Passion for the Past: Experiencing Our Research - Spring Cabin 1773: Rogation Sunday

We portray a frontier farm family, so therefore we deal a lot with planting crops.

Unfortunately, we don't have the space (nor the time) to run a farm, though that would be about as wonderful as it could get. But the patch of ground given to us to plant whatever we like is such a gift.

Even though we all live quite a ways away from Waterloo, Patty and I hope to make numerous treks out there to weed and water as best we can.

In period clothing.

Remember: as soon as you start to think of the past as happening (as opposed to it having happened), a new way of conceiving history becomes possible.

Here we conceive spring 1773~

. . .

The Colonial Crew are at it again -
this time we're in Spring 1773!

Since this wonderful historic cabin experience began back in the fall of 2020 (1770 for us), we have enjoyed twelve 18th century outings, including this one I am writing about today. That's twelve times we've been blessed to have such time-travel experiences - each one different but historically accurate - at least, as much as we are able to. No, we do not do first person, though we do our best to be immersive. In other words, we try not to bring up modern talk or issues such as social matters, current politics, or pretty much any technology beyond what we would have had before 1800. We don't "act 18th century" necessarily, for that would be...um...acting and we'd probably come off as too dramatic. Too Hollywood. No, we're not that at all - we are simply ourselves.

And our conversations reflect that, for we do speak of current events as we know them to be in the early 1770s, oftentimes eking up to the coming war. For instance, Jackie, ever the woman to keep her ear to the ground, brought up The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, which granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies.

Now, being that we were at the cabin on May 13, the chances of us even being aware of such an act was pretty much nil, but for discussion's sake with many of the patrons (and historical purposes), it was brought up. We had concerns of what such an act might do - the anger it might stir up in Boston - and were thankful we moved out to the frontier. We even brought up the future for a few visitors and mentioned the Boston Tea Party that would occur in the coming December.

This was done for a historical timeframe more than anything else.

But mostly we kept our conversations centered on the day and our activities and sharing our knowledge of the period with each other and with the visiting public.

The patrons truly seemed to be excited to be among the founding generation.

We do look a bit like frontier colonials, don't we?
We are not fancy, silk wearing folk, only simple farmers.

We may not be perfect in what we do, but we do our very best, and we share information with each other...I mean, each of us has a historical library in our heads, though oftentimes different chapters of the same book, and therefore we are able to share and teach of the different bits of knowledge we have. And we so enjoy it.

So on this fine mid-May day, planting crops was first and foremost on our minds.

Charlotte made her way first to where the garden will be with a pot of ash to spread.
Wood ash contains nutrients that can be beneficial for plant growth, for using wood ash in gardens can increase soil fertility. In fact, North America exported wood ash to Britain in the 18th century as a fertilizer.
Our ancestors were right-smart people!

The wonderful people at Waterloo tilled the soil for us.

Patty & Charlotte spent a chunk of the day planting in our garden.
Yes, as you may know, the wonderfully kind folks at Waterloo allow us a plot of land to plant upon, which we do. We've planted flax in previous years. This year we had seeds for onions, squash, beans, cucumbers, turnips, and even a few pumpkins.
We hope to enjoy a nice bountiful harvest come fall.

Spreading the ashes...

Patty & Charlotte did most of the planting.
But Patty & I have a few items we plan to plant as well - a few
more crops on our own that did not get done on this day.
But the ladies here did a marvelous job.

A young volunteer brings the water by way of yoke and wood buckets.

Always keep your eyes and ears to the ground, for you may never know what you might miss:

Fresh Asparagus!!

Asparagus growing in the brush.

Asparagus growing in the rocks!

Being that this was Jackson County's "Free Museum" Day" where folks can visit any museum countywide for free admission, we had a good crowd throughout the day, such as these three ladies, two of which came all the way from Africa! They were very interested in the agriculture of the past, which just happens to be Larissa's specialty, since she's worked at 1880s Firestone Farm and 1760s Daggett Farm (both located at Greenfield Village) for nearly 30 years!

On Free Museum Day, not everyone who comes out is a history person. There are those who come because their other (better?) half drags them, maybe kicking and screaming, for it only costs a little gas and perhaps a donation. But these non-history people are sometimes my favorite because I consider gaining their interest to be a challenge. I do believe that what they saw here (and I'm sure in the 1850s farm house right next to us) won many over, at least, to some extent.

Inside the cabin was a busy place with the ladies preparing our dinner meal.

Jackie brought along her table-top butter churn. It was perfect for this day, for we did not need the scads of butter made with the more popular floor churns often seen. We would have had way too much butter for what we were using it for. However, it would be great to use the larger one sometime and actually make cheese as well as butter!
Visitors loved giving the churn a turn, and Jackie very much encouraged them to give it a try. I look at it this way: how often to most people today ever get a chance to churn butter? What I wouldn't have done back in the day for such an opportunity.

My wife, Patty, also helped in the butter department.

Is it butter yet?

Washing your butter:
Yes, you read this correctly!
To finish the butter, rinse it under cool water, gently moving it around the sieve with a mixing spoon. You're rinsing off the residual buttermilk, and this is important because the more thoroughly you rinse, the longer your butter will last.

And into the butter holder it goes, ready to be spread.

Next up, our main meal.

Well, actually, aside from making butter, the ladies were also preparing the main meal, beginning with:

ooooooo-------pork roast!

Pork roast prepared on a reflector oven/tin kitchen!
Ready for the hearth - - - -

A reflector oven (sometimes known in older cooking literature as a tin kitchen, according to the Old Sturbridge Village Cookbook), is a polished metal container, often made of tin. It is designed to enclose an article of food on all but one side, to cause it to bake by capturing radiant heat from an open fire, and reflecting the heat towards the food, avoiding smoke flavoring the food. In its simplest form, a reflector oven is simply a box or collar that partially surrounds the food, with an open side that faces the hearth fire. In Colonial America this method of baking meat, fowl, quick bread, or pastries, was a very popular method for hearth cooking.

In our case: a pork roast!

The pork roast did not take very long to cook with the tin kitchen.
Quicker than anticipated, in fact.

Larissa, Jackie, Patty, and Charlotte~
All contributed to our day and meal in some form or another.
Jackie shows off her "Egg Pye," another 18th century dish.

I asked Jackie how she came up with such an addition to our meal. She responded with, "I was reading a post on an Historic Cooking site. They were talking about making a Hearty Quiche at an event. I love quiche & wanted to make it at our event. I mentioned this & someone, maybe Larissa, said it wasn’t a thing. So I started looking up recipes for Colonial quiche. Egg Pye kept coming up. I watched some videos & searched egg pie. You ate the result. I used Townsends recipe, using eggs, cream, salt, paprika, mushrooms, bacon, green onions, and pie crust. The ratio of cream to eggs is definitely more than scrambled eggs. I used all of you as my Guinea pigs as usual. It turned out pretty well ("Yes it did," agrees Ken). It gave me an opportunity to discuss the whole idea of using seasonal food items and lots of egg dishes at this time of year. Still wish I could have made a quiche. Quiche actually goes back to the 1500’s in Germany. (But) it wasn’t popular here till the 1800’s."

I love being a Guinea pig! lolol

The visitors who came through, and there were many, not only got a basic, general history lesson of colonial life from me, but a food history lesson from the ladies. And they enjoyed the enticing odors coming from the hearth - quite a few commented on how wonderful the smell was inside our cabin!

And even when there was an opportunity to sit for a few moments, there were still
other jobs to be done, including preparing yarn for knitting.

An expected guest knocked upon our door...
the Reverend Gerring.

One of the best images captured this day
grace before our bountiful spring meal.

And just look at what we ate:
(from upper left): egg pye, cheese, asparagus, beets
(not quite in season, but we love beets!), pork roast,
a pickle (more of a process of food preservation rather
than eating them in the manner we know them to be today),
and bread with fresh churned butter.

Our "Family" picture - - along with our minister.

Now, I mentioned that our minister came by expectedly.

Well, there was a reason for that:

it's Rogation Sunday.

You see, our springtime in 1773 at the cabin took place on Saturday May 13. The following day was Sunday May 14 - Rogation Sunday.

In the 18th and into the 19th centuries, this was the day when farmers looked to their land and crops and prayed for a bountiful harvest. On this day the clergyman and his flock walked through the village and out into the farm fields to bless the planted ground.

Blessing our crops~
We did not walk through what could be considered a makeshift village there on the Waterloo grounds, for they had a blacksmith on hand, a general/souvenir store, and all kinds of crafters of fiber arts.
Perhaps next year we'll all follow the pastor though the area, announcing the day.

Rogation is an ancient church festival to seek blessing for a community and its sustenance. The word rogation comes from the Latin verb rogare, meaning "to ask", which reflects the beseeching of God for protection from calamities.

Pastor Gerring found a prayer for this day and even read it in the old King James language.

This is the blessing that was read~

Another idea would be perhaps to have the blessing as part of the schedule of events
so others can see and learn another part of our history.
I thank Mr. Gerring for his portrayal as an 18th century minister. He is a Christian man who has the ministry in his soul, and one could never tell he was not the "real deal."
To us it was real - his portrayal is that good.

In the evening of Rogation Sunday, farmers and their families walked the boundaries of their property; it was both inventory and time for giving thanks for their land. Again, maybe next year we can do this.

You know, back in February we celebrated Candlemas, the day when the blessing of the year’s supply of candles would take place, and now we celebrated Rogation Sunday on this day at Waterloo (even though it was Saturday), where our clergyman blessed our crop.

Sometimes it's these little things - daily life - that can bring the past to life in stronger ways than what we often see. That's what research can do.

My dear wife and I.
I'm glad she enjoys being a colonial with me.

"Experiencing our research" - I am proud that I came up with that sort of aphorism. It happened this past winter while Larissa & I were having a discussion about living history, memories, and nostalgia while dipping candles at the frontier cabin. I was attempting to give "deep thoughts" on what we - Larissa, Charlotte, and I (Jackie couldn't make it on that February day) - were doing out there on our own, with no modern visitors in attendance (though we did have a few other living historians visit us that day). While most in this hobby will only dress for bonafide reenactments, more often than not, we four (and sometimes a couple more) do this whole cabin scene for ourselves without the public; in this way we are, instead, experiencing our research. We are such history geeks that this is what we enjoy doing as our hobby and, sometimes, as a lifestyle. And by experiencing our research, this can only help us to improve our impressions when we do speak to the modern visitors at actual reenactments.

As far back as I can remember, the past has enthralled me - I've always wanted to experience life in the colonies (or in some parts of the past in general); I wanted to be there and explore this foreign time, with all five senses, and the lives of those who lived "back then."

So, as far as bringing the past to life, only by way of living history can one remotely experience a touch of the world of long ago in that manner. And I have never, in all my years in this hobby, truly experienced life in the past as I have at our frontier cabin excursions.

And when you have such co-living historians as Larissa, Charlotte, and Jackie along for the ride (and more & more Patty), why...it does not get any better!

Or any more real...

I am so very proud of what we accomplish - on how we experience our research.
This is living history.
So from all of us to all of you, may you enjoy God's blessings and bounty.
Until next time, see you in time.

To visit the Waterloo web site, click HERE

If you are interested in our other cabin excursions, please click the links below:

To read about our 2020 autumn excursion at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2021 wintertime excursion at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2021 springtime excursion at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2021 summertime excursion at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2021 summer harvesting of the flax at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2021 autumn excursion making candles at the cabin, click HERE

To read about our 2022 winter excursion at the cabin, please click HERE

To read about our 2022 spring excursion at the cabin, please click HERE

To read about our 2022 summer excursion at the cabin, please click HERE

To read about our 2022 autumn excursion at the cabin (Pioneer Day), please click HERE

To read about our 2023 winter excursion at the cabin, please click HERE

Postscript:

The cabin we use as our colonial frontier home was originally built in a different Michigan location in 1840 and was brought to Waterloo about 50 years ago. I say this because we let the visitors know we were not from the 1840s but from the 1770s, and that cabins, in general, had not changed very much at all from the 18th century to the 19th century. In fact, the President of the Waterloo Historical Society, Brian Dewey, reenacts the 17th century. He recently wrote me:
"(I) hosted a 1680s event here, (and) all the guys do LaSalle time (René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle). And since LaSalle camped on the grounds, this is our holy spot!"