Short Stories and Essays
WHO WANTS TO BE A PIONEER WOMAN?
I gave some thought to a pioneer woman’s work. What a labor-intensive life! She kept the house clean, at least as clean as you can with a dirt floor; she milked the cows and churned the butter and made the cheese; she made the candles for seeing at night and the soap for the washing of the bodies in the household—in the creek in summer and a cat bath as close as you could get to the fireplace in the winter; she washed the clothes, often in a pot of boiling water, and hung them out to dry; she chopped wood and built the fire and kept it going; she hauled water to the house from the spring, or creek, or river; she cooked food in that same fireplace, mostly stews made from whatever was available, mixing cabbage, carrots, and sometimes a meat—squirrel, rabbit, duck, geese, deer; she did the gardening to produce those vegetables for the stews; she fed the sheep, sheared the sheep, spun the wool into thread, wove the thread into cloth, and sewed the cloth into clothes and blankets. All of this she did while in some stage of pregnancy or recovering from birthing a child in the home because the families were large. A vigilant lookout for Indians and bad white men was also in the mix. What a life! If that did not make you tired reading about it, you may not be human.