Friday afternoon the women had their own pow-wow, with a few men contributing. All four of my grandparents were there, of course Mom, Jean, Lois, Sandy, Amy, Lynette, Mel and I. Dad was there, too. Lois was a nurse and the dominant one in the group; she had been coordinating the meals and giving a lot of the orders.
Mom had said to me, “This is Jean’s place and it could make some conflict with Lois being so bossy.” Mom, however, played the peacemaker, kept her ear tuned to the situation and had to tactfully step between them now and again. So far things had been amicable.
Unlike Dad and Harvey the night before, who had laid out the challenges for the boys, today Lois asked us, “What are our challenges?”
“Well generally” Sandy said, “our responsibilities are food, laundry, bathroom and dishes.”
“So far so good,” said Lois. “We have hot water; we have quite a bit of laundry soap, dish soap, and bath soap. Why don’t we tackle laundry first? The boys did a good job of getting us hot water. We still have to carry water but I hear they’re working on that. We have plenty of wash lines and Poppop’s working on clothes pins. Jeremiah told me last night that the boys
are trying to convert one of the wash machines to mechanical drive. I don’t know how they’re going to power it, but we’ll see.”
Mom said, “I think we should ask them to build some kind of wringer, too, like our parents had when they started out. We wouldn’t have to squeeze them out by hand then.”
“Good idea,” said Sandy said, “I’ll say something to Aaron and Dennis.”
“Okay,” said Jean, “that should cover laundry for now. The next biggest item is food. At this point, we have a lot but conservation is the name of the game. Not only for food, but backing up a little bit, with soap, too.”
“It really helps,” Mom said, “if we prewash the dishes and pots and pans in good hot water before we put them in the soap water. That takes a lot of the grease and dirt off first and requires a lot less soap that way.”
“Mel said, “I think it’s really efficient for us to be eating our meals all at one spot. There are 21 of us. It sure saves time in both preparation and clean up to have it all at one place.”
“And,” said Amy, “I like how we can take turns cooking; where one group does breakfast, another group does dinner, and a third group does supper.”
I was on the breakfast cooking crew with Lynette, Mom and Grandma.
Lynette added, “It’s also good that we all don’t have to do dishes every meal.” This had been accomplished by dividing the work so that each of us only has to do dishes once a day. I was on the supper dishes crew with Mom, Jean and Lynette. Our placement had been Dad’s idea, so that Lynette and I could join him and the other men immediately after eating breakfast and dinner to help with the cows, in the garden or in the fields. Not that I was always anxious to work in the garden or move fences, but I loved working with the cows. Another benefit was that after supper Dad, Poppop, and Grandpop would often help with the dishes, too, lightening the load for our crew.
“I’m glad you like the way it’s working,” said Lois. “So, I guess, we’ll continue to do it that way.”
“Now,” Mel said, “the menu’s a different matter. I’m getting sick of tomato soup.” Of course, Dad loved tomatoes, and according to him, soup was just another good way to enjoy them. Fortunately we still had a few boxes of crackers. Dad could enjoy his soup without crackers, so he’d share his with Mel and me. It made the tomato soup a little more tolerable.
At this point, much of our menu was milk-driven. We still had supplies of cereal and that large bag of oatmeal that we could eat with milk, but those would be gone sometime. We also had some boxes of pudding. It was hard to chill in the springhouse, but that, too, would run out in the near future. We had quite a bit of tapioca which Mel loved to make, but at some
point, we’d run out of sugar. I’m not sure how we’d like it without sugar. We also had eggs to use in the tapioca pudding and other types of custard. We probably should save the pudding, tapioca and sugar for cooler weather; none would spoil until then. With plenty of milk on hand, we could also make milk gravy.
Lois said, “We have all these fresh vegetables to eat and all this milk. I sure wouldn’t mind if we could get some butter produced.”
“Well,” Sandy said, “I guess none of us has a butter churn, but does anyone have a homemade ice cream freezer, one that we can crank, or the boys can set up with a mechanical drive? We could try to make butter that way.”
“That’s a great idea,” Grandmom said. “Our ice cream freezer is crank-driven, so we can make butter. We’ll have to experiment a little to see how long to churn it and how much salt to add to make it work.”
Poppop chimed in, “Remember, we have to use cream, so we have to separate that somehow.”
Jean said, “We’re always stirring it into the milk we use now. We’ll just have to skim it off instead; maybe someone could come up with a separator some day. We can also use the butter for frying. I doubt if the men will come up with a way to squeeze oil out of the soybeans, but you never know. Eventually, however, we will do some butchering, then we’ll have lard and beef tallow for frying.”
“But butter is better,” shot back Mel. “It will absolutely improve the tomato soup!” Everyone chuckled.
“What can we use the buttermilk for?” Sandy asked.
“Well,” Mom said, “we can still drink it. Some of us were used to drinking skim milk anyway.”
“Or,” Lois said, “we could use it in baking.”
“Baking,” Jean said, “we haven’t done that for a while. Do you think the men can make some sort of oven using this stove?”
“I hope so,” Dad answered. “We’ll get them working on it, but what about leavening?”
“Oh,” Jean said, “Larry has a 50-pound bag of bicarbonate of soda that he used to put in the dairy ration. You know it as baking soda. He gave that to us knowing we might be able to use it.”
“And,” Mom said, “I think we also have some yeast in our supplies, but only a little.”
Sandy said, “There’s a recipe for Friendship Cake. It’s like sourdough where you keep feeding the yeast and only using part of it when you bake and you save the rest for more stock. I think you can perpetually keep the yeast growing that way.”
“That’s a great idea,” Lois said. “I’m pretty sure I can find that recipe but we need flour to keep the yeast growing and, for that matter, for any baking. We don’t have a lot. We’ll run out sometime.”
“Yes,” Jean said, “but there’s a lot of wheat in the barn.”
Grandpop said, “Sounds like another job for the boys to come up with a mill or a grinder to make flour.”
“I imagine,” Dad said, “We can come up with something. We’ll put it on the list.”
“It will be whole wheat flour,” Grandmom said.
“That’s good,” said Poppop, “it’s healthier for us anyway.”
“Then,” Mom added, “the final thing that we need to remember as far as food is concerned, is that we need to stay on top of things in the garden or in the fields, so that we use up fresh items in our cooking before they spoil.”
“That’s correct,” said Lois. “Conservation. We need to save the food that’s canned, dried, or in good packages for later use and use the fresh items as soon as possible.”
“Let’s talk about bathroom facilities now,” said Sandy. “We’re carrying a lot of water for flushing the toilets although the boys are working on a solution for that.”
I said, “I can pee outside like the boys do.”
“Yewh,” said Lynette and Amy.
Mom said, “I don’t know if you have to do that Alyssa, but every little bit helps.”
“Beats carrying all that extra water,” I answered.
“I don’t know,” said Jean. “Maybe at some point we’ll build an outhouse. But in the meantime, we might have to stop using the toilet in the house and use a bucket as a toilet instead so we only have to carry that out a few times a day instead of carrying all that water in the house.”
“Wait a minute,” Sandy interjected, “We’re carrying water in anyway to take baths. We just have to dip it out of the tub and use that water to flush the toilets. Buckets we have, let’s just remember to not let the bathwater down the drain.”
“Why sure, that’ll work,” Jean said. “Let’s talk about showering now.”
“Yeah, I sure do miss them,” Mel said. “I mean, when we wash in the tub we have to carry both hot and cold water.”
“I think,” Dad said, “The boys are working on a plan to build a shower room in the space between the outside furnace and the butcher house, so it would be warm in the wintertime and you wouldn’t have to carry the water.
It might be a trick to get it blended so that it’s not too hot or cold, but they’re working on it. They’re also trying to rig it up so that the overflow, the used water, would be caught to use to flush the toilets.”
“Well, I hope they figure that out,” Lois said. “I wouldn’t mind having a shower again.”
“Tell you what’s on my mind,” said Amy, “We’re going to run out of toilet paper too.”
“Ouch!” said Grandma, “Corn cobs are a pretty rough option.”
“Oh that’s very true,” said Mom. “We have to save any paper we have; tissues or paper towels may not be used for other purposes. We might have to use newspaper eventually. Any paper must be saved them for toileting.”
“I guess no one knows how to make paper or tissues?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said, “I don’t think anyone in this crew does. At some point, we’re going to have to use cloth. We brought with us the cloth diapers that I used when you were a baby. We can cut those into smaller pieces and use them to wipe, then they’ll have to be washed separately, perhaps the last thing we do on laundry day. We wouldn’t want to cut all of them. We might need some for babies.”
“Hey!” Lois exclaimed, “No one here is having a baby, are they?”
There were blank stares all around, so Sandy answered, “It doesn’t appear so, but you never know; none of us are getting our prescriptions filled now.”
“Plus,” Mom said, “others might join us over the next few months. Some could be expecting. We also can cut up other pieces of clothing if we need to, like some of our husbands’ holey tee shirts that they love to wear.”
“Those thick diapers can be cut for sanitary napkins, too,” Jean added. “We’re sure to run out of them, too.”
“Enough talk, already,” Grandma said. “It’s time to get supper started. Who’s on the cooking crew tonight?”
Lois said, “It’s Grandmom, Amy and I.”
“What’s on the menu?” Dad asked.
“Boiled cabbage and tomato soup.”
“Oh, boy,” sighed Lynette. “I can’t wait.”
After supper, Lynette, Amy and I were sitting outside with my dad and uncle Jeremiah.
Jeremiah said, “I saw Orion for the first time Wednesday morning.”
Dad said, “That’s great. I saw it this morning.”
Orion is an ecliptical constellation. It lies on the imaginary circle in the sky that the sun appears to travel on as we revolve around it. Unlike the North Star and the Big Dipper, which at our latitude can be seen every night of the year that’s not cloudy, about three months of the year we cannot see Orion because the sun appears in the sky at the same time. Sometime starting in late July, Orion rises early enough ahead of the sun that it can be seen before dawn. Orion is the hunter and our family treats it as a good omen, an announcement that hunting season will soon arrive.
“I guess we’re not sure how this hunting season will pan out,” Dad said. “With everything else going on, it sure makes me feel good to see Orion, even though we don’t know exactly where this year will take us.”
“Exactly,” Jeremiah answered, “seeing Orion brings me comfort, knowing that some things just don’t change.”
To be continued.... Mort
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