Monthly Archives : March 2015

Imagine my delight at happening upon Fiona J. Houston’s book, The Cottage Diaries My Year in the Eighteenth Century. Why would someone choose to live for a year in a small house without running water, electricity, heat or any of the comforts that we are accustomed to? Ironically, the present led her back to the past. While investigating the history of Scottish food for an exhibition, she read Felicity Lawrence’s Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on your Plate, and was shocked by the lack of nutrients found in industrialized food. She posited that people ate better in late eighteenth century Scotland and decided to take on the challenge of living and eating for a year as a dominie’s wife (a dominie is a Scottish schoolmaster).

Houston writes:

“One of my reasons for trying to go back in time was my anger at our throw-away society. It’s not just the wastefulness of buying goods, using them for a short time and then chucking them out that upsets me. It is the whole swathe of human activity and endeavour that is negated by this cycle. In the past, people had fewer resources. They had to use their skills and ingenuity to obtain the things that they needed for daily life. They had to make, mend, improvise and invent. I like all of that. I may not have all of the skills, but I have the inclination. In deciding to live simply for a year, I was setting myself a challenge to let the practical side of my nature come to the fore.”

Houston sets herself up in a small house and kits it to an eighteenth century standard with a simple table and chair, bed, a few candlesticks, pots and pans, and a range dating from 1860 (women of the prior century would have cooked on an open hearth, but the structure of Houston’s cottage did not allow for this). She wears clothing of the time (skirts and cloaks, both become soaked in the rain, for not waterproof), gardens and forages in order to cook seasonally, writes with a quill pen using homemade ink, and walks to the local village when necessary.

Her diary begins in January 2005 and chronicles her monthly chores and activities. She provides recipes, and I have yet to make her oatcakes, but soon nettle soup will be on our table. She kept a careful accounting of the her food categorized by season, purchased or foraged, as well as “What it all Cost.” She works incredibly hard at daily living, keeping warm or cool, gathering firewood, making candles and other chores. At the end of her day, she tries to sit down and read books of the time, but finds that it is difficult to read by the rushlights. Houston confirms my suspicion that working by candlelight was extremely difficult, for I often wonder how much was accomplished by such dim lights.

I have the utmost admiration for Fiona Houston, for mastering the skills needed to survive an eighteenth century year. Her book provides one with both the expertise to follow in her footsteps and the ability to see what one can do in the twenty-first century to live a more considered, ‘greener’ life.

NOTE: It seems only fitting to mark the completion of a second year of ‘on a colonial farm’ after reading of Houston’s eighteenth century life. Thank you, dear readers for joining me.

Fiona J. Houston, The Cottage Diaries My Year in the Eighteenth Century, illustrations by Claire Melinsky, (Saraband, 2009), pgs. 9-10, 44, 71, 214

Yet another snowstorm looms in our local future, as it does for many on the east coast. The weather continues to be a topic of much talk and, in some cases, despair, as it ever was.

Noah Webster (1748-1853) kept a “diary of weather” and thus was able to put both past and present into perspective. He wrote:

“The snow in January of 1805 was about 3 feet deep. This was the severest winter since 1780. But the snow left the earth in March in good season & spring was early. I cut asparagus on the 14^th of April, 9 days earlier than last year.”

His article ‘Meteorological’ in The Connecticut Herald seeks to make sense of the reported severest winters of 1780 and 1805. Webster was eagerly tracking the climatic changes through his strenuous data gathering, and thereby challenged the attestations of Thomas Jefferson and others that the “American winters were becoming milder.” Intriguingly, biographer Joshua Kendall links this controversy between scholarly gentlemen to what we now call climate change. Jefferson claimed that the deforestation in some states was the cause of this warming trend; Webster noted that variability in weather patterns was increasing, and he kept data and analyzed the statistics to prove it. Both of these wise individuals pointed to the plight that we are dealing with, or need to tackle, today.

Looking back at these winters and writers gives one a bit of perspective on the recent bout of record setting weather, which must needs give one pause about what we humans are doing each day as we shape the future of our globe.

Wendell Berry asks us to remain in the present with our actions in regards to climate change and land abuse. He posits that if we are only thinking of what can be accomplished in the future, we are missing the opportunity for what we can do right now. He invites us to ‘save energy now for the future’ by beginning with small acts today. Berry states,

“We are always ready to set aside our present life, even our present happiness, to peruse the menu of future exterminations. If the future is threatened by the present, which it undoubtedly is, then the present is more threatened, and often is annihilated, by the future.”

He continues:

“….so few as just one of us can save energy right now by self-control, careful thought, and remembering the lost virtue of frugality. Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be relief. A cooler, slower life may make us happier, more present to ourselves, and to others who need us to be present.”

Time, right now, to start a list of small actions for today.

Joshua Kendall, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture, (Berkley Books, 2012), pgs. 273-274.

Wendell Berry, Our Only World Ten Essays, (Counterpoint, 2015), pgs. 174, 175.