While visiting our county fair this fall I was impressed anew with the variety of a farm woman’s duties and the good work she is doing. Thru the poultry department, past the display of garden products and cookery and the fancy work still I sauntered and, instead of these material objects, I saw exhibited the industry and thrift, the imagination and love of beauty of women on the farms of the country today.
What endless work and patience it takes to make poultry keeping a paying part of the farm business, yet women are doing it in connection with gardening which supplies the greater part of the family’s living the year around.
It is all a part of their routine, together with the wonderful cooking they do without a thought that they are practicing the finest arts of chemistry.
Not content with all this, farm women show their love of beauty as well as their thrift, in the fancy work with which they adorn their homes.
Looking at the beautiful quilts and rugs made from scraps, especially one rug woven from burlap bags, one could almost believe that, despite the old saying to the contrary, a “silk purse could be made out of a sow’s ear.”
The work of grandmother’s patient fingers displayed beside the very latest in hand embroidery shows that, thru a long life, the love of beauty and habit of industry still persists.
A farm woman who is successful with her garden, poultry and homemaking has mastered several difficult trades, proved herself a good executive as well as business woman and is a link between the old and the new ways of life, preserving what is worth while from the days of her grandmother and adding to this the improvements and knowledge of her later day.
She has good reason to be proud of her work and her place in the scheme of things.
“Reminiscences of Fair Time” by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in The Missouri Ruralist, December 1, 1922
Comment1
I needed to read this today….thank you!
Comments are closed.