Are you hot enough yet? It’s going to be a scorcher here in West Texas today at 103! Summer officially arrives tomorrow but it’s a day early. The next three days will see no relief. I hope it’s cooler where you live.
Summers mean gardens and planting crops. Canning. It was work. Hard work. And everyone did their share.
Often people in the 1800s and even earlier had some darn good ideas that I wish we’d implement today. The people were mostly poor folks so how did they make do and survive when they had little money?
One really great idea was starting a seed library. One place or person was designated to collect seeds so when someone got ready to plant a garden, they’d go get what they needed. Then as their gardens died out at the end of the season, they’d take five seeds of each kind of plant back to the library. I always thought this was a great idea and no one went hungry.
I’m not sure why we don’t have these today. But then, people don’t grow gardens anymore. Not like they used to. They just run to Walmart.
I recently saw where scientists are collecting seeds from all over the world and storing them in a bunker up in the Arctic. Some plants are becoming extinct.
Another thing they did on the frontier involved the schools. Back then, as in the schools today, they had little money to operate with. Everything went for a building and a teacher with none left over for buying schoolbooks and supplies. The children would bring one egg each day for the teacher. She’d collect and sell them and use that money for what she needed.
Also, often the school board didn’t even have a place for the teacher to live so she took turns staying in people’s houses. I don’t think I’d have liked that very much.
People back then found ways around every obstacle. Delta Dandridge in a book I wrote called Texas Mail Order Bride used these ideas to help the town of Battle Creek, Texas. She also founded a women’s society and called it Women of Vision. The women all pitched in and restored the run-down town. They rebuilt buildings that were falling down, painted and gussied everything up and that attracted new businesses and settlers.
In case you’re interested, here’s the Amazon Link for the book. But it’s also available everywhere. 
Another practice that was not in the book was snow homes. In the winter when school children couldn’t get home because of the snow or rain, they went to the neighbor’s house that had been designated. Often they stayed overnight and then just trudged back to school the next day. Snow homes were a place of safety where you were warm and fed. You were always welcome. I love this practice.
Kids today sometimes don’t always have a safe place to go. They’re just left on their own to figure things out as best they can. But that’s a topic I don’t want to get into.
What do you think of these? Did your mother or grandmother ever tell you about other practices they had back then?
I’m giving away one ebook copy of Texas Mail Order Brides.
This started my Bachelors of Battle Creek series.
