We cooked Pottage (chicken, barley and black bean stew) and Indian cornbread (which burnt) over the fire. The kids helped to gather firewood and get the fire going nicely. The also shook up cream to make butter and used the mortar and pestle to grind up the spices for our pottage. I learned about the challenges of wearing long skirts and working over a fire. I guess that was quite a danger in colonial times.
Here are Megan and Jonathan working on the Indian cornbread.
I sewed or re-made most of the clothes we wore today. That has kept me busy this week but has been fun. Aaron's outfit was probably my favorite. I used an old short linen pair of pants of his and turned them into knickers. The Waistcoat (vest) I made from some red wool that had been given to me that was already cut out for a little girls coat. I eliminated several pieces and made it into a waistcoat for him. He wore some long socks of mine which we tied up with garters. The shoes, shirt and hat we already had. Jonathan was dressed similarly, I had to use scraps of wool to make his vest as I didn't have any big pieces left. He liked it though and decided the front was kind of like an airplane.
Here is Mara in her cloak that I quickly put together last night after church. It was warm and cozy and she liked it a lot.
Here is Mara in the dress that we re-made from an old dress that was in my quilt box. The apron was one I made for our class last year. Her cap is what they call a "coif".
Here is my great helper, my younger sister Keren. She helped to watch over kids and cook and anything that was needed. She put together her own outfit. This picture also shows our empty stew pot. We all ate together and licked the platter clean.
This picture show the pocket that Keren made for herself (she and I also made one for me but I ran out of time and didn't get much embroidery done on it.) In colonial times pockets in clothes had not been invented yet but women wore these tied around their waist. Sometimes they had two.
Here is a spindle and some wool. We worked at spinning yarn a little during the class. We also dyed some fabric using natural dye but I think I will talk about that in another post.
Well I hope you enjoyed our colonial days class. It would have been more fun if you could have been here but I guess this will have to do! :-) In my opinion pretending to live in other time periods is the best way to learn history. We have also been reading heavily about that time period these last few weeks. If you don't feel like going to all this bother at home ( your kids would love it if you would though) I would recommend going to living history museums or a Rendevous. Those are great places to learn history.
