—1883—Household System

#35

I have made it a rule in my housekeeping arrangements to have a set place—nail, box, bag, nook, or closet—for everything, from a clothes-pole to a darning needle. I have made it a set rule, never to be departed from, to always to put a thing away in its exact place as soon as I have used it. No matter how hurried or fretted I am, back goes the nutmeg-grater, as by instinct, on its nail, the nutmeg in its box, the box on its shelf, just where it has stood for years, and will stand, I suppose, to the end of time with  me. I have made it a set rule to wash the dishes, and all utensils used in cooking, as fast as I have done with them. That necessitates the constant presence of hot water, which is rarely missed from my range, consequently I don’t have a pile of dirty dishes about, and a heap of bowls, boxes, vials, and kettles to wash in a lump, as some housekeepers do that I wot of.—Mrs. Mary A Denison.
[Thomas’s Farmer's Almanac]

An old nutmeg-grater

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It would appear from today's almanac excerpt that keeping a household clean and neat has always been a challenge. But I often think it is more of a challenge to keep a house these days than it was in 1883. We may have modern appliances to help with the work, but we also have a whole lot more stuff to keep track of and clean. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mary A. Denison's advice is downright practical and timeless.

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—1864—Agriculture as a Duty

#34

Rev. T. S. King, in an agricultural address delivered in California, says: “In dealing with land, man is called to be a coworker with the Infinite Mind. This is the foundation of the nobleness of the farmer’s office. In fact, we shall not reach the right point of appreciating the eminence of agriculture as a duty, a profession and a trust, until we see the earth is not yet finished. The Creator has left part of the fashioning to man, or rather waits to work through man in perfecting it. Rejoice all you that are called to the dignity and trusts and delights of the farmer and the horticulturist! Rejoice that you belong to a class through whom God is finishing his creation, and who are enlarging the divine bounty, and adding to the beauty of the world. Whether an acre, a garden spot, or a section, is under your charge, feel more deeply your commission, be glad in the responsible honor of your lot. Resolve to add to the fertility of your domain.
 [Thomas’s Farmer's Almanac]

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As I've mentioned before, Thomas's Farmer's Almanac was a secular publication. Nevertheless, it was not unusual for such publications in the early to mid 1800's (and certainly before that) to reflect Christian ideals. That's because the Agrarian Nation of America's past was clearly Christian. 

The Christian-agrarian culture respected and honored biblical concepts of what was right and wrong. Biblical morality was the foundation for living a well-ordered life and having a well-ordered society. That is, of course, no longer the case. America is now a post-Christian nation.

So, what is the dominant religion of America today? That is a topic that could be discussed at length. For my part, I believe that America now worships at the altar of industrialism. The industrial religion includes a host of supporting idols, some of which are science, government, the wisdom of men, profit, leisure and  amusement. 

Even the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians these days love, hope and trust in the ungodly industrial idols. That is the way it looks to me. 

And as for the biblical responsibility for Christians to till the soil, grow food, and care for creation, as co-worker's with God (as today's excerpt explains), this is now a completely foreign concept to the vast majority of modern christianity.

End of editiorial.

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—1877—Use of Hay Caps

#33

Hay Caps on hay cocks in modern-day Ireland

Hay-caps ought to be reckoned among the labor-saving implements of the farm, so far as their economy is concerned; and we have yet to hear of a careful farmer, who has once adopted and used them wisely, who has discarded or thrown them aside. They have saved thousands of tons of hay, after it was partially cured and cocked up, from waste and ruin, and of course they have saved a vast amount of labor and worry, which a storm under such circumstances occasions. Made of simple cotton cloth, to be fastened with wooden pins at the corners, they are not very expensive, and four or five and a half feet square is large enough. Good, compactly woven, light sheeting is as useful as any material, and better to handle than if it were heavy. A simple cord-loop, sewn in at each corner, is the most convenient way of fastening, as it admits of some play on the wooden pins. Hay caps properly made, and stowed away where they are handy to access, can be applied in a few minutes’ time, and they have often saved their whole cost in a single storm. They can be made in winter, and kept ready for use in any sudden emergency. 
[Thomas’s]

Modern-day Romanian hay cock (also called a rick) without a cap

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Hay ricks in Wisconsin (photo link)

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Speaking of hay and haymaking, the following silent movie shows farmers making hay in England using horse and human power over 100 years ago. Horse-powered mowers were introduced into agriculture in the mid 1800s. This movie is a rare look back at the Agrarian Nation of the past (and perhaps a look ahead into the Agrarian Nation of the future).

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For another perspective on making hay with horses, the following movie shows a horsedrawn buckrake being used to gather jags of cured hay, and then the hay being stacked  (again, with horsepower) using a mechanical overshot stacker.
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Longevity SecretsFrom The Old-Timers(1852 & 1871)

#31

1852

How To Shorten Life

Lead a life of enfeebled, stupid laziness, and keep the mind in a round of unnatural excitement by reading trashy novels.

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Begin in childhood on tea, and go on, from one step to another, through coffee, chewing tobacco, and drinking.

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Marry in haste, get an uncongenial companion, and live the rest of life in mental dissatisfaction.

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Eat without time to masticate food.

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Follow an unhealthy occupation because money can be made by it.

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Contrive to keep a continual worry about something or nothing.

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Retire at midnight, and rise at noon.

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Gormandize between  meals.

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Give way to fits of anger.

[Thomas’s]

-1871-
How to Live Long

A venerable minister, who had preached some sixty-five years in the same place, being asked what was the secret of long life, replied, “Rise early, live temperately, work hard, and keep cheerful.” 

Another person, who lived to the great age of 110 years, said, in reply to the inquiry, “How he lived so long?”: “I have always been kind and obliging; have never quarreled with any one; have eaten and drunk only to satisfy hunger and thirst, and have never been idle.”
[Thomas’s]

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—1826—WalnutsAn Excellent Family Medicine

#30

Everybody eats walnuts; everybody knows how to make a pickle of walnuts. Few, however, know the medicinal virtue of walnuts. Now, the fact is, walnuts, when prepared, secundum artem, are an excellent opening medicine and alterative; and this is the way to prepare them: 

Get the green walnuts, fit for pickling, put them in a stone jar, filled up with moist sugar, at the proportion of about half a pound of sugar to the score of walnuts; place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, for about three hours, taking care the water does not get in, and keep it simmering during the operation. The sugar, when dissolved, should cover the walnuts; if it does not, add more. Cover it close, and in six months it will be fit for use. 

The older it gets, the better it is. One walnut is a dose for a child six years of age, as a purgative; and it has this great advantage over drugs, that, whilst it is an excellent medicine, it is, at the same time, very pleasant to the palate, and will be esteemed by young folks a great treat. 

Who can say as much of salts and jalap, and other doctor stuff? And, in a large family, it will abridge the doctor’s bill ten pounds a year.
[Thomas’s]

Pickled green walnut in the foreground with a mature walnut behind it

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Geo Watkins Pickled Walnuts: Pickled walnuts are an English condiment used to add zest to meats and cold cuts. Choice young Italian walnuts are salted and steeped in a marinade of malt vinegar, sugar, and salt.

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"Everybody knows how to make a pickle of walnuts."  

Well, maybe in the Agrarian Nation of 1824 they did, but I dare say almost nobody these days knows how to pickle walnuts. Personally, I never even knew green walnuts could be pickled.

If you would like to better understand the process of making pickled walnuts, I recommend this blog page (with pictures): Pickled Green Walnuts

And once you understand what pickled green walnuts are all about, then you can employ what you've learned in today's old excerpt to make "An Excellent Family Medicine" of sugared green walnuts. 

Modern medicine will, of course, disregard such old-fashioned homemade alterative and purgative medicines as foolishness and quackery. After all, the best medicines are developed by scientists, manufactured in factories, and bought in stores..... right?  

This sugared walnut recipe sounds like something akin green walnut liqueur, a gastronomic delicacy made in France and Italy. This web site provides some insights: Making Green Walnut Liqueur

Green Walnuts Ready For Picking

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Growing & HarvestingCorn By Hand

#28

Field Corn

For today’s Agrarian Nation excerpt, I am going to do something different. First, our topic is somewhat out of season. Second, instead of posting an excerpt from the old writings, I’m going to post an excerpt from a guy named Alan who  recently made a comment at my Yahoo discussion group, WhizbangChickenPluckers.

The discussion was about raising your own feed for chickens. It so happens that the cost of buying food for chickens is getting much more expensive these days, and more people are thinking about how to raise more of their own poultry feed. Well, that's how folks did it when we were and Agrarian Nation!

Someone on the group mentioned that they had an old two-row corn planter they might use to plant corn (the primary ingredient of poultry feed). That’s when Alan chimed in with the following comment (slightly edited by me).

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A two row corn planter? That is too fancy for me. I grew up growing field corn for pigs and chickens the very basic way.

We had a pole about 25 feet long that had ropes tied to it about every 30 inches. On the end of each rope was a piece of heavy chain. My step-father and I would walk across the field with that pole between us to mark the rows.

Then we had a couple two-handled corn planters. Take a step, poke it in the ground, spread the handles and put them back together then pick it up and take another measured step. When the corn is up to about five or six inches do the first hoeing and thin to two corn plants.
 
After that just hoe as needed.

Hand-held corn planter collection. These were popular in the mid to late 1800's. Click Here for the article that goes with this picture. According to the article, an 1891 "automatic" hand planter enabled a farmer to plant four acres a day, by hand.

 
When the corn was hard and the plants were brown we cut the stalks by hand and used a Shocking Horse to make corn shocks.
 
To picture a shocking horse think of a saw horse. Now remove the legs on one end. Picture the top board as a pole cut from a small tree and about 20 feet long. Now make the remaining two legs longer. Come down the pole from the legs four or five feet and drill a horizontal hole through it to fit a long broom handle.

Drag that out to the corn field and take it down between the rows so you have four rows on the one side and the rest of the field on the other side. Insert the broom handle. Two people with corn knives cut four rows to the broom handle and stack the corn against the pole against the handle.

Now cut past the handle those same four rows and stack it against the pole on the other side of the broom handle. When it is good and full tie some twine around the top then pull out the broom handle and move your horse farther down the rows. Between the legs of your shocking horse there should be a pole with a spool of baling twine on it.

Shocked corn waiting to be husked

  
Wait until the corn is good and dry then husk it out. 

Women husking corn in the field

A Husking Peg or two comes in handy here.

One style of corn husking "peg" (also known as a "hook")

 
I probably have 20 husking pegs, a good dozen corn knives and six or eight corn planters around here.

One style of corn knife

 
I have corn shellers and feed grinders too.
Here is one of my corn shellers....



These work too.  I have several of them.....

A red Black Beauty corn sheller. Black Beauty reproductions are currently available on Ebay for $85.

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Ariel view of corn shock rows on an Amish farm.

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The nice thing about this very simple lesson in raising corn is that it explains how to get the job done without being dependent on complicated, gas-guzzling machinery. 

This is the kind of down-to-earth knowledge that will need to be re-discovered and utilized by small farmers and homesteaders in the post-industrial Agrarian Nation that will emerge in the years ahead. 

It is from people like Alan, who know what they are talking about from personal experience, that we can learn a great deal. Thank you Alan!

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—1895—The Strawberry

#27

 
It is so difficult to buy in the open market a good strawberry, well ripened and well gathered, that every one who has even a small garden should have a few rods of land devoted to the growth of this delicious berry. On a good soil it is not difficult to grow fifty quarts to the rod, and when properly managed it requires but little labor.

Select that part of the garden which will stand the drought the best, and have it far enough from the border to plough between, thus preventing the grass roots from running among the plants to their injury. Set the plants the last week in April, if the ground is in fair condition.  Prepare the soil by harrowing in a liberal quantity of well decomposed barn manure, ground bone composed of from  three to four percent of nitrogen, and from twenty-three to twenty-five percent of phosphoric acid; also muriate of potash marked eighty percent potash.

Apply of the ground bone twelve pounds to the square rod, and four pounds of the muriate of potash; or in the place of the muriate of potash apply two peck of wood ashes.

Set the plants in rows four feet apart, and eighteen inches in the row.

In selecting varieties use your own judgment, as far as  possible, and select one that suits your particular taste.  To do this, the fruit of the different varieties should be tested the year previous to that in which the plants are wanted.

Keep the plants well cultivated the first year, and let them grow in matted beds.

As soon as the ground begins to freeze in the autumn cover the plants with pine boughs, cornstalks, or any course hay: never forgetting that the strawberry is an evergreen plant and will not bear close covering, but the air must circulate between the mulch and the plants, or the leaves will be killed.

When freezing weather is over in the spring remove the mulch and clean out between the rows, so there will be a good path to walk in while picking the fruit. But little more will need to be done except to gather the fruit when ripe.

For home use, let the fruit be on the vines until perfectly ripe, and gather about an hour before it is wanted for the table.

When gathering for home use, always leave the hulls on the plant, as this is the only ways a perfectly ripe berry can be hulled without injuring it.  Strawberries thus grown and gathered are as much better than the common market strawberry, as the Concord grape is better than the wild, sour grape.

When the fruit is gathered, plough the vines under and plant some late crop. It is best to set a new bed every year; the fruit is better, the labor is very much less, and the garden is kept in better condition. 
[Thomas’s]

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The old-timers evidently looked at smaller sections of land area in terms of rods. A rod is a distance of 5.5 yards, or 16.5 feet. When the almanac writer speaks of planting a few rods of strawberries, I assume he is speaking of square rods, and a square rod would amount to 272.25 square feet.


As someone who spent most of my working career in the building trades, I like to think of how many 4ft x 8ft sheets of plywood there are in 272.25 square feet. It comes out to 8.5 sheets. That doesn't seem like a whole lot of space for 50 quarts of strawberries.

I think it is interesting to note that a few rods of strawberries are recommended for people with "small" gardens. 

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