Well, I didn't make a house without nails or give birth in the wilderness, but when my son was a few months old, we went to live in an old house in Mount Pleasant, NY, and when winter came, there was no running water, and no heat, only a stream out back and a woodstove; so when my hubby went off to a construction job to support us, and I would have to get the diapers washed, that job entailed cutting down trees, splitting and chopping it into into stove lengths, gathering kindling, and building a fire in the woodstove; then breaking through the ice in the frozen stream and carrying in buckets of water for the diapers. And all the other laundry-- clothes, sheets, whatever got dirty.
And I cut enough wood to heat two rooms 24 hours a day. I got up three or four times a night to feed the stove or nurse the baby. I made yoghurt twice a week, and biscuits from scratch every night, because they were cheaper than bread.
I was 21. It seemed like fun. |
