A Hard-worked Woman
She’d almost forgotten about the diapers soaking in the tub. She scrubbed them on the washboard, rinsed them in a pail of clean water, and sent Jane out to hang them on the line. Sarah nursed the baby again and then set up Mary Anne to shell peas for dinner. They’d have chicken tonight, which meant Sarah had to go grab one of the older hens from the coop. She took the cleaver with her. Killing the bird was the easy part. Plucking it was another matter. Finally, she put the bird in the stew pot surrounded by onions and potatoes from the garden. Tonight’s dinner would also be tomorrow’s noon meal.
The girls were dirty from making mud pies by the well. Sarah heated a large pot of water on the cook stove so she could at least wash their faces and hands. Bodies would have to come later. She tried to give her children a bath a week, but sometimes that just wasn’t possible. Henry and Charles came in from the fields, hot and sweaty and hungry. They all ate together at the big table, Sarah cradling the baby in one arm. Lucy was still fussy. Although the elderberry medicine seemed to be helping her cough, she needed to be held. The hen was a little stringy but no one complained.
Tonight Charles cleared the table and scraped and washed the plates because Sarah had one more big chore to do before dark, and she needed Jane’s help. They had to get at least some of those green beans in jars and process them before they lost their snap.