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Daily Life |
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Hi! My name
is Almanzo. I would like to tell you about my daily life. My brothers, my dad, my uncles, and I hunt lots of wild birds and
animals for our meat and cut down trees for our firewood. We hunt birds
and animals for food our family eats each day. I also plant and harvest
crops with my brothers, my dad, and my uncles. We harvest in the fall
because if we wait until winter, the frost will kill the crops. When I
am nine years old I will be an apprentice to a Cooper or a
Silversmith. A
Cooper is someone who works with wood and fixes chairs or anything else
made from wood. I think I
will learn a lot from him like making barrels and wagon wheels. I will
be an apprentice for about seven years. Now, my sister does different
kinds of things every day. I'll let her explain the kinds of
things that she does herself.
Hi!
This
is Elizabeth. My mother, my aunts, my grandmothers, and I make our soaps and
candles. We spin wool with a spinning wheel and weave it into cloth. We get the wool from sheep. We shear the wool off the sheep. You may think that this hurts the sheep but it doesn’t. It feels like getting a haircut. I also cut and prepare the meat for eating. I get the meat from my father and brothers. My mother and grandmother have taught me to knit and sew. My sisters and I start learning these skills when we are very young. After I have enough sewing practice, I will begin to work on a sampler. A sampler is something I make to show my skill in sewing. You sketch a pattern that includes sentences or verses. I think I will want to make an alphabet and a Bible verse on mine and I will be very proud of it. It isn't as big as the quilts my Mom makes, but it still shows how well I stitch! We are taught to be eager workers by our parents because laziness is considered a sin. We get up very early to do chores like sweeping, feeding the chickens, milking cows, watering horses, running errands, picking berries from the forest, gathering peas, onions, turnips, carrots, vegetables, and spices from the garden, and taking eggs from the chickens. We help cook breakfast, a midday meal, and dinner. We don't really take many baths, but we wash in a pail with hot water about once a day. Most colonial families including ours, are very big. We have nine children including me, two aunts, two uncles, and three grandparents, and we all live together. We work hard each day. We are self-reliant, which means that we could meet our needs without help from anyone else. Two other important parts of our lives as Colonial Kids
are our religion and what we do for recreation. Click on the
links below to read more: |
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To learn more about farming, Take the Barn Tour |
We make candles by tying string to a stick and we put the
strings into a pot of boiling wax and