Nanny had a peach orchard in her side yard. She had a huge garden in back, a long line she hung clothes on, a pasture with cows, and a chicken coop with a very mean rooster. She also had a little wash house a few yards from the main house that housed an old laundry machine.
Between that and the door to the storm cellar, a black cauldron sat on a bare spot in the yard. She didn't use it anymore, but in decades past, it was where she boiled laundry. Nanny would collect ashes from the fires she built beneath it, until she had enough to make the lye she needed to make soap.
I can't imagine the time and work it took to do nearly everything from scratch. We have a far easier life these days than we realize.
Soapmaking is one thing that's on my list of things to do.
My mom, a retired English teacher, wrote a companion workbook to a novel that one of her friends wrote. In it, she included a lye soap recipe. If you have kids, especially if you homeschool, you might want to check it out. The title of the book is When the Cowboy Rides Away. It was written by Molly Noble Bull, a woman who grew up around ranchers in Texas.
The novel can be found here, and the workbook can be found here.
If you want something spooky, try the novel and workbook combo titled Gatehaven. It's not western, but it is historical.
Those are available on Amazon, too.
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Before I go, I want to leave you with one more spooky thing so my post's title won't be a total Halloween bait and switch. This isn't western either, but it does support a great cause.
FULL DARK's 5th anniversary is this month. It's a benefit anthology, and all proceeds go to help veterans and first responders.
What happens in the dark will come to light.
2 comments:
Hi Melissa: My grandmother had a wash machine similar to the one in your post. She had it in the basement and I remember going to the basement with her and watching her wash the clothes. What I remember more is the one step on the stairs that we had to watch out for as it wasn't very sturdy. Wished my grandfather had fixed it, because I was always afraid of falling on it and breaking my neck.
Hugs!
Oh no!
I never saw my grandmother use the machine with the rollers. By then, she had a modern washing machine in the house. She didn't have a dryer, though, and still hung clothes and sheets on the line.
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