Maybe I should have been a pioneer woman

[catherine]

I'm 67 and just had the revelation that maybe I have been living a cloaked life--middle class, suburban, raising my kids in the land of lofty material expectations and upwardly-mobile goals (New Jersey), college educated, city-oriented.

But do you know what I feel my greatest accomplishment is this year? Knowing how to build a great fire in the wood-burning stove. Being the architect of the flame, harvesting kindling in my yard and surrounding yards, feeling the wood for its lightness and choosing it for its dryness. Respecting the wood that gives us heat. Feeling the early morning chill and turning that into a warm glow.

DH and I have determined that we are earning our winter-lake-street-cred and that we are probably going to sit through the winter here next year. Yeah, it's windy. Big deal. Yeah, it's 10 degrees colder than even Burlington, VT. Big deal. We have our "wee hoose" that's cozy and comfortable--even in the winter.

Are there any "pioneer skills" you take particular pride or enjoyment in?

[razz]

LOL, Catherine. I have harvested wood, grown crops and preserved them, made fires, harvested maple syrup, sewn clothes, cut hair, knitted garments, shoveled lots of pig and cow manure, milked cows, killed and plucked a chicken, walked many miles, and all the things that pioneer women accomplished without some of the technology that I had. Glad that I had that experience and richness in my life but I love my cozy house with all its amenities right now.

My pioneer skills are learning to do things as needed with what I have on hand, stretching a dollar and as my dear DH used to say, "The impossible just takes a little longer".

[catherine]

LOL, Catherine. I have harvested wood, grown crops and preserved them, made fires, harvested maple syrup, sewn clothes, cut hair, knitted garments, shoveled lots of pig and cow manure, milked cows, killed and plucked a chicken, walked many miles, and all the things that pioneer women accomplished without some of the technology that I had. Glad that I had that experience and richness in my life but I love my cozy house with all its amenities right now.

My pioneer skills are learning to do things as needed with what I have on hand, stretching a dollar and as my dear DH used to say, "The impossible just takes a little longer".

Yes, we always gravitate toward what we lacked in life, razz! I totally get that you want and deserve a comfortable life with modern amenities--as you say, the lessons well learned are in how to be resourceful and frugal. When you've lived in New Jersey or New York as I have and take light pollution and traffic for granted, seeing stars and open road and open sky are gifts. I feel like I'm opening the gifts a little late in life. My second bedroom here in VT has a futon against a wall with a long ceiling-to-floor window--sometimes I sleep there, and I open the curtain, and I'm mesmerized by the night sky where the stars shine so brightly. It's the best cure for insomnia.

Maybe that's why I love Elton John's song "Good-bye Yellow Brick Road"

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Back to the howling, old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny-back toad
Oh, I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

I just wish I had another 20 years....

[razz]

I do understand your enjoyment of nature and the night sky as I miss that with the bright street lights when I walk my little dog in the evening. Having the farm of our own and growing up on a farm, one does see the world differently than an urban dweller.

I have a neighbour who will celebrate 100 years in 2020. She drives to church on Sunday, down to the local senior centre every week day, never says 'no' to any invite to go somewhere or do something, plays a mean hand of cards of every sort and is my inspiration to settle for nothing less than 100 years of living life fully.
Who says that you don't have 25-30 more years of a full active life? Try new experiences for the heck of doing so. Life is an adventure to be savoured through its peaks and valleys.

[Teacher Terry]

My folks owned a small summer resort so I have plenty of pioneer skills from that experience plus when young we lived in a small town in upstate New York and had a wood stove,etc. Now I am all into my creature comforts. I love living in town where we can walk places and not be so dependent on our cars. So does your lake house stay warm enough for winter? I had imagined that it was made to be a summer house so not insulated.

[catherine]

My folks owned a small summer resort so I have plenty of pioneer skills from that experience plus when young we lived in a small town in upstate New York and had a wood stove,etc. Now I am all into my creature comforts. I love living in town where we can walk places and not be so dependent on our cars. So does your lake house stay warm enough for winter? I had imagined that it was made to be a summer house so not insulated.

They sold it as a "year-round" place. The previous owners had insulated it, installed baseboard heating, and had renovated it for the purpose of living there year-round. The folks we bought it from had actually lived there year round for five years with a small baby a couple of those years! But our neighbors, even Canadians and rural Vermonters said, "You DON'T WANT TO BE HERE in the winter!!" So we believed them. It is very cold here. The lake effect is brutal, and we face north. Our previous owner (a permaculture-type guy) oriented the mudroom so that the door faces south an you can actually duck outside, grab a couple of firewood pieces, and run back in without feeling the wind.

DH was very skeptical when I told him the house is actually pretty air-tight, but he has conceded that it is. There are very few drafts, as long as we seal off the pantry/mudroom (which we have, with that plastic stuff you tighten with a blow-dryer.) It's pretty amazing, actually, for this small "camp" built to be a summer residence, to achieve such energy efficiency.

The rest of the neighborhood is summer-only, so we get the piece of solitude in the winter. There are two homes up the road that are here year-long, but that's it. It's actually quite beautiful in the winter.

3039

[SiouzQ.]

I hear ya on the fire front! Seeing that our new little wood stove is responsible for heating most this big drafty house, I am been learning by trial and error how to keep a good fire going. I have to admit, last night after the snowstorm we got it was pretty hard to keep this place warm, even in the room that has the wood stove; I actually started longing a little for the days when I could just turn up the thermostat. Seeing that it is our first winter in this new house, there are a LOT of things we need to do, like sealing up all the drafty windows that we didn't know about until the windstorm hit...

But I agree, there is an element of satisfaction about learning to accept and survive a lifestyle decision we made. Yes, it is more work than an easy-peasy life (which I'll admit, I sometimes miss) in suburbia, but it is nice knowing that we are handling things as they crop up.

I have to walk to and from work now because my car is on the fritz, but it is only a 5 minute walk, slogging through the snow and desert mud. I'll even have to carry a flashlight because it gets dark so early, and when I get home, the house will be freezing because no one has been here all day. So the first thing one does is build a fire and get that going before anything else. There one upside to having passed through menopause, is that my internal body core temperature seems to be set a bit higher, because I generally don't get nearly as cold as I used to!

[Teacher Terry]

Catherine, it looks beautiful. Living on a lake in winter is cold but it sounds like you have everything covered to be warm.

[pinkytoe]

I just wish I had another 20 years....
So much wisdom seems to come later in life about what really feeds our souls. I too get a lot of satisfaction from being resourceful. Being in cold climes now, I do have much trepidation about slipping on ice and breaking bones.

[Tybee]

What a beautiful view. So glad you are finding the house okay for the winter--it sounds so cozy.

I'm sure you have more than 20 years to enjoy living in Vermont!

[iris lilies]

Building a good fire is a skill indeed, one I dont have, so it is one of accomplishment.

As for living in your cabin throughout the winter, sure that’s fine in a mild winter. If you have back to back extreme winters like they had, what was it, six years ago? five years ago? You might look at it differently. Do you even have snow moving equipment? I dont understand it, but whatever.

I guess the key is being able to predict what kind of winter you’re going to live through, so good luck with that.

Our good friend moved to northern New Hampshire and it’s all about the snow for her. She lives on 5 acres outside of a little berg, and she can see a couple of neighbors but the nearest neighbor is gone through the winter, they are snowbirds.

So here she is clapping her hands in excitement about the idea of snow and her first winter in northern New Hampshire, and she has no snow moving equipment and she hasn’t lined up anyone to move it for her. I don’t think she understands what a real blizzard condition is that during those snows all the heavy equipment in the world can’t even get to her road or to her house. She also is from New Jersey/New York.


I’m from Iowa and DH is from Northern Iowa and he has seen his share of blizzards blow across the plain. In one snow story he tells how he spent the night with Thousands of cute chicks. Driving home from work he had to pull over and spend the night inside the chicken hatching facility.

I will not live north of interstate 80.

But I think New England is gorgeous in all respects. The topography, the vegetation, the architecture. I would love living there April-December.

[catherine]

So here she is clapping her hands in excitement about the idea of snow and her first winter in northern New Hampshire, and she has no snow moving equipment and she hasn’t lined up anyone to move it for her. I don’t think she understands what a real blizzard condition is that during those snows all the heavy equipment in the world can’t even get to her road or to her house. She also is from New Jersey/New York.


We have two guys lined up for snow removal, and last year, I parked our car 100 yards up our road to the road they plowed and I shoveled out our car after the plow came through. Maybe because I come from Pilgrim stock survival is in my DNA.

[Geila]

I remember that show some years back where modern families were taken out into frontier-type conditions and had to live without all the modern conveniences. And one of the women said that she had never realized how much freedom her washer and dryer represented and I totally got that. I was born in a place without electricity or running water (there was a river nearby though), no cars, no hospital or medical services of any kind, etc... So I know that I could live like that again, but I sure wouldn't want to. Lugging dishes, pots and pans, and laundry down to the river to wash and then lugging back up... Using an outhouse or trudging out to the woods... Bathing in ice cold water... The danger of rivers rising during storms... Backbreaking labor just to feed a family and provide shelter... The sheer terror of having one of your kids get sick and knowing that a doctor was nowhere to be found. Taking your child to the doctor several towns away meant leaving the rest of your kids alone for several days. No thank you.

I think it's easy to romanticize the lifestyle through our lens of modern conveniences. In the true pioneering days, you would be completely isolated. And no heat, no car, no internet! :) No water source because your lake is frozen. Hunting or foraging for food.

[catherine]

I remember that show some years back where modern families were taken out into frontier-type conditions and had to live without all the modern conveniences. And one of the women said that she had never realized how much freedom her washer and dryer represented and I totally got that. I was born in a place without electricity or running water (there was a river nearby though), no cars, no hospital or medical services of any kind, etc... So I know that I could live like that again, but I sure wouldn't want to. Lugging dishes, pots and pans, and laundry down to the river to wash and then lugging back up... Using an outhouse or trudging out to the woods... Bathing in ice cold water... The danger of rivers rising during storms... Backbreaking labor just to feed a family and provide shelter... The sheer terror of having one of your kids get sick and knowing that a doctor was nowhere to be found. Taking your child to the doctor several towns away meant leaving the rest of your kids alone for several days. No thank you.

I think it's easy to romanticize the lifestyle through our lens of modern conveniences. In the true pioneering days, you would be completely isolated. And no heat, no car, no internet! :) No water source because your lake is frozen. Hunting or foraging for food.

Yes, I agree. As razz said, she agrees with you--modern conveniences makes life easier and more pleasant. I probably am romanticizing a "simpler" life from that perspective, but too bad we can't marry the two. I love building a fire, but I'm so glad I have a little stackable washer/dryer, and a clothesline outside to dry the clothes on (I prefer line drying to electric/gas drying). I'm glad I have a dishwasher, but I choose to wash my dishes by hand. We have a hospital 35 minutes away, and our Rescue Squad is literally a 5 minute walk, but I love knowing there's only one blinking light in the town for the rescue vehicle to navigate through (have you ever been in NYC and seen ambulances trying to get through that traffic?? You could be 2 miles from a hospital, but you might as well give up and die).

Maybe choice is the answer, but sometimes that leads to the path of least resistance, and perhaps it makes it too easy to forget the more primal ways of life that lead to peace. At the same time, it's great to hear from people who have lived lives of drudgery and survival, so that we don't overly romanticize that experience. I like my middle road.

[iris lilies]

Sometimes I think our appliance dishwasher is just dumb. At the moment it is caked with greasy grain and it needs its biennial scrub down.

We don’t have a dishwasher in Hermann and I’ve lived there for year and a half and do not mind doing dishes at all. I still have to put them away which is always a chore for me in either scenario.

But the washing machine and the dryer – I would not live without those.There are days when I do four loads of laundry.

[Teacher Terry]

I hate washing dishes so wouldn’t be without one. Especially when we have company and I am entertaining 10 -20 people. If I had to wash all the dishes I probably wouldn’t do it.

[catherine]

But the washing machine and the dryer – I would not live without those.There are days when I do four loads of laundry.

Another "nouveau-pioneer" habit: I create my laundry schedule based on the weather report. that way I can hang my clothes on decent days with a decent amount of sun, even in the winter. I just have to keep on top of the laundry so I don't wind up with four loads.

[SteveinMN]

I figure there are skills people used to have which are no longer necessary for everyone to have and common skills people have today about which folks from a couple of centuries ago would be clueless.

For a few months I found myself watching Westerns on TV -- Bonanza, The Rifleman, etc. I found it fascinating to watch people with very different skill sets and expectations in their lives. Yes, granted, it's TV. But I think it was accurate in showing that, if you lived far from a bigger city and someone got sick or injured, the doctor could be days away. There was no ambulance and the doctor's horses really couldn't run faster than your own did.

I don't think people expected to live as long as they do today, with today's advances in life support and multiple sources of chemo/radiation treatment and the like. That such high medical expenses are incurred by many people just before they die speaks, I think, to our shift in attitudes toward the deaths of people we know.

Ditto with even less-skilled work: you repaired your own wagon and equipment; while there were people who specialized in making wagons and shaping metal, etc., you still had to know how to do some basic repairs. Of course, the wagon was simpler back then. You attached the powertrain (the horse) and off you went, protecting yourself from the elements and the lack of paved roads as best you could. There was no need to attach a computer to your wagon to adjust how well it ran.

On the other hand, today we think nothing of managing a vehicle going down the road at better than a mile a minute -- a speed that can maim or kill us -- and mentally composing a shopping list or fiddling with the radio. It's a skill most of us have that probably would scare the whee out of "us" from 150 years ago. We sleep nightly in noise and light conditions which probably would feel like daylight to our forebears. I would guess that Americans today on average have much bigger vocabularies than they used to and can recollect a far wider amount of creative work (books, recipes, popular speeches) than people could back in the day. We may not know how to tie a set of reins but we know how to operate a washing machine and dryer. Or an ATM.

Just different skills for different times.

[Geila]

I totally get the appeal of rustic surroundings. We spent our honeymoon at a cabin in Yosemite in the fall and it was just beautiful. Big fireplace and lots of walks in the woods. Fresh clean air. But I was always really aware of how much modern luxury we had as well. I think when you've lived without it you can't help but see it.

Totally unrelated - or somewhat related? - has anyone seen Holiday In The Wild? I'm a big Rob Lowe fan, he's just so yummy, and this was a cute movie.

[catherine]

Yes, but nothing wrong with knowing different skills. I remember the time I asked one of my male coworkers to help me jump my car which had a dead battery. He didn't know how. I found this astounding. My DH knew how to jump-start a car--why didn't everybody?

I also remember when our VT neighbor was talking to us about the former owner of this house and he said, "He didn't even know how to frame a window!" DH and I looked at each other pretty sheepishly. We know NOTHING about framing a window. But our other neighbor offered to build us a whole new porch to keep us from falling and hurting ourselves. So then you talk about being able to rely on neighbors and that's a whole other topic.

I so respect people who have this foundational skills. Another one of my neighbors, a female, shot her first buck last week. To me, especially as a former vegetarian, it's a little "icky" to think about, but I so admire her skill and her ability to shoot what she eats.

We have lost so many of these skills. I'm not a prepper, but I worry about the days when these skills will be called upon again..

[Tammy]

Iris lilies - I always enjoy your statement about not living north of interstate 80. I grew up on an Ohio farm that was bisected by route 80, but the house was 1/4 mile south of it. Then when we lived in Laramie we were about 1/2 mile north of route 80. Lots of my life was lived within a few miles of that interstate. It’s nice to be in Phoenix in the winter.

[JaneV2.0]

I would have worked at the brothel, and depended on the kindness of strangers. :devil:

Aside from quiltmaking, I doubt I have one pioneer skill. One of my great-great grandmothers was the community doctor who used to light out across the landscape to tend to the sick. Maybe I could do that.

[catherine]

One of my great-great grandmothers was the community doctor who used to light out across the landscape to tend to the sick. Maybe I could do that.

Maybe you could have been a shaman or a witch doctor.. I could see you as that!

If I were here in the 15th/16th centuries, I think I could have worked at the local printing press if I had been bold enough to ask for a job there as woman, but if not, I'd have been happy just raising kids and tending to the chores.

[JaneV2.0]

Maybe you could have been a shaman or a witch doctor.. I could see you as that!

If I were here in the 15th/16th centuries, I think I could have worked at the local printing press if I had been bold enough to ask for a job there as woman, but if not, I'd have been happy just raising kids and tending to the chores.

If I'd been around back then (and I suspect I was), I would have been burned as a witch--or narrowly escaped that fate.

I would have been comfortable being grandmother Magdalena's apprentice in a later time.

[pinkytoe]

My grandfather was a cattle rancher in the high mountains of western Colorado and I was always enthralled with his way of life. Several times when I was younger, we visited his long abandoned summer and winter cabins so so isolated from the modern world. The only thing I would detest is having to use the outhouse. I imagine the chamber pot got a lot of use back then.

[bae]

Wonderful thread!

[Yppej]

The closest I have come is when the power is out several days in a row in the middle of winter and I have to cope.

Generally I avoid power tools. For instance, I will cut down a tree with a hand saw though it takes a long time.

But I do not consider myself a pioneer because my mother grew up getting water from a pump, using an ice house instead of a refrigerator, riding a horse and buggy to school, etc up in rural Saskatchewan.

[rosarugosa]

As far as the whole pioneer woman thing goes - I can hardly stand to think of living in a time before Tampax tampons, reliable birth control and full access to educational opportunities. I'm sure there are at least 100 other things, but these are the ones that first come to mind. I am living in the right place at the right time.

[happystuff]

I agree with rosarugosa. I like living in this time AND place! as I feel I have way more choices than a lot of other people may have.

Pioneer skills - I'm thinking my sourdough starter counts. Have had it for over a decade now and can make a decent, edible loaf of bread. LOL.

[JaneV2.0]

Yeah, that was my take on it too. No birth control would probably rule out my raucous life as a lady of the evening. I suppose I could have been a nun...Supposedly, I have relatives of that ilk, too.

I can rise (or sink) to the occasion as necessary, but I've been camping and I've survived days without electricity, and I can't romanticize primitive living. If anything, I was born a couple of decades too soon.

[Teacher Terry]

My grandma talked about using cloths for your period and having to launder them. Yuck((:. I remember when housework was a full time job with wringer washers, no dryers, having to iron even the sheets since they would be too wrinkled to sleep in. Ironing was a entire days work. No thanks.

[pinkytoe]

My paternal grandmother died at a young age from massive burns when the paraffin she was melting for canning caught on fire over the wood stove. Life was short and brutal for many.

[LDAHL]

I think the full pioneer package of hostile natives, malnutrition, unrelenting drudgery and untreatable disease would not be very appealing to most of us effete moderns. I in fact suspect that much of human progress has been driven by people looking for ways to escape that existence. It may sometimes be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I like a nice fire, but I wouldn’t want my life to depend on stockpiling enough fuel to survive the winter.

[catherine]

I wouldn’t want my life to depend on stockpiling enough fuel to survive the winter.

I know. I'm surprised I love it as much as I do. I think it has to do with such a simple equation: outputs=inputs * attention. Overconsumption starts when you lose a grasp of what goes into what houses you, heats you and feeds you. When you have a garden, it's amazing how much less you are willing to waste a home-grown cucumber than one you pulled off the shelf in a supermarket. I choose the log that's going to keep me warmest longest. I don't have a steady stream of fossil fuel succumbing to my every whim while I complain that it's cold--72 degrees, and tell Alexa to turn up the thermostat. There's a direct relationship between commodity and comfort when you're living off the direct heat of a cord of wood. My VT neighbors go one step further and spend a couple of weeks in October felling a couple of trees to heat their family. I'll never get to that point. That's why I said I wish I had 20 more years. I may have 20 more years, but if I were 47 and not 67, I may be out there chopping my own wood.

ETA: Also, I find it more rewarding to build a fire, and moderate the humidity in the room with the cast iron skillet filled with water on the stove with cinnamon sticks thrown in than churning out market research reports for pharmaceutical companies.
PLUS.. Maybe it's the just the Aries in me that appreciates being a fire starter.


ETA2: I'm off to dress up in my winter gear to go out and hang up my clean clothes on the line. It's partly sunny, 22 degrees, and a good wind off the lake--great conditions for drying.

[rosarugosa]

Catherine: Are you staying in VT for the winter this year? I thought that wasn't going to be until next year?

[catherine]

Catherine: Are you staying in VT for the winter this year? I thought that wasn't going to be until next year?

We're leaving mid-December until March to stay in a furnished rental in NJ in order to visit grandsons/DS/DIL, but we have both decided that next year, we're staying here. It's not as bad as we thought it would be (so far).

[razz]

Catherine, maybe the difference is that this is all new for you to experience. The novelty does disappear soon enough although the values may not change. Enjoy!

DH always enjoyed the routine of looking for the trees that needed culling, sawing, cutting, reducing them to suitable sized logs for the fireplace and airtight stove, stacking them in the shed for our winter supply. The logs needed to dry out for a year at least. We used two old wooden carts to haul the wood from our woodlot to the shed, load enough for a week stored in the garage and downstairs. After his passing, the job was mine and I used up the stash that he prepared over the two years on my own hauling it all inside.

[Tybee]

We had two wood stoves when we lived in upstate NY. I could cull our 65 acres of woods for the deadfall and keep warm that way, although I remember one time being snowed in and sick and alone and burning furniture to stay warm.

It was a little scary in that house.

[rosarugosa]

We're leaving mid-December until March to stay in a furnished rental in NJ in order to visit grandsons/DS/DIL, but we have both decided that next year, we're staying here. It's not as bad as we thought it would be (so far).

This sounds like a nice way to sample it without committing to the entire winter the first time around. Good plan!

[iris lilies]

My paternal grandmother died at a young age from massive burns when the paraffin she was melting for canning caught on fire over the wood stove. Life was short and brutal for many.
My paternal great great grandmother died in similar fashion, in a household fire event.

What was interesting is that we heard this story decades ago from a non-relative, someone who was doing genealogy research and who said she read an account of the fire in a local parish newspaper. The story came to our ears as “ Mrs. Stuart died in a barn fire. She was living in the barn with her children and she threw them all out of the loft to safety before succumbing to the fire herself.”

For decades my cousin attempted to find this newspaper story, and finally did find it, only the event wasn't as dramatic as the tale we had been told. Her garment caught on fire in a (probably parafin) accident and she died a few days later.

We had always wondered why she was living in the barn anyway, and assumed the nogoodnik great great grandfather had abandoned her and the children.
p.s. We couldn't get family history from our family because they were tight lipped. I suspect alcoholism, but ya never know.

[JaneV2.0]

My pioneer diarist/ancestor died, probably of cholera, en route to Oregon. (Making a case for antibiotics.) She was buried near the Barlow Road.

[LDAHL]

I think it’s interesting to consider the past in terms of the things that used to be constant worries that are no longer major concerns.

Like fire. It was a much greater threat in the days of open flames, oil lamps, gas lighting and coal dust.

Or when letters inquired after your health, it was a much more serious question when disease and infection were so prevalent.

Now we don’t have to give those things all that much thought in our daily lives.