Arlene Edwards Kimber wrote about her mother, Nina Sorenson Edwards, and a family member posted it to Familysearch.org. Nina was Larry Edwards' grandmother. I don't know how these ladies did it---plus the daily care of their children and keeping up with everything often while expecting a new baby.
Mom’s water supply was an open well with only boards covering the top. It was about 100 feet from the house. Water was carried to the house and stored in a bucket or 5 gallon can to use for cooking, drinking, washing etc.
Mom’s cooking stove was a wood burning stove. Mom always started the fire each morning. Dad did not start the fire as he would often use Gasoline and cause damage rather than being helpful. Mom with that stove could create the best bread, meals, venison steaks, pies, and cookies, that pleased all of her grateful children and husband.
An outhouse was built about 100 feet from the house. That was another area that Mom had to watch and ensure that chemicals were placed on the discarded waste, and if needed another hole was dug and the outhouse moved to another location and the old hole covered with dirt. Indoor waste containers were located in the house to use in the night for little kids and Mom took the containers to the outhouse and emptied them.
Lack of electricity created the need for all tasks be done before the dark of the night. The light at night that I am most familiar with is the oil lamps that put off a yellow dim light. School assignments were better done early and nightly chores also. The nightly chores were bringing in wood for the stove or even chopping wood if you were a boy or able to handle an axe and bringing water from the well to fill the house containers. The children did the task and Mom made sure it was done.
House hold duties were not the only thing that had to be done on a farm. Mom had chickens and chickens are not low maintenance. Children don’t mind gathering eggs, or feeding chicken but they do not like to clean chicken coops. Mom generally had that smelly and unpleasant task of scraping the chickens waste off of the boards that were used by the chickens at nighttime. Mom generally would kill the chicken when she wanted to prepare a meal of chicken. She had a long wire with a hook on the end that would catch the chicken by the leg and then she would either ring the chicken’s neck or use a hatchet while keeping the neck of the chicken on a log. Chickens couldn’t be a pet because they had a purpose of laying eggs; becoming a mother to a bunch of chickens hatched from the eggs she had laid for that purpose or becoming a delicious dinner for the family. Mom was fortunate to be able to sell the eggs at the local store in exchange for items that could not be grown.
One of the evening chores was milking cows. Mom always wore a dress with an apron covering the dress even when she milked the cows. Cows have a tail that is use to swat at the flies on their backs and often you were hit in the face with the tail. Cows are not always gentle and good natured and if they don’t like how you treat them, they will lift their foot and sometimes it will end up in your bucket of milk. You must always be on the alert. Milk was also part of the income that came into the Edwards household when it was sent in milk cans to Malta to the cheese factory.
Spring time was the time for Mom to plant her garden containing all kinds of vegetables. It is a lot of work to maintain a garden but mom never complained and did most of the work herself. First you prepared the soil, planted the seed, hoed out weeds that always come, water regularly and finally harvest the product. She would get up early to do her work before the heat of the day.
Mom would enlist the help of daughters when bottling the vegetables and fruits. Green beans had to be snapped. Corn taken off the cob. Peas shelled. Apples peeled and core taken out. Bottles washed. The woodburning stove had to be hot enough to boil the water in a large galvanized pan, that held the bottled vegetable or fruit for the needed time to preserve the item. It was a hot and long process but a very vital process to provide us with fruits and vegetables to last us for a year. Little fresh air could get into the kitchen as window did not open and the door did not go outside, but into a little porch.
Having a big family created a lot of washing. I don’t remember our washing machine but I do know we had to haul and heat the water and Mom made the soap that washed the clothes. I remember helping hang the clothes on the three rows of clothes lines that went along the south end of the lot. I hung a lot of clothes with close pins and gathered them when they were dry. I think mom did most of that work of folding and ironing the clothes with an iron heated on the stove.
