we raked up into windrows by hand. We had a tractor though
and milking machines, and a modern house. The only horse was my
saddle horse whom I doubted would ever have considered pulling a plow.
But as a young woman I still dreamed that if I met the right man we would journey to northwestern Canada and raise a family pioneer style.
In my late 30s I found myself a single Mom. I had a good job-two in fact-so I found a man who was willing to take a chance on me at a time when no bank would loan a woman funds to purchase a home. He owned an old farm house almost at the top of a mountain
with three barns-two of which were falling down, and 20 acres of
unkempt fields bordered by tumbling stone walls and second growth trees. I gave him a small down payment and he gave me a 20 year mortgage.
Many memories and stories I have to tell about the 24 years I owned the place I named Singing Meadows. ( Birds and insects
kept up a constant song in those sun-kissed fields) But in a way we,
my children and I, did live a pioneer dream. I did not build a barn, but I did remodel the interior of the best one to have a stall for a horse, pens for a goat and hens. I did not build a house. That farmhouse was over 100 years old, with a hand pegged log frame.
It had been modernized to have electricity (fuse box) and the water in the hand dug well at the back door had been piped into the house. We had a bathroom. The toilet drained into a hand dug cesspool. The sink & tub water ran out on the ground to a swampy area below the house. For heat there was a potbelly cast iron oil stove located at the foot of the staircase between the kitchen and the living room. During our first winter in residence, that stove became defunct. I went to the local hardware store and with the $100 my parents had sent for my birthday, I purchased a small
sheet metal wood burning stove. How well I recall the days my 12 year old son, Brian,our collie dog, Loki, and I cut wood to feed that little stove. I had a chain saw. I hiked through the snow in the back pasture to the old apple orchard and there I cut up some of the dead
trees. We fashioned a harness for the dog and as I cut limbs into reasonable lengths, I attached them to Loki's harness. Then I sent her back to the house, dragging her load to Brian, who stood at the front of the woodshed where he unhooked Loki, sent her racing back to me, and began cutting the limb into stove sized pieces, then
stacking them in the shed, with the help of his 10 year old sister, Margie.
We grew all our own vegetables, picked wild grapes, blueberries and raspberries. We had eggs from the hens and meat from the young roosters, which we butchered ourselves, milk , cheese & yogurt from the goat. We even tapped the 6 maple trees in February for making syrup. We not only survived, the children and I thrived.
So could I have been an 1850s pioneer woman? Maybe.
But this program is showing me how much I was NOT prepared to do. Now I have my own pioneering memories. Maybe a book?
Okay. I have written quite a few chapters/episodes in the past.
ReplyDeleteSo I think I will try putting it together and see how it goes.
Thank you for your enthusiastic response. :- )
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