Laura Ingalls Wilder on being a farm wife

I love our new librarian, Bill.  He has been eager to get to know us and help us enjoy the library.   It's a small library and so we make good use of the inter-library loan system.   He's always asking what he can get for us next and recommending books and authors he thinks we might enjoy.  One day when we were in there browsing he approached me with a book called  "Farm Journalist," a collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder's writings from the Missouri Ruralist.  "Thought you might be interested in this."

I'd never read anything of hers outside the Little House books and was kind of skeptical because I know she was considered somewhat a feminist, as well as being the head of Missouri's Eastern Star oganization (Freemasonry for women, if you will).  But so far I've been quite tickled with the book.  The writing isn't fantastic (I understand her daughter did the majority of the actual writing for the Little House books), but it's not bad.  And feminism a hundred years ago is nothing like what it is today.  Mostly I identify with her as a Missourian (transplants, both of us) and as a busy farm wife.

The following one something that hit the spot, as I'd been contemplating this very thing during the few days before I read it....

From Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist, page 25-26


One thing is most important if we (farm wives) expect to keep rested and fit to do our best and that is not to worry over the work nor to try to do it before the time comes. The feeling of worry and strain caused by trying to carry the whole week's work at once is very tiring. It doesn't pay to be like the woman of years ago, in old Vermont, who opened the stairway door at 5 o'clock on Monday morning and called to the hired girl: "Liza! Liza! Hurry up and come down! Today is wash day and the washing not started; tomorrow is ironing day and the ironing not begun; and the next day is Wednesday and here's the week half gone and nothing done yet."

Better for a little while each day to be like the tramp who was not at all afraid of work, yet could lie down right beside it and go to sleep. Slipping away to some quiet place to lie down and relax for 15 minutes, if no longer, each day rests both mind and body surprisingly. This rest does more good if taken at a regular time and the work goes along so much better when we are rested and bright that there is no time lost.

Change is rest! How often have we proved this by going away from our work for a day or even part of a day, thinking of other things and forgetting the daily round for a little while. On coming back the work is taken up with new interest and seems much easier.

If it is not possible to go away, why not let the mind wander a little when the hands can do the task without our strict attention? I have always found that I did not get so tired, and my day seemed shorter when I listened to the birds singing or noticed, from the window, the beauties of the trees or clouds. This is a part of the farm equipment that cannot be improved upon, though it might be increased with advantage. Perhaps some day we will all have kitchens like the club kitchen lately installed in New York, where everything from peeling the potatoes to cooking the dinner and washing the dishes is done by electricity, but the birds' songs will never be any sweeter nor the beauties of field and forest, of cloud and stream, be any more full of delight, and these are already ours.