The stock market crashed in October of 1929, and things are not good for our stock market in this year of 2003. Folks are scared because of the war. They don’t want to start a new business because they don’t know what this war will do to the economy. A lot of folks are out of work around us.

And yet, we as Christian mothers are not of this world and we don’t live by the rules of this world. And the Lord will make a way for us where there is no way. We will be affected by the coming economic collapse and yet, certainly we won’t be bound by it. It will not make our rules for us. But you won’t find this kind of bull dog tenaciousness at a good news club. No, you will find the strength to go on through the spirit of wisdom.

Wisdom is the stability of the times. And this is how the mothers during the Depression kept their families thriving, through wisdom. They found a place for their families to live and then they made a garden. The husband would go fishing and hunting to put meat on the table. He would work odd jobs here and there until better times came. Mother made a home through wisdom. With wisdom a house is built and with understanding it is established, and with knowlege it is filled.

Mother worked hard and created a home. She knew she was there to create a mood of joy and to keep the family encouraged and full of hope. She gave them vision as they awoke each morning to the smell of breakfast. She prayed when the children were at school and the Papa out looking for work. In the spring she would gather dandelion greens to serve her family. She knew the edible plants and herbs for healing. This is the knowlege she used for her family. Of course, she learned all of this from her own mother. But in these days, we have to learn from books at the library.

See, I have studied herbs for years, so my yard is full of them. I have wild onions that come up in the spring … they are up now. I have never used poisons on my lawn. So I have many wild herbs, like how our country used to be probably back a hundred years ago. But all of this Roundup and all that junk is not good. It poisons the water as it seeps into the ground. A lot of what folks kill as weeds are healing herbs.

The food is out there, if we only knew it is under our feet. When I go for walks in the summer, I find chamomile everywhere. It’s that stuff that grows in the cracks of the sidewalks sometimes. It has a ferny stem and the top is a small yellow dome. Folks try to kill that stuff and then go to the store and buy the same herb. Just go dig it out of your sidewalk and save yourself some money.

I have almost every kind of mint in my yard. I planted it and it comes up every year. Comfrey is a wonderful herb as a cure all. All of these herbs come up every year. I have lemon balm and catnip and many others. I have yarrow and dill everywhere in my yard. To me, these herbs are precious.

And the old time mothers knew these herbs on sight. In the spring, they would gather them and make fragrant teas for their families. I can envison many a mother during the Depression weeping and sobbing in her chair after the family had gone to work and to school, praying and asking the Lord how she would feed her family. And, of course, after prayer, the Lord would lead her to go to the countryside and gather herbs and edible plants to feed her brood.

Mother back then didn’t include the children in the families worries. For the most part, I think, Mother cried alone. She was the encourager to her husband. I think if she broke down in front of the family, it was rare. I remember when I was growing up in the 1950s, the adults didnt share much worry with us children. I think we have to be careful not to cause a riot in the camp. Some things are left best unsaid.

And I am not saying all of this about the economy to scare you, but to give you some vision as to how the Lord has taken me through hard times and how you can make it through them, too. You have to keep your hearts in peace, Mothers.

The works of righteousness brings peace … this is in Isaiah 32:17. And the work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness QUIETNESS and ASSURANCE FOREVER.

So, as we walk in His will, dear Mothers, and we continue to build up our homes …

We keep happy hearts and busy hands.

We keep the soup on simmer.

We keep the home fires burning.

We aren’t looking out the windows of our souls for this and that new teaching.

We are obedient to follow the Lord as keepers at home.

Ya know, back in the old days,the mother couldn’t let the fire go out or her family would freeze in the winter. So you would know that the wise mother stayed home and kept her family warm.

In the spring, she went to the store and bought food supplies. But she also bought lots of seeds and she made a garden. Hey, ya know what? Those mothers didn’t have a garden tiller. They just dug up their kitchen gardens with a shovel. The husband usually had the land dug up with a horse and plow for crops he would grow and sell. But the gardens up by the house, Mother usually made herself. I read a story once about a woman who had only a broom to make a garden with. She dug the earth with the broom handle. Then she planted her seeds and then swept the dirt back over the seeds with the brush part of the broom.

And, hey, we wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for old pioneer women that had more guts than money and more ornery hide than common sense. But those women, for the most part, didn’t get that strength from just wanting it. They prayed until they saw a vison and then they followed it. They lived off of prayer and their stability was the visions in their hearts. And this is how we will make it, too, through hard times, and keep our families warm healty and happy.

Happy is the Mother who trusts in the Lord, and I think this is just how Papa and I made it through so many hardships. We just leaned on the Lord and kept pioneer spirits. And we still live like this. Oh, we could worry ourselves to death over this and that, but we choose not to. We just go on and do what we can and what we can’t do, we figure the Lord will provide for us. And that’s all a person can do, huh?

You know, those mothers back in the old times … Good grief! They knew their way around their kitchens. They were chemists and biologists and herbologists. They lived off the land and knew every plant that grew on the praire and what it was used for. They ate from what they had or could make.

They were very intelligent women who were always thinking on their feet. They learned to gather berries of all kinds in the summertime from the woods around their homes, and then they made pies and cakes and preserved some of the berries for sauces and jellies and jams. Apples were a staple for them, like potatoes, as they made their own vinegars and apple butters and sauces, and then dried many apples for winter pies. They gathered nuts in the fall to bake with for the holidays. They dried some of their foods and canned their vegetables and fruits from their gardens. They would gather herbs and use them to make medicines for the long winter.

Mother knew just how much liquid to add to her bread because she made it every day, and it produced a knowing in her heart. She lived at home and produced at home. She had a flock of chickens and sold the eggs to buy coffee for Papa and tea for herself. She bought flour and sugar with her egg money, and school supplies for the children.

She quilted and sewed, tatted and crocheted and knitted. She made pillowslips and underwear and dish towels out of old feed sacks. They were washed up on an old scrub board and later ironed and starched and embroidered, and the edges tatted or crocheted. And, of course, she used the feed sacks for all kinds of clothes, dresses, and aprons. I used to have a bed sheet that my grandma made of just feedsacks sewn together, and if it got a hole in it, she just patched it. I am sure they probably used feed sacks for diapers. They probably just bleached them white and hung them in the sunshine to dry to get all the germs out. Old time Mothers raised a flock of geese so that she could pluck them and make feather pillows for the family.

I got an old book from the Salvation Army written in 1909 by Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Abe’s mother, about Abe Lincoln. It said that, as a boy, Abe slept on a bed of leaves on a wooden bed. Abe lived just like the birds and squirrels, and he was so strong and healthy, he was over 6 ft. tall when he was only 14 yrs old. They said that he could easily do the work of 3 men. He lived close to nature in the open air. But he was very intelligent and loved to read and tell stories. He would take a book to read with him as he plowed a field and read at the same time. He was self taught and George Washingtom was his hero. Even as a boy, Abe wanted to be like President George Washington. And the other books Abe read most of the time were the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.

We as housewives can learn so much, too, just from reading and using the knowlege we attain. Get some good cookbooks, like the older Better Homes and Gardens, and just read them in the evenings as you hold the baby or play with the children. I mentioned this cookbook because it has every kind of cooking in it, not just certain kinds. It’s really basic.

But we as homemakers need to educate ourselves in the things that matter, like the home crafts. We don’t know what lies ahead for our country, but if we live at home and make what we need, we will sure be that much ahead. And we can be confident, as our pantries are full and our minds quick and full of knowlege and wisdom.

The truly intelligent women aren’t just the ones in the work force. Because, if a woman can’t make a home and feed her family, she isn’t really equipped for every good work. She is not really wise in the things that matter, like common sense.

I am confident that I could do all of my wash in the bath tub if I had to, because I did used to have to. So if my washer was to go out, it wouldn’t throw my whole family off. Anyway, I have my wringer washer and I know how to comfortably use it. I have melted snow to do the dishes in the winter when the water was shut off. No big deal.

We should just run our homes in peace and be glad to do the work of housewifery, no matter how much work it is. We should turn the heat down in our homes and wear extra clothes to keep warm, as this is so much more healthy, and the cool air keeps us crisp and ready for every good work. And we should be happy and content and thankful to do our work and to have a private home to live in.

Let us take up our swords and shields, our kitchen utensils and aprons, and pledge ourselves to do good works today to honor the Lord and our families. Let us take a vow of poverty to live and be poor, if we must, in order to keep our families afloat, no matter how much sacrifice this is to us.

I remember when the children were young, I didn’t have any winter shoes to wear for years. I just wore cheap sandals in the summer or mostly went barefoot, and in the fall, I wore socks with my sandals. In the winter, I had some shoe boots and I wore them. And this went on for years. Finally, Papa made me get a pair of winter shoes as I had broken my foot. I never had my foot set, as I just wore a flat sandal. Then Papa made me wear these high top winter shoes, which was so nice for support for my foot, and it all healed up in six weeks. I never have any trouble with it. I just made my own cast, in other words.

Back in the old days, many country mothers would have the old summer kitchens. They would move the woodburning stove outside to an out building. Here, she did her cooking and canning, and it kept the heat out of the house. She would boil water on the woodstove and do her washing outside. And then, of course, she watered her garden with leftover wash water and gave the front porch a good wash, too. And then to the pungent odors of her canning and cooking, she added the scent of freshly scraped laundry soap.

The children helped, of course. Children love to play in water, anyway. Can’t you just see the wee ones running about barefoot for the summer? Mother givng them buckets of used wash water, telling them not to spill it and to water the tomatoes with it?

When my children were little and I used my wringer washer, I would save my water, too, and the children would run back and forth for buckets of water, to water the garden. Often, they missed the plant all together and watered only the dirt. Those are cherished memories with my little ones. I couldn’t grow zuchini one year because I kept thinking the children were watering it, but they were missing it by about a foot. Finally I checked it but, by that time, it was dead. But I really don’t like zuchini, anyway, do you? (And I cant spell it either.)

Well, duty calls.

I think we would really like to think that pioneer mothers were used to all the hardship. But many of these women that came west with their men were from established cities and families.

And during the Depression, these women were not used to being poor, any more than we would be. The stock market crashed in 1929. But before that, our country was enjoying a lot of prosperity. Don’t kid yourselves. When you read of these women during the Depression, praying in what they needed, they weren’t any different than you or I. But they were called upon to have courage, and they came front and center and showed the world what they were made of. They kept encouraging their men and kept on singin’ as they made their bread. And they kept the peace in their homes. And with their faith, they kept their families safe and sound.

I read about one young married couple. They had to move from their home and they moved into this shack, and the wife made a home out of it. And, lo and behold, the mother found a secret garden in the backwoods nearby. Someone had to move after making the garden, and it had been overcome with weeds. The corn was all dried out, but this mother took it and she cut it off the cobs and she cooked it in water. And someone gave her some canning jars, and she canned it. Also, she found some tomatoes and she made things with these. And, of course, she dug potatoes. But the Lord kept her and her husband, and they made it through the winter. The husband worked and was paid with fresh meat, a hog, and his young wife preserved this, too. They just lived from week to week, looking for the Lord to provide for them. They rode out the hard times and didn’t give up.

I read of a mother that didn’t have a hoe to garden with, and she used her broom. After her husband had plowed her garden up, she made holes in the soil with her broom handle, and then swept the dirt over the hole with the other end of her broom.

During the Depression, there was also a drought in the midwest. Dust storms made gardening impossible. But, of course, the weeds grew. And one mother canned lambs quarters for her family to eat in the winter. Well, ya can’t keep a good woman tied down for long.

So many of the mothers would forage in the woods for food, and some would glean the gardens after the farmers had gotten what they wanted out of it. These mothers kept going when many women today would just roll over and play dead. But none of we women would even be standing here right now if we hadn’t come from some pretty strong grandparents and great grandparents. These old time mothers kept the home, and everything they did pivoted from home. The children helped, too.

Jim’s mom raised 11 children right through the Depression and never lost a one of them. Papa was born in 1940 and he was the 12th, and then she had Don, and he made 13 children. She just stayed home and sewed and cooked and baked and kept house … never went out to work. She just kept them all afloat. Of course, all the children had to help. Jim remembers helping his mother can outside in big pots. He had to dig a hole and build a fire for her pots. He would put a grate on the top of the hole to hold the pot on. She would can in big washtubs. She would make a washtub of pickles, beans and peas. She would can her corn on the cobs in big jars. She saved the jars, from year to year, in her root cellar.

Well, duty calls.