Family Chores

I wasn't very old, perhaps 5 or 6 years, when I learned how to peel potatoes and help out with meal preparation. I also enjoyed baking, particularly cakes and cookies. Mom valued help in the kitchen as she spent one to two hours dairying in the morning and the evening. Mom made fresh buns and cinnamon buns every Saturday morning, a real treat for all. I still shape buns the way that I learned from Mom. It was my Mom's wish that I become a Home Ec teacher because I so enjoyed helping out in the kitchen. (My love of math won out, and I became a math teacher!!) We moved into our new home, a split level, in 1961. There were three levels to clean weekly - bedroom, kitchen and living, rumpus room. Mom organized herself, Alice and me to take turns cleaning those three levels. Mom sewed many beautiful dresses for us over the years. She would say, "If you make supper, I will start sewing .........for you."

I remember occasionally helping Mom with outside chores like mowing the lawn or weeding the raspberry patch. I believe Alice would say that she was the main outdoor help as she preferred working out-of-doors to working in the kitchen. Mom always had a beautiful garden, like her mother before her. I am glad that we learned to eat a wide variety of vegetables from an early age. We weren't very old when Mom would pack us all up in the car and go berry picking. I remember her picking raspberries in the Hills west of Kingman where she grew up. I also remember helping pick saskatoons and chokecherries closer to home. It was fun picking saskatoons because you could eat while you picked. The same could not be said for picking chokecherries.

What chores did we help Dad with? Probably the least loved chore was picking rocks. Dad would hook up the stoneboat to the tractor and drive along while we (children) ran behind throwing stones on to the stoneboat. Picking roots was not much better but we were enticed by the promise of a bonfire with a weiner roast at the end of the day. Alice remembers being paid 25 cents for the task. I remember occasionally cleaning grain for Dad, and I helped him shingle the new milk room.

We also helped Dad with loose hay, and later on bales. I remember once when Dad was taking a load of hay to Auntie Helga's. Orville and I were sitting on top of the stack. When Dad turned the corner into Auntie Helga's lane, Orville and I slid off the rack along with a big pile of hay. At our home we had the traditional style barn with hayloft. A large rope with pulley and sling attached ran along the center roof beam. When Dad had a full hayrack he would pull up in front of the barn. The huge door in the front of the loft would be opened, and the sling dropped to the rack and wrapped around the hay. Then the hay was pulled up into the barn. When the barn was full of hay we would so enjoy swinging off the pulley rope and sliding down the haystack!!

In later years we switched from loose hay to square bales. We would help Dad load up the bales out in the field and unload them either in the barn or outside. Dad set up an elevator from the truck to the smaller loft door. He would put the bales on the elevator and we would catch them up in the loft, stacking as we went. Dad had a very particular way of building a stack, whether in the truck or free standing. I must say his stacks were very sturdy. Much of our childhood fun centered around bales. We frequently built tunnels and houses in the bales in the loft. When Dad would go to the loft for hay he was not impressed when he would fall through a hole into one of our tunnels!!

My parents were certainly effective at teaching us how and getting us involved in helping with chores!! My efforts with my children were more ad hoc.