A few days ago, Jim told me that he would like some sour dough pancakes. I really didn't think he knew about sour dough. I thought maybe he was talkin' about a mix he had seen. I said to him, "Well, Honey, you have had the real sour dough pancakes?" And he said that all the housewives in his neighborhood had a sour dough pot, and they made all kinds of baking with it. Jim said back when he was a boy, if a woman didn't have a sour dough pot in her kitchen, then she wasn't worth much.
Jim came from a family of 13 children and he was the 12th. And just up the street was a family who had 16 ...no twins. And another family who had 14 right close to his house. And these were old time families who had lived through the Depression and were still goin' strong. Jim, of course, was a younger child, having been born in 1940.
Back in the old days during pioneer days, a new bride was given a sour dough starter to take to her cabin. Probably her Mama gave her part of hers. I read about one bride who used a cup of her starter and forgot to feed it again with more flour, and she had to walk a few miles in the winter to get some more starter from a neighbor. And the Gold Miners used to take their sour dough starters everywhere they went. I mean, you couldn't buy yeast, baking powder or soda at the store, and the sour dough was all you had to make breads and pancakes rise.
In the winter, the Mother had to keep her fire going in the fire place. If her fire went out, she would have to borrow some from the neighbors, so she had to stay home and keep the home fires burning. She needed to watch the fire and make sure it stayed contained and didn't burn the house down. She needed her fire to keep the cabin warm and for candles to see with.
Mother worked and depended on herself for food and light for her family. She had to be wise and prudent with what she had. She learned to live from the inside out instead of from the grocery store or Wal-Mart, etc. She had sheep and she spun wool and made the material to sew with. And she had a flock of chickens and geese, and she used the feathers to make pillows and matresses for the beds.
And, ya know, here we are ... good grief! Feminism and its ways have thrown us out of the kitchen. But, still, we can cook and bake and sew and live by the inspirations that God puts in our hearts. Let's quit listening to the world and let God inspire us in our homes.
I don't cook sometimes. I get discouraged and I don't want to do my housework. But I have a special gift, as far as cooking. So if I need to clean the house, I will start out with putting a pot of soup on the stove, and this gets my Happy Home Yeast to bubbling. It lifts me up and gives me joy. And pretty soon, I am cleanin' the living room and washing the dishes in the sink. Maybe your gift is sewing, and as you think of a project, you think, "Wow, I am going to take the whole afternoon to sew." And then you think, "I had better get some soup on for supper, and I will get the beds made and clean the bathroom so I can sew all afternoon."
I think the Lord gives all of us gifts in our homemaking. You know, an old woman said to me once, when I was a young bride, "Sister made the pies and I made the bread in our family home. I would try to make the pies, but I wasn't good at it. And Sister wasn't good at makin' bread, either." But I could see early on as a homemaker that each family member was given a gift to help the others out. So, if you had a house full of sisters, you could see many different gifts in homemaking, and the home was run smoothly.
Our daughter Christian was always an excellent organizer, and she kept me organized. She was so gifted as a helper to me when I had so many children. She could find anything, and I was always losing things. But I had to cook and we all knew that, so I was mainly in the kitchen. I made stuff out of absolutly nothing at times.
