The Day for a Pioneer Woman

The pioneer woman's typical day consisted of cooking over a wood stove, pumping water, and carrying it into the house for cooking, bathing, and washing. She also made most of their clothes, scrubbed them clean on a washboard, using soap she had made in an old butchering kettle, dried the clothes in the sun, and ironed them with a heavy iron heated on the stove. She would hang her milk in the well to cool, put straw under the carpet for more wear and more warmth, and filled the straw tick mattresses twice a year with clean straw. She gave birth to her children by lamplight in the drafty house and nursed them all on castor oil and prayer.