Christmas at the Store

by Heather Blanton

Back in the 19^th Century, a mercantile was an essential store in more ways than you might think. Not only did it carry supplies as vital as coffee and bacon, it was often the social hub for smaller western towns. Christmas, then, was an exceedingly exciting and bustling time. The mercantile transformed into the best place to see neighbors and get “store bought” gifts.

Walk with me for a moment down the boardwalk to Boot & Co General Store. Christmas is just around the corner and the proprietor, Mr. Boot, is busy getting ready for the season!

You probably haven’t given it much thought, but most general stores are dirty, dark, and cluttered affairs. Customers track in mud ceaselessly. Stores often only have a few windows because they take up valuable shelf space. Patrons shop in gloom by the light of weak overhead lanterns or small, narrow windows. 

Christmas, then, is not only the excuse for purchasing more “frivolous” items, it allows the storekeepers to stock up on beautiful gifts that sparkle and shimmer, adding a festive air to the shelves.

Mr. Boot does keep a healthy supply of eggs, milk, butter, sugar, spices, and flour, the real essentials even for a remote mercantile like this one high in the Rockies. Christmas, though, means shimmer and shine, spit and polish. Decking the halls. Fa la la la la la la la.

Up ahead our dear proprietor is unloading a wagon of Christmas trees and leaning them up against his store front. The German tradition of dragging a tree into the parlor hit America around 1850 and now, 1877, is well-entrenched. Don’t you just love the smell of pine floating in the air?

What’s that sparkling in his display window? Let’s walk over.

Ah, Mr. Boot, ever the entrepreneur, has made sure to provide items with which to decorate the trees. He has traded out a used saddle and worn pair of jeans for a small Christmas tree bedecked with ornaments. Some hang from the window frame as well, from silk ribbons. Let’s step inside and take a closer look.

Ornaments on the tree are made of wax, cloth, ceramic, tin—why, Mr. Boot even ordered a few glass ones from Germany! Look at this one, a shimmering red ball, deeply fluted and reflecting warm oranges and yellows! And, oh, my!! A little wax angel with spun-glass wings. Around her, a dozen little ornaments cut from tin also adorn the tree. Shiny crosses, snowflakes, and puppies.

I step back and survey the display. Quite impressive. I know I’ll be leaving with a few new items for my tree.

Then you spy the bright pile of Oranges! We rush over and pick up the glowing, fragrant spheres. Mr. Boot doesn’t have many—only a dozen or so—and they will go quickly, but they smell heavenly. Oranges have become quite the popular Christmas gift during the Victorian era. Citrus fruits of any kind are expensive, and not widely available. I think I’ll buy one! Just one.

Next to them in a tin bread box, we see the Victorian sugar plums! Oh, I haven’t had any of these since I was a child back in Tennessee. Little confections made out of dried fruit balled-up and rolled in sugar—though they are more brown than purple. 

I turn to the store and am amazed at the work Mr. Boot has done in here. He’s added extra lanterns and lit more candles. He’s swept the floor. Along the far wall hangs a new saddle, keenly oiled and glistening in the flickering light. Beside it, all the Remington rifles glimmer, too, polished to perfection.

In the corner, two miners lean against the canned goods, discussing the latest news in town. Ginny and Dan will be moving on. Did you hear a bakery will be opening up soon? They nod at us, and motion for us to join the conversation.

You go, but I want to look at those ornaments again. Clutching my orange, I head back to the window, eager to pick out a few trinkets for my own little tree.

And to you, Gentle Reader, I wish a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Wheat Harvest

By Shanna Hatfield

Wheat harvest came a few weeks early in our part of the country this year. Most farmers are just finishing up, if they aren't already done with the harvest.

In my Pendleton Petticoats series is set in Pendleton, Oregon, in the early 1900s, several of the stories include scenes of wheat harvest.

Back in the early years of the twentieth century, Umatilla County (where Pendleton is located) produced approximately one percent of the nation’s wheat crop. Wheat harvest brought workers to town, provided income for families, and was quite an event.

It was also a lot of hot, sweaty, backbreaking work. Growing up on a farm, I write from experience about the dusty, itchy chaff that makes the air thick and hard to breathe.

When I was working on Ilsa’s story, one scene in particular finds her out in the field where one of the characters gives her a first-hand look at a combined thresher harvester.

I looked online for some visual inspiration and found a few photos that were exactly what I was searching for.

This photo was taken in 1903 in Sherman County, Oregon. (If you’ve read the Grass Valley series, it is set in Sherman County.)
Although I had a general idea of what each piece of equipment on the machine did, I had no idea how to describe it.

 

This was another photo that provided a great visual of exactly how I pictured wheat harvest at Nash’s Folly, the main ranch in the Pendleton Petticoats series. Taken in 1902 in Walla Walla, WA, this photo shows not only the machine, but also the deep dip in the hill as well.

This photo, also from the oldoregonphotos.com website, shows the team of 32 pulling a hillside harvester in 1900. Because of the rolling hills, the farmers needed a machine that wouldn’t tip over on the steep inclines.

 

And here’s a crew in the early 1900s sitting with bags of golden kernels  near Arlington, OR. The woman on the end doesn’t look particularly excited to be there- but if I had to cook for a threshing crew in the unbearable summer heat dressed in layers of petticoats and long sleeves, I’d probably look really, really grumpy.

 

I also found this awesome photo that shows walls created with 100,000 sacks of wheat near Pendleton. Mission is on the Umatilla Reservation.

After gathering the historic photos and studying them, I still had no idea how to describe the equipment, so I contacted my dad and asked his sage advice. After emailing him a couple of the photos, he called me and told me what all the parts and pieces were as well as giving me the names of the different jobs each men did.

The jigger sewed the sacks shut once they were filled. The tender made sure the cutter was going where it was supposed to while the skinner drove the team. I had no idea!

My dad, who comes from a long line of farmers, also spent several years after he and my mother first wed working in Pendleton in the early 1950s. He had first-hand experience with the terrain, the hillside harvesters, and even told me why so many of the farmers preferred mules to horses (because the mules could go all day without a problem and the horses often got sores or sick.)

 

This is a photo of my Dad and his friend, who he’s only ever referred to as Shorty. (Don’t you love the farmer’s tan!). My dad’s about 5’11”, so Shorty was indeed of small stature. But Dad always talks about him with fond and funny memories.
***

Here's a little excerpt from Ilsa:
***

“Oh, Ilsa,” Aundy said, trying hard not to smile as she carefully put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and turned her toward the house, knocking eggshells out of her hair as they walked. Garrett winked at his wife and a giggle escaped. Soon everyone was laughing.

Ilsa glared at Aundy then marched herself around the house to the kitchen door.

Mad at her sister for laughing and the rest of them for joining in, Ilsa stamped her foot and dislodged a flurry of eggshells on Aundy’s clean floor. As she yanked her apron over her head, more broken shells and slimy yolks dislodged themselves from her head.

When the back door slapped shut behind her, she let her temper have free rein.

“How could you? It’s bad enough I made a fool of myself, but you set off all the laughter. It’s just mean.”

The sound of a muffled laugh made her even angrier. Trying to reach behind her back to undo the buttons of her dress, she needed to take a bath and have a fresh start to this awful day. It wasn’t even yet six in the morning.

“Don’t stand there like a hysterical ninny. Help me get out of this,” she ordered, resisting the urge to stamp her foot again. She felt fingers working at the buttons of her dress but the musky, masculine scent that reached her nose made her fully aware Aundy didn’t stand behind her.

Spinning around, she looked into the smirking face of Tony Campanelli.

A hopeless romantic with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure, Shanna Hatfield is a bestselling author of sweet romantic fiction written with a healthy dose of humor. In addition to blogging and eating too much chocolate, she is completely smitten with her husband, lovingly known as Captain Cavedweller.

Shanna creates character-driven romances with realistic heroes and heroines. Her historical westerns have been described as “reminiscent of the era captured by Bonanza and The Virginian” while her contemporary works have been called “laugh-out-loud funny, and a little heart-pumping sexy without being explicit in any way.”

She is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Romance Writers of America.

Find Shanna’s books at:
Amazon | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords | Apple

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Milk Cows in the Old West, by @JacquieRogers #western

Dairy Farming in the Old West

by Jacquie Rogers

Whether it's Valentine's Day or Christmas, if you own a dairy farm, there's work to be done all day, every day, 365 days a year. Of course, all farms are work-intensive, but once you enter into the stock business, life gets a lot busier. Dairy farming has the added onus of milking — twice a day, twelve hours apart. I repeat, that's 365 days a year.

No, you don't get any days off.

We'll talk about milking in a minute. There's a whole lot more to operating a dairy than milking. All the care that's required of horses, beef cattle, hogs, or chickens is also necessary to maintain a healthy dairy herd.

Breeds

Your 19th century dairy farmer most likely had Milking Shorthorns. These cattle came from the British Isles — Milking Shorthorns from Britain and Beef Shorthorns from Scotland. Originally, they were one breed but the Brits bred for milk production and the Scots for bigger steak cuts. Because of their widespread popularity for both milk production and beef, most of the oxen that pulled the wagons west were Shorthorns.

Feeding

An experienced farmer knows the right mix of feed, and that's just by looking at his animals. Are their coats shiny? Are they energetic? Has production increased or decreased? Cycles on schedule and breeding program without glitches? If the answers to all these questions are favorable, then the farmer has the right mix. If not he'll have to adjust. Need more roughage? Feed alfalfa hay. Need more protein? Corn silage is good for that — but it will change the flavor of the milk, as will certain grasses. I'm not going to go into it here but believe me, there's a lot to know about dairy animal nutrition.

Here are the basics, although the 19th century farmer wouldn't have had access to much of this information. Still, they did a lot of these things anyway just out of common sense.

Calving

A cow has to birth a calf, called freshening, before she produces milk. A dairy farmer has to have proficient veterinary skills in order to maintain his herd. Losing a cow would be a disaster to a family trying to eke out a living on a homestead that's two day's ride from anywhere. First there's the risk of breeding. A too large bull can break a cow's back (called stifling). After a successful breeding and gestation, here's how the freshening is supposed to go:

A Jersey cow freshens (gives birth to a calf):

But sometimes things don't go so smoothly. Then what? We'll go to Ireland and see. I thought this video best explained how to help a cow in trouble give birth. Several times a year, my dad did the very thing that this veterinarian shows us. Yes, I assisted occasionally. We had ropes but not that other fancy contraption. Usually, my dad planted his size 10 on the cow's butt and pulled.

How to pull a calf:

He doesn't mention it, but you also have to make sure the cow expels the placenta, and if not, you have to stick your arm in there and get it. Leaving one small piece could cause an infection.

Milking

Now that we have the calf, we'll get some milk. The first few days, the cow produces colostrum and that's the most important food the newborn calf will ever get. It's low in fat, and high in carbohydrates, protein, and antibodies. A calf who drinks colostrum is a healthy calf. The cow is still milked because you always want to empty the udder, and the extra colostrum is fed to other calves. After that, the calf is removed from the cow and bottlefed.

In the 19th century, cows were milked by hand. I'm not sure why there aren't a lot of dairy farmers as romance heroes because these men are generally stronger than other men, have broader shoulders, and they have great hands.

Pretty decent how-to, Part 1:

Part 2:

Actual handmilking motion:

Hoof care

Now you've fed your herd, milked them, and provided comfortable living conditions for them — a good shed and a nice layer of straw for them to rest in. But there's a lot more to dairy farming than that, and one of them is hoof care. Hooves grow just like our toenails do, only we don't walk on our toenails and cows do. They have cloven hooves and trimming can be quite a bit more complicated than trimming horses' hooves.

This video annoys me a bit — we always washed the cows' hooves before we started trimming. There are two reasons for that: 1) handling manure is never pleasant, but more important; 2) it's easier to see if your cuts are correct and the bottom of the hoof is nice and even.

Okay, so I don't have any romance heroes who are dairy farmers, either, but I do have a family in the Wolf Creek series who own a dairy, and the head of the family is Gib Norwood.

Here's an excerpt that shows just how precious each calf was to this family whose very existence depended on the health of their herd.

'Twas the Fight Before Christmas

by Jacquie Rogers

a short story in

Wolf Creek, Book 9: 
A Wolf Creek Christmas

Gibson Norwood melted the ice off the newborn shorthorn heifer’s nose. “Looks like you’d better spend a few days with us. Your mammy won’t like it, and neither will Glory, but maybe Santa will bring you a little something.”  That wasn’t really true about Glory—she’d been a good sport and had endured a lot since the Recent Unpleasantness.

Born a mulatto slave to Gib’s mother’s family, she was in fact, Gib’s mother’s half-sister. After his mother had died giving birth to him, his father kept Glory as the head housekeeper—and to warm his bed. Two years later, she’d given birth to the twins Peter and Paul—Gib’s half-brothers, and half-cousins, too.

Gib always suspected that his father was as much in love with his slave as any man was with his wife. They’d seemed to be dedicated to each other. Glory, only a hand taller than five foot, had run the plantation house with skill, and during the war, she’d done everything possible to nurse Gil’s ailing father while the Yankees burned and pillaged the farm.

Gib gathered up the baby calf, tucking his left arm under the calf’s brisket and his right arm around the heifer’s hind quarters. He headed toward the soddy, choosing his footing carefully through the four-inch snow. Then through the dusk, he saw Paul, who also carried a calf, and the race was on. Whoever got there first would have Glory’s sympathy—but two calves in her house, especially on Christmas Eve, would set her to scowling for sure.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Oh wait, this is Valentine's Day!  

Yes, there's a book waiting just for you.  I have a pig farmer in this one.  Okay, so he's a former bounty hunter.

A Flare of the Heart

by Jacquie Rogers
a short story in
Hearts and Spurs

Celia Valentine Yancey has no illusions she’ll ever enjoy wedded bliss, so chooses marriage over spinsterhood even if she has to marry a man her father picked. On the way to meet her groom, she endures armed robbery, a stagecoach wreck, a dozen hungry baby pigs — and an incorrigible farmer.

Ross Flaherty retired from bounty hunting to become a farmer but now Celia has brought his worst fear to his door — in more ways than one. A ferocious wolf-dog and a dozen piglets are no match for this determined lady.

Which is more dangerous — the Sully Gang or Miss Celia Yancey?

Happy Valentine's Day!

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