The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually
taken over as a moveable feast with many participants supplying the Words.
When Delores closed her
blog forever due to other problems, Elephant's Child (Sue) took over
the role of coordinator.
Now, after Sue's demise, River has taken the mantle of coordinator upon her shoulders.
No matter what, how, where or who the aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to our mind.
This month the words are supplied by River and are to be found on her blog.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please leave a comment on
River's blog, then we can come along and read it and add a few encouraging
words.
It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.
So
Please,
remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples'
stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this
one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need
encouragement.
And for today, Wednesday 4, we were given:Chips
Herd
Clamped
Walk Over Cheese
Still continuing my dream-story of Peter's Time Travel.
Next day we walked to school, a trek of about one kilometre
through woods and over fields. The children knew the way, but it was
hard on me to walk this far in the snow. In school, the teacher already
knew about me, and placed me in the back of the classroom with a slate
and a book containing the alphabet and writing exercises for beginners. I
blushed, and felt utterly uncomfortable with my long legs cropping out
from under the table no matter how much I tried to keep them in. And my
hair was still too long. Paul, the farmhand whose chamber I slept in,
had promised to cut it for me, but not on a Sunday. Tomorrow, maybe.
The
classroom incidentally rescued me from any faux-pas, by solving the
question of who was king, as a portrait of king Christian 7 hung over
the door there, I had been one king too far.
After
starting the younger children off, the teacher, Mads Laursen, came and
sat next to me. He was very young, I think not much older than me, and
we both felt the awkwardness of the situation. I felt his warmth and his
breath crowding me, now had he been a young woman ... the thought made
me blush, and I hurriedly fastened my attention on the letters at hand.
It did not last long till I could write all the letters to his
satisfaction, and after going to school Wednesday as well, he declared
that by Friday I would be ready for work, I was less certain, but I felt
restless and misplaced in the small school chairs, and I itched to be
of use, to prove myself valuable.
I spent some weeks doing
taxation papers and other accounting jobs for the farmers nearby. My
maths were far superior to theirs, and I was happy for the back story of
my father being a well to do merchant to explain this proficiency. Most
farmers had a hard times doing simple sums in their heads, only when it
came to grains and bushels they lit up. By the time I was done doing
this, I was know by, and knew most of the bigger and smaller farmers in
the parish. I had learned to ride a horse, and I had grown stronger.
The
winter had been unusually hard, and the night still were frosty. I
recalled something called The Little Ice Age from the news, maybe this
was it? Selfishly I felt happy about it. More time for paperwork meant
that I would be fit for the field work once sowing season started, which
could not be long now.
That Sunday the chaplain approached me and
told that the scribe, which I knew from the 'grilling' as I still called
it, had fallen ill, and asked if I was able to give him a hand with the
church registers. He had gotten behind, and now he was looking for a
vocation somewhere else, he would prefer to leave the registers in
order. I asked Lars if it would be OK, and he approved. The next week I
spent my mornings doing farm chores, then I rode to the church, where we
sat in a room in the vicarage and brought all the church registers up
to date, I learned much abut the people in the community and about human
kind in general during these sessions.
By walking, riding and
helping with household chores, mucking, cleaning, chopping, cutting,
planing, threshing and so on. I grew stronger. Actually stronger than I
had ever been.
I was still homesick and cried myself to sleep most nights, but I was slowly learning the ropes.
Then Spring came. And with it sowing of barley, oats and rye.
I asked Lars why we did not grow any wheat. At first he just gave me the expected: "It is not done," but then proceeded to tell me of types of soil, too short periods for growth and the larger fertilization needs of wheat.
WHEAT! I had walked through the fields the day my former life ended. I had tasted some ears of wheat, and put some in my pockets, I had always loved the taste and feel of ripe wheat. And I had listened enough to my granddad to know that modern wheat would be vastly superior to anything grown in 1802. I asked to be excused and went to the attic and looked, and yes, my pockets were still stuffed with golden ears of wheat.
What now. Could I ask for a small field of my own, could I just sow them somewhere or what should I do? Of course I ended up in Lars' office. Riisbye was a small, dying town, more like a hamlet. Four farms in all; two big ones, Lars' being the smaller of the big ones, and two smaller. Apart from the farmer's families it housed the ususal farmhands. a beggar and a tailor. Nothing much ever happened here - much to my luck. Later in the afternoon he told me, that I could have the furthest of the fields for my experiments, it was no longer in use and had fallen into disrepai. I was free to try my hand at it if I liked to test out my "foreign crops" there. The only condition was that I did not neglect my duties on his farm. Next day, while Lars and a trusted hand were sowing his fields, I tried my hand at ploughing. It looked so easy, but man, it was tough. Horses are not the same as a reliable tractor. They get shy, they try to avoid the hardest work and my furrows looked like they were made by a drunken sailor. I sowed almost all my wheat, sawing only a couple of ears for an experiment in autumn sowing. Another "It is not done" this earned me.
Then came fencing and weeding. I had to do my part on Lars' fields as promised, so often my field was weeded and tended to in the late evening hours or just before dawn. The wheat prospered. I took to watering it with the contents of my chamber pot diluted with water.
During summer I also helped Elizabeth wash, bake and even weave. All of this was hard work. She also taught me of candle-making, soaping and conserving. I picked many fruits for her, cherries, strawberries and apples, lots of apples. Conserving was hard and hot work, and not menfolk's work, but I liked to be around her, and she often appeared in my dreams, slowly replacing my first love, Lucy, and after a while appearing more that friends and family from my old life.
I harvested my wheat by hand after the rest of the harvest had been done, All alone, because no-one believed in my foreign crops. I had learned to use a scythe, and my small field was soon done. I dried it in the threshing room when nothing happened, threshed it on the sly one Sunday after church and put away one small sack for sowing next spring. I was vary of mice and other rodent, so I asked for, and had the old trunk I came in. Helped by Lars and one of the farm hands I repaired it and stored my grains in it in the room, I shared with some of the menfolk. Later I took some of it along to the mill to be made into flour. We tasted it for Christmas and Easter baking, and I was promised more land for my foreign crop next Spring. It really was tastier, and whiter, which seemed to be a determining factor for Lars and his family.
... to be conlcuded next Wednesday.
