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Susan Cain demonstrates the art of cutting bacon for the families. Read her bio.
Update from the field:
Micah Fink, Field Producer
Food is a critical issue on the frontier. Our three
families arrived at Frontier Valley at a period that used to be known as "starving time," because food supplies used to dwindle during the
winter months, and fresh vegetables were not yet
available locally.
Sue Cain, our domestic life expert, prepared the
initial supply list by poring through the sales
records of a Montana mercantile run by George Bruffey,
whose store thrived in southwestern Montana during
the early 1880s. Bruffey's daybooks provided
detailed lists of the foods and goods available, as
well as the prices and quantities at which they were
sold.
The families had to subsist, for their first five
weeks, on traditional 19th-century basics: steel-cut
oats, wheat flour, corn meal, dried beans, hard
cheese, smoked bacon, salt-cured hams, lard, coffee
beans, black tea, sugar, molasses, and honey. They
also had a small supply of canned foods, including
peaches, pears, tomatoes, corn, and oysters. This
small larder quickly grew monotonous, and the families
sorely missed fresh fruits and vegtables,
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"There were grave concerns that the supplies would not last
until the first visit to the local store -- a 10-hour trek."
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Nate and Rudy saw wood for the house.
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Rudy comments on differences between life past and present.
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and there were grave concerns that the supplies would not last
until the first visit to the local store
-- a 10-hour
trek leading pack horses -- but vitals were horded
and stretched, and everyone survived to witness the
delivery of new supplies.
Fresh milk, drawn twice a day from their small herd
of dairy cows, has been a valuable supplement to the
frontier diets and provides the raw materials for
freshly churned butter. A flock of recently acquired
hens adds a few precious eggs to the daily diet -- as
well as the occasional chicken dinner. And kitchen
gardens, cut with great effort from the virgin sod,
will soon provide fresh vegetables -- if the homemade
fences can protect the tender shoots from maurading
deer, mice, and other nibbling species of local
wildlife.
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