Tools & Technology – Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm

March Onward! Tapping Maple Trees, Fresh Eggs & Donuts

Deb D (Aunt Eunice) — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 15:27:00 +0000

The Origins of Leap Year

Hello Folks, Aunt Eunice here. February 2020 is a leap year. According to Chiff.com – A leap year is any year with 366 days instead of the usual 365 days. Therefore, leap day in 2020 will fall on Saturday, February 29th. So…why the extra day? It was the ancient Egyptians who first figured out that the solar year and the calendar year didn’t always match up. That’s because it actually takes the Earth a little longer than a year to travel around the Sun – 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, to be exact. Therefore, as hours accumulated over the centuries, an extra day was occasionally added to the calendar, and over time the practice became more or less official. The Romans first designated February 29 as leap day, but a more precise formula (still in use today) was adopted in the 16th century when the Gregorian calendar fine-tuned the calculations to include a leap day in years only divisible by four – 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, etc.

New Lambs, Farm Fresh Eggs, Donuts

Besides being a Leap Year, February has been an interesting month at Quiet Valley. We had an early set of lambs, “Quentin” the Quiet Valley groundhog says it will be an early spring. Punxsutawney Phil agreed with him. The chickens are enjoying the sun and are providing us with plenty of eggs which doesn’t always happen this time of year, unless you provide them with an artificial light source. It is so nice to have fresh eggs! I never knew what a big difference there is between older ones and newly laid ones until I came to Quiet Valley. One morning I was working in the cellar kitchen and had a nice fire going in the hearth. I was waiting for the first school to arrive for their visit to an 1800s farm. I hadn’t had breakfast so I grabbed a couple of eggs, one green and one light brown, and fried them up in the spider. Not a real spider, of course, but a round cast iron frying pan that has several long legs supporting it. Hence the resemblance to a real arachnid. The eggs were delicious, simple fried eggs, so fresh, so good! The green egg was from an Araucana hen and the light brown from the Buff Orpington. They both tasted the same, just better because they were fresh. The Monday winter camp group learned how to make raised donuts using mashed potatoes in the dough. I was fortunate to get a sample. We also had our first staff winter training session. As part of that day I gave a lesson about medicinal herbs and their uses on the farm in the 19th century.

The Science & Technique of Maple Sugaring

There are eight days left in February, but signs of March marching toward us and onto our calendars are all around. One sign is the fact that the temperature is right for tapping the sugar maple trees! It needs to be about 40 degrees in the day and below freezing at night. According to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, understanding how maple sap is formed requires some knowledge about tree physiology. In the later summer and fall, maple trees virtually stop growing and begin storing excess starches throughout the sapwood, especially in cells called ray cells. This excess starch remains in storage as long as the wood remains colder than about 40 degrees F. Whenever wood temperatures reach around 40 degrees F, enzymes in the ray cells change the starches to sugars, largely sucrose. This sugar then passes into the tree sap. As the temperature increases to about 45 degrees F, the enzymes stop functioning and sugar is no longer produced. In March and April, the sugar changes back to starch—except during periods of flow. Rising temperature creates pressure inside trees, causing sap to flow. When a hole is bored into a tree, wood fibers that are water/sap carrying vessels are severed, allowing sap to drip out of the tree.

I love maple syrup on buttermilk pancakes. When my husband is baking homemade sticky buns, he makes a special batch for me where he substitutes maple syrup for the corn syrup. What a treat! It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. It requires lots of heat (firewood, your kitchen stove, an evaporator) to get the majority of the moisture out of the sap. If you drink the sap before boiling it, you will sense the flavor potential of what it will taste like after it boils down to syrup. If you boil it past the syrup point you could cook it all the way down to sugar. If you decide to tap your sugar maples and boil the sap down inside your home, you may wish to rethink the location. My friend did that once and all the wallpaper in her kitchen peeled off due to the release of so much moisture and warmth. Yikes!!

Preparation for Spring Activity

The second Sunday in March means a return of Daylight Savings Time. Part of the kitchen garden is being tilled so as March marches forward we can get early spring crops in by the end of the month. Our spring programs and field trips take place in March and spring cleaning will begin. By April will we be running on all cylinders!

Well, that’s all for now, folks. Thanks for checking in. Be talking to you soon. Aunt Eunice

Toothbrush & Toothpaste development by the 1800s

Kat M — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 22:29:00 +0000

In my previous post we addressed a question raised by a visitor regarding 1800s toiletries, specifically toilet paper and toilets. This got us curious…what about toothpaste and toothbrushes?

TOOTHBRUSHES AND TOOTHPASTE

It seems that people have been trying to clean their teeth for as long as we’ve had civilization. Some of the earliest recipes to make toothpaste were written by the Egyptians and Babylonians. Throughout most of history toothpaste was a powder that was rubbed onto the teeth with a frayed stick, a finger, or a cloth. The Egyptians seemed to prefer a toothpaste with lots of grit….yum. Ingredients such as charcoal, crushed burnt bone, oyster shell, sand, and pumice are common ingredients.

By 1600 BC the Chinese were selling chewing sticks from aromatic trees to clean teeth. They invented recognizable toothbrushes around the 1400’s. This consisted of bristles made from boar neck hair attached to a bone or bamboo base.

18TH AND 19TH CENTURY TOOTHBRUSHES

The first commercially produced toothbrushes were made around 1780 by William Addis in England. Toothbrushes were not exceedingly common for most of American history. It is estimated that only 1 in 4 Americans owned a toothbrush in 1920. Toothpaste was usually burnt bread mixed with spices such as cloves, salt, and vinegar.

A dentist named Peabody produced a toothpaste that contained soap in 1824. Soap was an ingredient in toothpaste until 1945. Many toothpastes during the mid-1850’s contained chalk powder. And many cookbooks contained recipes for toothpaste that involved charcoal. By about 1850 toothpaste began being sold in jars usually with labels like “Crème Dentifrice”. Toothpaste began being put into tubes by Dr. Washington Sheffield in 1890.

Amazingly, tooth care hasn’t changed too much but our technology and methods have gotten updated. So now you know something new.

The Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm blog is written by Kat Muller, as she explores and learns about the farm during her first year employed here. This blog post is part of a series answering the questions posed by visitors and oftentimes stump or puzzle the interpreters.

Slow Adoption of Toilets & Toilet Paper in the 1800s

Kat M — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:57:00 +0000

Some of my favorite questions as a living history interpreter are ones that deal with ordinary activities we tend to overlook in our daily lives because they are so common. These activities happen without us thinking about it. For example, when walking from the bright sun into the Cellar Kitchen at Quiet Valley a visitor asked “can’t you turn on the lights?” Well, in 1820 there was no electricity to turn on; they had to light lamps or candles. This really gets a visitor thinking and leads us to some interesting research on other day to day activities, namely the bathroom routine – toilets, toilet paper, tooth brushes, and toothpaste. Here is what we found out:

TOILETS AND TOILET PAPER

The Romans were rather advanced when it came to most things, including toilets. They very famously had public ones where dozens of people could go at the same time connected to a sewer system with flowing water to wash things away. Seems rather odd to us but privacy is a very new cultural trend. Archaeologists, such as Ann Olga Koloski-Ostraw, are discovering that Romans even had some in their private homes. The first flushing toilet was invented for Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1596. She did not care for it at all. It was noisy and if she went to the room with the toilet the courtiers would know what business she was about. A chamber pot or a toilet stool could easily be brought to you for your “necessary” needs. The embarrassment of people seeing you take a trip to the toilet or to buy toilet paper took a long time to overcome.

The first practical flushing toilet appeared around 1778 and was invented by Joseph Bramah. Toilets started to catch on in popularity but there was a problem. Unlike the Romans, there were little to no sewer systems. Most toilets lead down into a cesspool under the house or outside the house. Most ordinary people had an outhouse or just dumped their waste into the street. It wasn’t until 1859 that the first planned sewer systems were built in both America and England. By the 1890s sewage treatment plants were being built to help prevent disease such as cholera and typhoid. The Victorians started many campaigns aimed at living better lives and focused on everything from cleaner water to education.

It took a rather long time for toilet paper to appear on the scene. The earliest toilet paper seems to have been invented in China around the 6th century. The first commercially made toilet paper was Gayetty’s Medicated Paper for the Water Closet. There were flat sheets instead of the roll to which we are all accustomed. The advent of a flushed toilet changed what was used as toilet paper. When people used privies it didn’t really matter what was used as toilet paper since it went down a hole. So items like corncobs, straw, water, and sticks were common. But these items couldn’t make it through the bends and turns of pipes. Newspapers and pages from catalogs were used in outhouses to such a point early Old Farmer’s Almanac’s were printed with a hole in the corner to be easily hung on a hook. It wasn’t until about 1930 that toilet paper was a commercial success since prior to that people were embarrassed to buy it in stores!

There are some fun facts to brighten your day.

What is the History of Consumer Sewing Machines?

Kat M — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 16:17:34 +0000

From time to time, historic interpreters hear a question they haven’t been asked before. When I receive a question I’ve never considered, I always find myself saying, “That’s a great question,” as a way to stall while I consider the answer. This series is about some of those great questions.

Yesterday while learning the presentation for the New (1890s) Kitchen, one of the visitors asked about the sewing machine in the corner. “When did people start having sewing machines in their homes?” Great questions but neither the interpreter or myself knew for sure. Here is a little bit about personal sewing machines.

The first machine that used a needle and shuttle to sew cloth was invented in 1790 for working leather and canvas. Due to poor marketing it wasn’t widely known. The first United States patent for a sewing machine was given to Walter Hunt in 1832. (He would go on to invent the safety pin in 1849.)

In France, Bathelemy Thimonnier had invented a sewing machine and had a factory with 80 machines to sew uniforms for the French Army.

By the 1850s sewing machines had developed many of the functions we are familiar with today such as sewing forward, backwards, up, and down. The cloth at this point was generally held vertical across the machine. (Many earlier versions had you hold the cloth horizontally across the machine.) In 1851 Isaac Merritt Singer added a foot to the sewing machine to help hold fabric in place while working. The 1850s saw a series of patent wars rage their way through courts across the country between major inventors and company owners.

Isaac Merritt Singer and Edward Clark played a big role in bringing the sewing machine into homes across the country. In the 1850s sewing machines cost about $125 (the average family’s income was $500 a year). Singer and Clark allowed people to purchase a sewing machine in monthly installments of $3 or $5.

By the late 1860s sewing machines were becoming much more reasonably priced. Sophie Best of Minnesota wrote to her parents, “It is wonderful what progress civilization makes! My head is filled with those pretty sewing machines that are being bought by so many families and are so delightful to have! Some people have been able to get these little fairies for between $10 and $60. The stitches they make are so strong, so pretty, and so easy to make.”

Sewing machines were rather controversial for a time. Women and men generally spent a lot of time sewing by hand. It could take up to 14 hours to sew a man’s dress shirt by hand. With a machine that time could be cut down to just 1 or 2 hours. But what would people do with all this new free time? A common belief throughout history was “idle hands do the devil’s work.” People could get into trouble without work to do. Many people became unemployed because of the sewing machine for a time. There were factories where people used to hand sew clothing. With the sewing machine you needed less people to produce the same amount. So until the factory could buy enough machines for all the workers, people were laid off. There was also a fear that women wouldn’t be able to learn a complex machine like a sewing machine.

Many of the sewing machine manufacturing companies hired women to demonstrate the machines at fairs and in store fronts and women were highlighted in advertising. Many people who owned sewing machines took in mending or custom work and thus earned money and filled leisure time with projects. Generally if someone has some down time, they fill it with something.

The Wheelbarrow: History & Varied Uses on The Farm

Kat M — Wed, 17 May 2017 05:23:00 +0000

Everyday, we overlook the ingenious simplicity of hundreds of inventions. Doors, latches, zippers, buttons, and hammers – just to name a few. At Quiet Valley, we explore this topic with school aged children through a presentation called Simple Machines. We walk the students through simple problems that can be solved with machines such as levers and fulcrums. How do you place a nail into a board of wood? With a hammer, your arm is the fulcrum allowing the hammer head to pivot and drive the nail into the wood. Hold it close to the head and you have a lot of accuracy but not a lot of force. Hold it low on the handle and you have a lot of force but lower accuracy.

Presenting problems like that and walking students through solutions allows them to see how simple machines can be combined to form more complex machines. A lever, fulcrum, wheel, and axle can be combined to make a slightly more complex machine – a wheelbarrow. I was astonished, along with the students, while watching a presentation the other day. I had never thought about the number of components used in the humble wheelbarrow. From long years of moving dirt in archaeology to mucking stalls here on the farm, I have a great appreciation of the kind of work that can be done by one. The presentation got me thinking and I looked at the wheelbarrow in a new light.

The wheelbarrow, as we know it, is probably a Greek invention from around 406 BC. Though the Chinese invented one around 100 BC as well. These earlier versions tended to have the wheel coming up through the middle of a raised platform. Some also had sails to assist them in going up and down hills. It appears also that in addition to moving goods, the humble wheelbarrow has also been used as an escape vehicle. It seems that there are a number of historic accounts of kings, politicians, etc. ending up on the wrong side of a rebellion and making an escape either hidden in a wheelbarrow or carrying others in them. The little wheelbarrow has a long history and without it, it would be difficult to do almost anything on the farm.