FARMERS’ WIVES.
One of my “Dutch” neighbors, who, from a shoemaker, became the owner of two farms, said to me, “The woman is more than half;” and his own very laborious wife (with her portion) had indeed been so.
The woman (in common speech, “the old woman”) milks, raises the poultry, has charge of the garden,—sometimes digging the ground herself, and planting and hoeing, with the assistance of her daughters and the “maid,” when she has one. (German, magd.) To be sure, she does not go extensively into vegetable-raising, nor has she a large quantity of strawberries and other small fruits; neither does she plant a great many peas and beans, that are laborious to “stick.” She has a quantity of cabbages and of “red beets,” of onions and of early potatoes, in her garden, a plenty of cucumbers for winter pickles, and store of string-beans and tomatoes, with some sweet potatoes.
Peter R. told me that in one year, off their small farm, they sold “two hundred dollars’ worth of wedgable things, not counting the butter.” As in that year the clothing for each member of the family probably cost no more than fifteen dollars, the two hundred dollars’ worth of vegetable things was of great importance.
Our “Dutch” never make store-cheese. At a county fair, only one cheese was exhibited, and that was from Chester County. The farmer’s wife boards all the farm-hands, and the mechanics—the carpenter, mason, etc.—who put up the new buildings, and the fence-makers. At times she allows the daughters to go out and husk corn. It was a pretty sight which I saw one fall day,—an Amish man with four sons and daughters, husking in the field. “We do it all ourselves,” said he.
(Said a neighbor, “A man told me once that he was at an Amish husking—a husking-match in the kitchen. He said he never saw as much sport in all his life. There they had the bloom-sock. There was one old man, quite gray-headed, and gray-bearded; he laughed till he shook.” Said another, “There’s not many huskings going on now. The most play now goes on at the infares.”)
In winter mornings perhaps the farmer’s wife goes out to milk in the stable with a lantern, while her daughters get breakfast; has her house “redd up” about eight o’clock, and is prepared for several hours’ sewing before dinner, laying by great piles of shirts for summer. We no longer make linen; but I have heard of one “Dutch” girl who had a good supply of domestic linen made into shirts and trousers for the future spouse whose fair proportions she had not yet seen.
There are, of course, many garments to make in a large family, but there is not much work put upon them. We do not yet patronize the sewing-machine very extensively, but a seamstress or tailoress is sometimes called in. At the spring cleaning the labors of the women folk are increased by whitewashing the picket-fences.
In March we make soap, before the labors of the garden are great. The forests are being obliterated from this fertile tract, and many use what some call consecrated lye; formerly, the ash-hopper was filled, and a good lot of egg-bearing lye run off to begin the soap with, while the weaker filled the soft-soap kettle, after the soap had “come.” The chemical operation of soap-making often proved difficult, and, of course, much was said about luck. “We had bad luck making soap.” A sassafras stick was preferred for stirring, and the soap was stirred always in one direction. In regard to this, and that other chemical operation, making and keeping vinegar, there are certain ideas about the temporary incapacity of some persons,—ideas only to be alluded to here. If the farmer’s wife never “has luck” in making soap, she employs some skilful woman to come in and help her. It is not a long operation, for the “Dutch” rush this work speedily. If the lye is well run off, two tubs of hard soap and a barrel of soft can be made in a day. A smart housekeeper can make a barrel of soap in the morning, and go visiting in the afternoon.
Great are the household labors in harvest; but the cooking and baking in the hot weather are cheerfully done for the men, who are toiling in hot suns and stifling barns. Four meals are common at this season, for “a piece” is sent out at nine o’clock. I heard of one “Dutch” girl’s making some fifty pies a week in harvest; for if you have four meals a day, and pie at each, many are required. We have great faith in pie.
I have been told of an inexperienced Quaker housewife in the neighboring county of York, who was left in charge of the farm, and during harvest these important labors were performed by John Stein, John Stump, and John Stinger. She also had guests, welcome perhaps as “rain in harvest.” To conciliate the Johns was very important, and she waited on them first. “What will thee have, John Stein?” “What shall I give thee, John Stump?” “And thee, John Stinger?” On one memorable occasion there was mutiny in the field, for John Stein declared that he never worked where there were not “kickelin” cakes in harvest, nor would he now. Küchlein proved to be cakes fried in fat; and the housewife was ready to appease “Achilles’ wrath,” as soon as she made this discovery.
We made in one season six barrels of cider into apple-butter, three at a time. Two large copper kettles were hung under the beech-trees, down between the spring-house and smoke-house, and the cider was boiled down the evening before, great stumps of trees being in demand. One hand watched the cider, and the rest of the family gathered in the kitchen and labored diligently in preparing the cut apples, so that in the morning the “schnits” might be ready to go in. (Schneiden, to cut, geschnitten.)
One bushel and a half of cut apples are said to be enough for a barrel of cider. In a few hours the apples will all be in, and then you will stir, and stir, and stir, for you do not want to have the apple-butter burn at the bottom, and be obliged to dip it out into tubs and scour the kettle. Some time in the afternoon, you will take out a little on a dish, and when you find that the cider no longer “weeps out” round the edges, but all forms a simple heap, you will dip it up into earthen vessels, and when cold take it “on” to the garret to keep company with the hard soap and the bags of dried apples and cherries, perhaps with the hams and shoulders. Soap and apple-butter are usually made in an open fireplace, where hangs the kettle. At one time (about the year 1828) I have heard that there was apple-butter in the Lancaster Museum which dated from Revolutionary times; for we do not expect it to ferment in the summer. It dries away; but water is stirred in to prepare it for the table. Sometimes peach-butter is made, with cider, molasses, or sugar, and, in the present scarcity of apples, cut pumpkin is often put into the apple-butter.
Soon after apple-butter-making comes butchering, for we like an early pig in the fall, when the store of smoked meat has run out. Pork is the staple, and we smoke the flitches, not preserving them in brine like the Yankees. We ourselves use much beef, and do not like smoked flitch, but I speak for the majority. Sausage is a great dish with us, as in Germany.
Butchering is one of the many occasions for the display of friendly feeling, when brother or father steps in to help hang the hogs, or a sister to assist in rendering lard, or in preparing a plentiful meal. An active farmer will have two or three porkers killed, scalded, and hung up by sunrise, and by night the whole operation of sausage and “pudding” making, and lard rendering, will be finished, and the house set in order. The friends who have assisted receive a portion of the sausage, etc., which portion is called the “metzel-sup” (or soop). The metzel-sup is very often sent to poor widows and others.
We make scrapple from the skin, a part of the livers, and heads, with the addition of corn-meal; but, instead, our “Dutch” neighbors make liverwurst (“woorsht”), or meat pudding, omitting the meal, and this compound, stuffed into the larger entrails, is very popular in Lancaster market. Some make pawn-haus from the liquor in which the pudding-meat was boiled, adding thereto corn-meal. The name is properly pann-haas, and signifies, perhaps, panned-rabbit. It is sometimes made of richer material.
These three dishes, just before mentioned, are fried before eating. I have never seen hog’s-head cheese in “Dutch” houses. If the boiling-pieces of beef are kept over summer, they are smoked, instead of being preserved in brine. Much smear-case (schmier-käse), or cottage cheese, is eaten in these regions. Children, and some grown people too, fancy it upon bread with molasses; which may be considered as an offset to the Yankee pork and molasses.
In some Pennsylvania families smear-case and apple-butter are eaten to save butter, which is a salable article. The true “Dutch” housewife’s ambition is to supply the store-goods for the family as far as possible from the sale of the butter and eggs.
We have also Dutch cheese, which may be made by crumbling the dry smear-case, working in butter, salt, and chopped sage, forming it into pats, and setting them away to ripen. The sieger-käse is made from sweet milk boiled, with sour milk added and beaten eggs, and then set to drain off the whey. (Ziegen-käse is German for goat’s milk cheese.)
“Schnits and knep” is said to be made of dried apples, fat pork, and dough-dumplings cooked together.
“Tell them they’re good,” says one of my “Dutch” acquaintances.
Knep is from the German, knöpfe, buttons or knobs. In common speech the word has fallen to nep. The “nep” are sometimes made from pie-crust, or sometimes from a batter of eggs and milk, and may be boiled without the meat; but one of my acquaintances says that the smoke gives a peculiar and appetizing flavor.
Apple-dumplings in “Dutch” are aepel-dumplins; whence I infer that like pye-kroosht they are not of German origin.
In the fall our “Dutch” make sauer-kraut. I happened to visit the house of my friend Susanna when her husband and son were going to take an hour at noon to help her with the kraut. Two white tubs stood upon the back porch, one with the fair round heads, and the other to receive the cabbage when cut by a knife set in a board (a very convenient thing for cutting kohl-slaw and cucumbers). When cut, the cabbage is packed into a “stand” with a sauer-kraut staff, resembling the pounder with which New Englanders beat clothes in a barrel. Salt is added during the packing. When the cabbage ferments it becomes acid. The kraut-stand remains in the cellar; the contents not being unpalatable when boiled with potatoes and the chines or ribs of pork. But the smell of the boiling kraut is very strong, and that stomach is probably strong which readily digests the meal.
Sometimes “nep” or dumplings are boiled with the salt meat and sour-krout. A young teacher, who was speaking of sour-krout and nep, was asked how he spelt this word. He did not know, and said he did not care, so he got the nep.
“As Dutch as sour-krout,” has become a familiar saying here. In Lehigh County, if I mistake not, I heard the common dialect called “sour-krout Dutch.”
Our “Dutch” make soup in variety, and pronounce the word short, between soup and sup. Thus there is Dutch soup, potato soup, etc.; scalded milk and bread is “bread and milk soup,” bread crumbed into coffee “coffee soup.”
Noodel soup (nudeln) is a treat. Noodels may be called domestic macaroni. I have seen a dish in which bits of fried bread were laid upon the piled-up noodels, to me unpalatable from the quantity of eggs in the latter.
Dampf-noodles, or gedämpfte nudeln, are boiled, and melted butter is poured over them.
The extremely popular cakes, twisted, sprinkled with salt, and baked crisp and brown, called pretzels (brezeln), were known in Pennsylvania long before the cry for “ein lager, zwei brezeln” (a glass of lager and two pretzels), was heard in the land.
One of my “Dutch” neighbors, who visited Western New York, was detained several hours at Elmira. “They hadn’t no water-crackers out there,” he complained. “Didn’t know what you meant when you said water-crackers; and they hain’t got pretzels. You can’t get no pretzels.”
Perhaps not at the railroad stations.
We generally find excellent home-made wheat bread in this limestone region. We make the pot of “sots” (or rising) overnight, with boiled mashed potatoes, scalded flour, and sometimes hops. Friday is baking-day. The “Dutch” housewife is very fond of baking in the brick oven, but the scarcity of wood must gradually accustom us to the great cooking-stove.
One of the heavy labors of the fall is the fruit-drying. Afterward your hostess invites you to partake, thus: “Mary, will you have pie? This is snits, and this is elder” (or dried apples, and dried elderberries). Dried peaches are peach snits.
A laboring woman once, speaking to me of a neighbor, said, “She hain’t got many dried apples. If her girl would snits in the evening, as I did!—but she’d rather keep company and run around than to snits.”
The majority keep one fire in winter. This is in the kitchen, which with nice housekeepers is the abode of neatness, with its rag carpet and brightly polished stove. An adjoining room or building is the wash-house, where butchering, soap-making, etc., are done by the help of a great kettle hung in the fireplace, not set in brick-work.
Adjoining the kitchen, on another side, is a state apartment, also rag-carpeted, and called “the room.” The stove-pipe from the kitchen sometimes passes through the ceiling, and tempers the sleeping-room of the parents. These arrangements are not very favorable to bathing in cold weather; indeed, to wash the whole person is not very common, in summer or in winter.
Will you go up-stairs in a neat Dutch farm-house? Here are rag carpets again. Gay quilts are on the best beds, where green and red calico, perhaps in the form of a basket, are displayed on a white ground; or the beds bear brilliant coverlets of red, white, and blue, as if to “make the rash gazer wipe his eye.” The common pillow-cases are sometimes of blue check, or of calico. In winter, people often sleep under feather-covers, not so heavy as a feather-bed. In the spring there is a great washing of bedclothes, and then the blankets are washed, which during winter supplied the place of sheets.