The Good Old Days

Many of us do remember the good old  days when life was slower and cars went slower. We had time for our neighbors. We even depended on them to help us when it came time to make hay or harvest corn. Back in the early 1900's, there was no push button or big machines that took care of all of the things that needed to be done on a farm.

Farm work was hard. It required you to be very physically fit. Many families had many kids because they needed help doing the chores associate with the family farm. Kids helped feed the livestock, such as chickens, small calves, and pigs. They  had to help put up hay, clean the barns using such a thing as a pitch fork. They even had to help harvest the crops.

No one had an easy job. Women started cooking early in the morning. They had to gather wood to heat the stove and then place everything in a pot hanging over the fire. It was not until the late 1800's when a cook stove came about that the women could control how long it took to make something.  Laundry was another very intense job. Water had to be heated on a fire built outside and then clothes was added. If the clothes  was really dirty, women used a wash board to scrub it clean.  Women even had to make their own soap-- lye soap. All of the clothes were washed in the same water. Women started with the whites and then moved to the dirtiest clothes such as the man's jeans.

No matter what you did in the good old days everything was hard work.