The American Haggard Housewife

Landlord loading the old Pennsylvania Barn – 2013 

      The shadow of a buzzard blackened the ground as my hoe broke upon three rows of potatoes in our humble garden.  Mounding the hills as barn swallows danced in the breeze next to the old Pennsylvania Barn, the pines upon the hill whispered a story to me.   It was a story of all those that came before us, the immigrants seeking a better life, the settlers breaking the soil and the ancestors that worked in the factories, helping to build America’s economy.  Where we came from had been an ever-prominent thought throughout my life.

      As a girl, I longed to be Laura Ingalls Wilder and dreamed of what it would have been like to be alongside her in The Little House on the Prairie.  Her life was vastly different than mine, having grown up an only child in town with scarcely space in between the buildings, and the possibility of anything more than a few heavily shaded container plants under siege by the neighborhood squirrels, impossible.  There were no grasshoppers, no farm, no endless prairie, just an apartment and my father’s business across the yard.  Then I was introduced to Industrial America, and discovered post-Civil War America full of anthracite coal mines, lumber tracts and railroads in my part of the country.  My fascination with Industrial America and the museum field drove me to entering college for a degree in American Studies with a class concentration in Museum Studies and Public Heritage.  Even then, I never imagined a few years later, I would be hilling potatoes in the reddish brown soil of Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

      Today, instead of my intended museum profession, I’m a housewife and industrial historian, who strives to live in the vision of The American Frugal Housewife, Lydia M. Child.  Mrs. Child, as she was known, taught American women how to live within their means in 1832, from keeping accounts of your expenses, to planting gardens, butchering animals, preserving food, and cooking amazing home-style meals.  Being a housewife as a full-time job doesn't mean someone necessarily has to adore cooking, cleaning, or have all the time in the world.  There are days when I try new recipes and others when I’m so tired I would rather run to the local pizza shop then lift a finger in the kitchen.  In this every-minute counts lifestyle many of us lead, the time is not always there to get every last thing on the to-do list done, or to make good home cooking the way our mothers and grandmothers did.  Mrs. Child relayed to us that “Time is Money,” and in our modern society it seems that one can never have enough of either, prompting people to desire to live frugally, but not always having the time many of us believe it takes to do so. 

One-day harvest from our garden – 2013

      Six months after my husband and I married, we had the fortune of coming across approximately four acres of land and a small home to rent.  It gave us the best of both worlds; being close enough to town that we could easily get to places, but far enough in the country that my husband could hear the spring peepers’ chorus rise up from the marsh on a warm evening, or we could watch a white-tailed deer stroll through the pines.  There were already berry bushes and a sour cherry tree sprouting from the red earth, we had room to plant an in-ground garden instead of container gardening, and the ability to hunt on the neighboring land.  Our college education (both of us majoring in a history-based field) was put to the test, living in the mindset of our economical forefathers as we attempted to make ends meet and relish the good home cooking we grew up with.  Needless to say, one’s waistline in this modern sedative lifestyle most people lead cannot stand night after night of home cooking; however, our taste buds were craving the stews, croquettes, ham balls, and gravy drenched meats from our mothers’ and grandmothers’ kitchens in opposite ends of Pennsylvania Dutch Country.  That is when I decided those meals from our pasts could taste good and not destroy our waistlines or our wallets.  That we didn't need to spend so much on groceries, toiletries or dining out, and that we could slowly get out of debt from the student loans that were weighing us down. 

      How do we plan to do this?  Was it my husband’s love for country life, hunting and history?  Or, perhaps, my desire to live a little more like Lydia M. Child?  Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s our continuing desire to go back to the roots of our forefathers and the realization that those whispering pines on the hill were actually telling me another story as I hilled the potatoes in early 2013. 

      Welcome to the world of The American Haggard Housewife.

The winter snow upon the pines on the hill – 2014