A simplified down-to-earth life sounds charming, very sustainable, and rewarding.
Just the other day I was thinking about the root cellar we had in my family-of-origin home.
It was a small room with an earthen floor, and shelving all around holding the preserves my
mother made. She had worked as a teacher in a one-room school-house, but after marrying
my dad and the children started coming, she stayed at home, and never even learned to drive.
Back then we had milk and bread delivered to our house. Sixteen loaves of bread was a usual
weekly order, and we often ran out, and were sent to the corner store for more. A loaf of bread
was under twenty cents back then. One of my sisters was very sensitive to whether or not we
were drinking real milk, or skimmed milk made from powder; real orange juice or Tang; butter or
margarine. Us kids used to use the milk box to pass goods through when we played grocery store.
We would help making the preserves. The best (most fun) part was putting the fruit through the
grinder, which was clamped to the edge of the kitchen table. My mother would boil the jars. We
made jam, pickles, and fruit preserves of all sorts. Every weekend was flurry of activity also, with
lots of baking done (including three apple pies every week), all the regular house cleaning, and
a big load of laundry. With thirteen people in the house we did laundry at least three times a week,
but Saturday was the biggest and most loads. All this work fell to the girls, while my dad and brothers
were off selling produce at farmer's markets. I volunteered to work with them when I was eight.
The way I remember it is, my mother was against it, but because there were way more girls than boys
in the family, my dad was happy to accept my help, and he fought for me. I worked with my dad and
brothers for ten years after that, all day Saturdays, Friday after school, and special fall fairs, for which
my dad would make barrels and barrels of apple cider. I do not know what a barrel sold for, but a cup
of cider was five cents (same as the cost of a single apple), and a forty-ounce bottle was thirty five cents.
The cider would ferment after a few days, too! Of course I cannot but help think about how much every-
thing has increased in cost the last few years, but comparing prices now to then? A pound of potatoes
now costs as much as a fifty or seventy-five pound bag used to. They really were dirt cheap! Summer
was the busiest time with all the seasonal fruit we sold (lots and lots of peaches). An eleven quart
basket of peaches was three dollars and fifty cents. We sold apples and potatoes year round, along with
honey and maple syrup, rain or shine, and all through the deep dark days of snowy winter. Both of my
parents had been raised on farms, with my dad's family especially being dirt poor, and living hand to mouth.
