Wanna Be a Steader!

:::Laura Ingalls Wilder...I love reading her news articles, this was printed in the June, 1919 issue of McCall's magazine...this is a good one on the farm wife and farm life:::

It is a poor life that does not teach us to shed envy as a duck sheds raindrops.

:::a bit of forward...Laura is in her Rocky Ridge kitchen, making bread, and sees a friend coming up the field...the banker's granddaughter:::

There was a time when I would have been ashamed to receive Elizabeth, a banker's granddaughter, in the farm kitchen.  Farm kitchens are not like city kitchenettes, not even like the white-painted, muslin-curtained kitchens that some of the town people have.  All the work of a farm centers in the farmer's wife's kitchen.  I skim milk, make butter, and cook bran mash for the chickens and potato parings for the hogs in mine.  A big iron pot of parings was steaming on the stove when Elizabeth came in.

I may as well admit that 25 years ago, when I was her age, I would have hustled her into the front room and entertained her there, feeling embarrassed because my rag carpet was not Wilton amd my furniture was not mahogany.  The bread would have waited until she was gone, and if my family ate sourish bread for a week, I would have felt it were not my fault.

But this morning I gave her a kitchen chair and went on kneading, thumping the dough and sprinkling flour over the breadboard while she talked.  Good bread is my pride now, rather than Wilton rugs, and I have found that friendliness not genuine in the kitchen is not improved by a parlor.

:::Her question to Laura...would you be a farmer's wife if you had the chance to live your life over again?  Seems Elizabeth's beau has stated he wishes to return to the country after coming out of the War and take up farming:::

While I talked to Elizabeth and kneaded the bread, I thought of many things I did not say.  Many persons think that a farmer, and of course, his wife, are isolated from the current affairs in the nation, but sometimes I think we have a better viewpoint on them because we are farther away.  The mail carrier brings out our papers and magazines in the morning and after the chores are done, I usually have a few moments to run down to the mailbox and bring them up.  During the day, I snatch a glance at them now and then, and after chores are done at night, we sit by the fire and read and talk.  We have a great deal of time for thinking at our work and for making our own opinions about the happenings in the world.

There must be a great many of them (city girls) who, like Elizabeth, are undecided because of their ignorance of the real conditions of life on a farm, and nothing I have ever read seems to tell them the truth about these conditions.  There has been a great deal of pity spent on the farmer's wife, and a great deal of condescending effort has been spent to educate her, while, on the other hand, some very pleasant and poetic things have been written about country life.  But I have never seen it pointed out that the farm woman's life combines the desires of the "modern woman" with all the advantages and traditions of homekeeping. 

On the farm, a woman may have both economic independence and a home life as perfect as she cares to make it.  Farm women have always been wage earners and partners in theird husband's business.  Such a creature as the woman parasite has never been known among us.  Perhpas this is one reason why "feminism" has never greatly aroused us.  It has been amusing to farm women to read flaring headlines announcing the fact that women are at last coming into their own, that the younger ones at least can now become self-supporting.  About the woman past forty there seems to be little doubt in the papers.  But the woman past forty on the farm is still sure of her position, even the woman past fifty or sixty.

Perhaps the reason this economic value of farm women has gone unnoticed is because they have taken the advice the small boy gave the hen.  When he heard her wildly cackling to announce that she had laid an egg, he exclaimed, "Aw, shut up!  What's the use of making such a fuss?  You couldn't help it!"  It is true that a farmer's wife can never stop contributing her share to the success fo the farm without ruiningh er husband's business as well.  Many times when the churning had to be done and the hens fed, I have felt like running away into the woods, "just to walk and to walk and to stun my soul and amaze it -- a day with the stone and the sparrow and every marvelous thing."  And I have felt that the life of a parasite woman has its attractions. But it lacks certain sturdy values that are good for a woman to have.  Women in cities have tried the parasite life, and it appears that they do not like it.  Yet, in the city, conditions inevitably pull married women into economic dependence and partial idleness.

It is not good for a creature to be idle.  A horse that does not work becomes unmanageable and fractious in his stall; he begins eating the wood of the manger, which is not a good thing to do.  Hens, if they are to be kept healthy, must be kept busy, and evry good poultry raiser gives them straw to scratch, so that they may earn part of their food by good, honest toil.  I think it is not unreasonable to suppose that women, too, must use their energies to some purpose, good or bad, and no woman can make a success of her marriage if she uses her energies eating the wood of her manger.

The farm woman's economic independence pulls in the direction of making her marriage a success.  Her interests and those of her husband are the same; their success is a mutual success of which each may be equally proud.  In the even of threatened failure, their interests still hold them together, instead of pulling them apart, and failure may often be averted because of the simple fact that two heads are better than one.  A farmer's wife may and should be -- I may almost say must be -- her husband's partner in the business, and she may be this without distracting from the home life.  Meals on time; the surplus of garden and orchard preserved; meats properly cured at butchering time; the young creatures of the farm and home cared for as only a woman has the patience to care for them; work in the dairy and with the poultry contribute very largely to the success of teh average farmer.

:::where do I end this wonderful bit of learning from Ms Wilder?  There is so much more to glean from her article, but perhaps these are the best points, the ones that should really hit home and ring true in our hearts as keepers of the homestead and kindler of the dream fires.  Here are a few quick remarks still remaining in her notes that really sum it all up:::

Farm life has its ample compensatons for all its hardships, and the greatest of these is a sense and enjoyment of the real values of life.  These are not the modern improvements of which we hear so much, the telephone, the rural free delivery, the automobile, and teh labor-saving machinery, which are bringing many of the city's advantages to the country.  They are not even the beauties of nature, which give so much daily joy and always help over the hard places.  The real values of farm life are simplicity, money honestly earned, difficulties overcome, service lovingly given, respect deserved; in short, the exercise of physical and mental, and spiritual muscles until a rounded, complete, individual character is built.

:::What is it we as women of the homestead want in our lives?  I don't know many of us who are merely whiling away our time waiting for something better to come along.  Certainly in our day and age, if we wanted a so-called 'better' life, we could easily go off the homestead and find something to do.  I know many who in fact do just this, and truly, I do not see or hear any real sense of accomplishment or happiness in their doing so.  Sure, some will play it out and tell you how great their lives are, how rich they feel now that they have a 'use' but if you truly listen to them, hear their heart voice, it's not matching the spoken words at all.  They leave the homestead, the homefront, for many reasons -- to meet an expense, to fix up the home, to make the purchases they want and dream of -- but they miss the heart of it all I think.  They are off doing what they feel is needed, but they get caught up in that action and become trapped; they aren't able to be back home, enjoying the fruits of what they felt was such a need in the first place.  They begin to see their worth as the city ladies in Ms Wilder's story do.  It's sad to see that happen to friends.

Many of you who know us, or have followed this blog back from it's start, know that we live a simple, basic life.  We have dumped many of our previous 'rural city' experiences and on a whim (truly spur of the moment!), relocated to, well, the middle of nowhere essentially.  Dh left a well-paying job as a Union electrician to come here, begin a new job as a machine operator in a factory and make less than half of his typical pay. While our income decreased, our bills did not, but we have a better life here than we ever had up north in that 'rural city' living.  I thought we had a good life there, and in many ways, we did.  But here, we have truly left all those city visions behind and changed our way of thinking and living.  I called our farm up north our homestead...it wasn't.  We were 'hobby farmers' up north; we lived in a rural setting on a few acres, had our hobby animals of chickens, milk goats and meat rabbits, and still kept in close contact with the pulse of the outside world by being in and of it on a daily basis.  Here, where we are now, living as we are now, we are true homesteaders.  It isn't a whim, or a fancy.  It is our daily life now.  We breath it in every moment of the day and night.  We make far less money but live a far richer life. 

We have many plans for our vision of a 'perfect homestead', but really, are they important?  I'd love to see them all come to fruition, but if they don't, are we going to miss out?  Once upon a time, I would have thought so.  Now I've grown up and learned better.  We will complete the duties that are needed, and fit in with the Plan that the Lord has for our lives here.  And I am more content now to wait and watch for those plans to fruit than I ever would have been in our 'rural city hobby farm.'  We could have had it all there, but it took leaving it all behind without regrets to really find it here.  If I had not been willing to leave everything (or to 'lose' everything as some worldly friends have mentioned) and to begin again without feeling cheated or somehow dumped, I would have come here to this place only to find the same misguided visions I had back there. 

It wasn't in being noble and 'losing' everything...it was in waking up and gaining more than imagined!