She more than kept up her end of the farm work. She was more
strenuous than father. How many hours she sat up mending and
patching our clothes, while we were sleeping! Rainy days meant
no let-up in her work, as they did in Father's.
The first suit of clothes I remember having, she cut and made.
Then the quilts and coverlids she pieced and quilted! We used, too,
in my boyhood to make over two tons of butter annually, the care of
which devolved mainly upon her, from the skimming of the pans to the
packing of the butter in the tubs and firkins, though the churning
was commonly done by a sheep or a dog. We made our own cheese,
also. As a boy I used to help do the wheying, and I took toll out
of the sweet curd. One morning I ate so much of the curd that I
was completely cloyed, and could eat none after that.
I can remember Mother's loom pounding away hour after hour in the
chamber of an outbuilding where she was weaving a carpet, or cloth.
I used to help do some of the quilling--running the yarn or linen
thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles. The distaff, the
quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very familiar to me
as a boy; so was the crackle, the swingle, the hetchel, for Father
grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our
shirts and summer trousers, and for towels and sheets.
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