I am working in a new job that enlightens my mind!
I started my summer at Sauder Village on Tuesday, and have been wrecking havoc ever since.
Susan showed me the gardens around Sauder Village that I will be working in at some point, and I am excited about gardening, and I also learned a little bit about how the settlers used to garden, what they used to garden, and how they used to can.
For those of you who are just tuning in, I am working at a frontier culture museum, designed to help students live history as it was for settlers back in the day, in Northwestern Ohio.
On my second day of work, I was rigged up in a costume for Natives and Newcomers, dressed as an Indian from the early 1800s. They dressed in wool skirts and leggings, with calico shirts made from fabric traded with the settlers traveling west. Indians made currency with the pelts and hides of the animals they trapped. As the settlers brought more things to trade, the indians homes became more modernized: some lived in log cabins, they used canvas on top of their wigwams to stop the rain from coming in, and they used metal tools: rakes, hoes, pots and pans, to cook and garden instead of the ones created from bone and gourd.I spent an afternoon making moccasins, from elk and moose leather, sewing them with fake sinew (they don't actually sell sinew).
This day flew by, I didn't even think about time until the announcement rang through that there were twenty more minutes for visitors to walk through. It was a bit chilly, but we made it through the day. I breathed in smoke all day; I was making popcorn for part of the morning, then crushed the popcorn into a flour like consistency, and put it in a pot of water that was over the fire: popcorn soup! In addition, a pot of hominy was started and some old hominy that needed to be peeled was set out for visitors to peel as they pleased. The corn that was being used for the Hominy was White Miami corn (named after the Indian tribe, not the city in Florida). The corn used for the meal was actually blue, and from far away looked like ash in the grinding log. It came from Blue Delaware corn. I imagine that it makes pretty cornbread. It would be interesting to serve to people. There were four types of corn that we had, two in addition to the ones I've already talked about: Cherokee Corn: the indian corn used for popcorn that we made the soup with, and Silver Queen corn, a sweet corn that was dried, and when cooked like popcorn, made a sweet parched corn.
I talked about the mound gardens that had the three plants that supported each other in their growth: Beans who put nitrogen back into the soil, also supporting the corn stalk as it grows up it, corn which takes the nitrogen out of the soil, providing a natural pole for the beans to climb, and squash, whose shallow roots served as a natural mulch hampering weeds from growing.
There was so much more!
My second day I was training as a Train Conductor: this is the role that I was looking forward to the most. Mom had to assist me to find a costume within our home so I would look like a conductor: I used my black dress pants, one of Dad's old dress shirts, Dad's Guatemalan vest inside out, one of Dad's old ties, which I somehow remembered how to tie, and I put my hair in a bun and wore my sneakers with black socks. I pulled it off.
It was fun doing this job because of the people that I was working with. One's name was Phil, who was the conductor that was training me, and the other was Jack who was the engineer driving the train. THere weren't too many customers at the beginning of the day, but before lunch and after lunch, there were several runs. I sat through two train rides with Phil doing the interprestation: talking about things in the Village and the adjacent Sauder buildings and functions, and then I had a go and did the rest of the day. The first one I did, Sarah Beck showed up and Phil promptly got up, took his conductor hat and placed it on her head, and sat her down on the Conductor's chair next to me and sent us on our way. I felt like I did ok. I got more comfortable with it as the time passed and the last group I went with really enjoyed my conversation. I have to run a cash register for this position, but it's not a pain in the butt because there is so much of a social aspect of this job, and I love it!
This is Sauder Village thus far. On Saturday I work as a Native again, on Tuesday as a Conductor, On Thursday I am supposed to alternate between training at the Stuckey house and working at the ice cream shop and Friday and Saturday I'm to work at the ice cream shop. I'm busy! But I'm enjoying it a lot. I like that I'm getting to get to know people.
Mom on the phone with Sara, our neighbor:
"Sara, can we get some eggs? WE'll have the money ready for you when you come over"
Me: "Mom are you talking to the Bloomers about eggs? Can you ask them to bring a kitten over?"
Mom:"Can you send a kitten over too? (to me) Do you want to borrow it?"
Me: "Yep, just borrow it!"
So I borrowed a kitten that could curl up in the small of my back and fall asleep, with its bright orange fluffy fur and sky blue eyes. We let her tramp around the house with her squeaky meuws and let her defend herself to our ramboncuous hound of a dog, ROcket. I could tell she was getting sleepy, so I brought her in my room and let her crawl onto my back. And there she slept for a little while. After I was done doing some things and really had to pee, I brought her back over to the Bloomers. She crawled up my shoulder and lounged on my neck/back on the walk over and caused giggles to erupt from the Bloomer girls as I knocked on the door with my hunched back and said, "I have a kitten for you."
Later, when Dad looked at the pictures, he said that I couldn't have the kitten around when he was, that that was a bad idea. He might want to keep it. My family has always had a soft spot for animals.
