The Homestead Diaries | With Needle and Thread

Goodness, another whole week has blown by already!  How time is flying this time of year.  Today was a busy one at the farmhouse.  It started early in the morning when I baked some cornbread for tomorrow's corn presentation.  They do a corn event every year and tell people about how important corn was back then and all the things you can make from it. 

While that was in the oven, I got to work doing some sewing on the hand crank machine.  We got out a few machines so we could all work on some nine patches.

I worked on a Pfaff model from the late 1800s.  It was really a unique experience sewing on such a famous name brand, only it looked quite different, and prettier, than Pfaffs today.  These machines were touted as being the "latest, quietest machines", making very little noise other than a calming, metalic rhythm spurned with each turn of the wheel.  Of course, the invention of the hand crank provided a much more portable machine than the old treadle powered models.  One advertisement even suggested bringing your machine to the seaside for a relaxing afternoon of sewing on the shore!

Interestingly, these old machines cannot stitch backwards, so if you want to reinforce the beginning or end of your seam, you have to lift the needle out, bring the fabric back a bit, and sew over it again at the end.  Usually I don't though, because most of the seams are sewn over again in other places which overlaps the ends.

Each machine does its own stitch.  We had two straight stitch machines and one chain stitch machine out.  One bonus about the chain stitch machine is that taking out seams is super quick!  Just pull the thread and it all comes out like a row of crochet stitches.

There is the nine patch I made today.  I think I will make it into a pillow, since I am not at all a quilter, nor do I have the patience to make a million more and sew them all together.  I do like the way it turned out though.

Right there is the quilt that the quilter's club works on a little each month.  We keep it in the sitting room with a cloth over it for protection.  The pattern is very pretty!

And there's the cornbread that was baking while I was sewing.  It was pretty tasty, and it cooked well in the skillet.  I am getting more used to cooking in cast iron and I like it.

It was cloudy in the morning, but after our noon meal it brightened up into a muggy, damp afternoon.  The air smelled like wet grass, soft mud and fragrant flowers growing around the farm...

Hope you are having a lovely day!

The Best Day

Since Mother's Day was just this week, I thought it appropriate to share this song with all of you.

"The Best Day" by Taylor Swift

This song makes me cry every. single. time. I listen to it.  Perhaps it's because I can relate to each and every word.  I love my mom so much. :')

(Dear me, I just hit that play button again and now I'm a sniffly mess!)

Mother's Day Ramblings

I hope you all had a lovely Mother's Day with your mothers!  Ours was wonderful.  It started in the morning when my sister and I woke up early and prepared a breakfast in bed for Momma.

Sorry, I had the plate over it to keep it warm and didn't think to take it off before I took the picture. :)

After celebrating in the bedroom and presenting our humble offerings wrapped up in brown paper and ribbon, we proceeded to get ready for Mass.

After a beautiful Mass we headed to our friends house for most of the day.  I had made Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes the night before which, alas, I did not get pictures of.  But apparently they were popular because by the time the girls and I returned from the airsoft war they had all vanished into thin air!  Oh and yes, you did hear me correctly.  I played airsoft practically the whole afternoon.

Normally I would have been absolutely horrified at such an unladylike sport, but when the boys called for reinforcements, and the other girls begged me to come with them, I decided that for this one afternoon I could throw being ladylike to the wind and have some fun.  It was very.... interesting, considering I absolutely stink at shooting anything, and most of the time I was just trying not to get shot (those things hurt really bad!), but overall I did have a great time.  Countless two-man airsoft wars in our own woods with my brother have at least made me somewhat familiar with the game.  However, I did come home with some sunburn.  I looked in the mirror later that evening and, to my sorrow, saw a nice pink stripe starting at one end of my cheek, skimming over my nose, and ending on the other side.  So much for preserving my complexion this year.  In all the books I read, a lady always makes every effort to keep the sun off of her face, so as not to tint her features, as that was considered very uncivilized.  So, each spring I get so determined that during the warm months, I'm going to wear a hat or bonnet and sunscreen whenever I go outside, to keep the sun off my face.  But each year my failure is epic when, on that one spring day (like today), it just sort of happens, and then there it is for the rest of the summer.  So here I am, an unsophisticated redskin from the backwoods.  Well not quite, but that's how I feel.

Well somehow I went from talking about Mother's Day to getting a sunburn in one post.  Sorry for my very random ramblings!  But then again, I did warn you in the title of this post.

Happy day after Mother's Day! :)

God bless,

The Homestead Diaries | Ginger and Molasses

Well here I am with the second official Homestead Diaries post!  I got a lot of enthusiasm in the comments on my first post, so it looks like you all want me to go ahead with the series!  Alrighty then.  Let's get started.

Today, I did my first ever baking adventure with the wood stove.  After browsing the old cookbooks, I decided to try a simple ginger snap recipe dating back to 1890.

I got the stove roaring, and waited for the oven to heat up.  It usually gets to be between 350 and 400 degrees, depending on how big your fire is.

Checking to make sure it has enough wood...

As the stove was heating, I gathered all of my ingredients together and began preparing the dough.  The molasses was in the cellar, so I had to brave all those little spiders who have made their threadlike homes down there and grab the molasses and run back upstairs. *shivers*

 After some elbow grease I at last got the dough to the right consistency.  There were no mixers back then!

I cut them out with a simple, jagged edged round cutter.   There were a bunch of other shapes, but I wanted them all uniform. :)

 And then into the oven they went!  With a wood burning stove you have to gauge how long you have had your food in, and turn it around halfway through or else one side will be doughy goop and the other will be fried within an inch of its life.  And yes, I'm speaking from experience.  You do not want to see how the first pan came out. :)

 

Set some dishes to soak while I was waiting for my cookies...

Pussy wants to come in!  Sorry Sarah, no kitties allowed in the house!  

She's the sweetest little thing....

It looks like they're done!  Perfect!  Now we'll just get a trivet out and let them cool somewhere where little fingers can't reach them... :)

 

I just have to say I am so stinkin' proud of myself that I successfully baked something in that oven.  Of course, the other homemaker and I couldn't eat all those cookies ourselves, so I brought some to the ladies at the country store, and then turned the rest of them over to the ever grateful, ever obliging fellows at the blacksmith.  They told me they were delicious. :)

Now, I want a wood burning stove for myself.  I am definitely going to use one in my future home!

Oh yes, I almost forgot!  The recipe!

 

  

Ginger Snaps 

 (1890)

2 eggs well beaten

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup molasses

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp soda

Enough flour

Mix in order given.  Turn out on a floured surface; cut into shapes.  Bake in a quick oven.

Now, don't panic.  You have to remember that this is a very old recipe, which dates back to a time when women were in the kitchen much more often, and thus knew what they were doing.  Which means that recipes were a bit vague, especially with amounts and baking times.  We will take this one step at a time.

Beat the eggs, stir in the brown sugar, molasses, and baking soda.  Add some flour in 1/2 cup increments until the dough holds together and is able to be rolled out on a floured surface. When I made it I think I used about 3 1/2 cups in the end, but be your own judge.  Roll out dough on floured surface to about 1/4" thickness.  Cut into shapes, and place on a greased cookie sheet, about 1 1/2" inches apart.

And now, we have the oven situation.  In the old days there was no set oven temperature which you could work with.  You could fluctuate the temperature a bit by how hot you had the fire going, but that was it.  So if you are using a modern oven I would suggest bringing it up to 375 degrees and baking the cookies for about 15 minutes, or until set.  My first batch was done in a flash, but by the time I was putting last batch in, I had let the fire go down a bit so they took longer.  Just make sure you keep an eye on them so they don't burn.

 

Lovely!  Now you know how to make ginger snaps the way they did in the old days.  I hope you enjoyed the post. :)

God bless,