In the article, "Farm Wife, 1900" a middle west farm wife describes what her average day looks like. Although her days are much like mine and vary depending on the tasks at hand, here is a glimpse into her day.
In the article, she paints a picture of her life. She is married to a farmer and he is a natural hustler who believes that the only way to make an honest living is by digging it out of the ground. He is also very tight with his money and would rather do all the work all the time than hire out the work to be done by others (sounds familiar).
She speaks of how she is his farmhand. She does all the work a man can do and she does so when he calls out for her. She earned a teaching certificate before the age of eighteen and would've stayed in school, but she got married to her farmer. She enjoys reading, but he feels it shows a lack of love because she'd rather read instead of talking to him when he is home. So now she reads when he is away at work.
She then says,
". . . This is a vague, general idea of how I spend my time; my work is so varied that it would be difficult, indeed, to describe a typical day's work."
I feel that. Living on a farm, you never know what will come next.
4:00 AM :
Wake up and get dressed.
Do hair.
Sweep floors.
Fix breakfast.
5:30 AM :
Farmer goes to work.
Let animals out.
6:30 AM :
Feed & water all the animals.
Straighten up around the house.
Make Beds.
7:15 AM :
Eat breakfast.
8:00 AM :
Hoe in Garden.
11:30 AM :
Eat Lunch.
Feed and water chickens.
Sweep floors.
Sit & rest.
Read.
1:00 PM :
Hoe in Garden.
4:00 PM :
Start on supper.
Make farmer's lunch for the next day.
Set supper aside.
Get plants ready for transplant.
Feed animals.
Put animals up for the night.
8:00 PM :
The farmer comes home.
Eat supper.
Get beds ready.
Farmer goes to bed.
Wash dishes & clean kitchen.
9:00 PM :
Prayer & Head to bed.
So, how exactly does this 1900 schedule differ from my 2020 schedule? Well, for one, I am not waking up at 4 AM. The farm life is aging me fast enough, I need every hour of beauty sleep I can get. Another thing, this farm wife hoes in her garden for hours. Y'all. From 8 AM to 11 AM she hoed in her garden, then after lunch and resting awhile she went back out there and hoed from 1 PM to 4 PM. This lady was on it. If I followed her schedule I wouldn't have a garden full of weeds right now. She really doesn't have a lot of time to spend with her husband either. He gets home at 8 and goes to bed. We usually stay up till the wee hours of the morning just laying together and watching tv and relaxing after dinner and I leave the dishes till in the morning. I think it would be really fun to follow her schedule and see how productive it makes me, just the hoeing in the garden should really help to be honest. Maybe one day next week I will try this entire schedule and see how it really is first hand. Until then, enjoy this and continue reading with this story about a mystery poem in an agriculture book from 1918. "Farm Wife, 1900" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2007)