Chapter 12 - 2
I didn’t clean all day, every day though that is mostly what I stuck to those first two weeks. I also had to take care of the mules and my growing fowl collection … I added a few more egg layers to make sure the flock stayed diverse. I also got lucky and caught a covey of quail in a basket trap … although that isn’t what I had been trying to catch as I’d been after a rabbit. Then there was the foraging I tried to do. Tried being the operative word since March isn’t what you would call super productive and I was learning the lay of the land on Dunn’s property. I did start collecting cattail shoots and making cattail pickles[1] from them. Two dozen pint jars now sit on the shelves in the basement with all the other goodies. Dandelion greens, wild asparagus spears, chickweed greens, and sorrel[2] that I canned just because I love the stuff, and then I found several more bunches of wild violets still in bloom that I did things with the same as I had on the road to Dunn’s place.
After those two weeks I did something maybe I shouldn’t have but I want to help Dunn. See I know how to make wild wines and meads. The first one I started was Chickweed Wine[3]. It doesn’t sound the least appetizing to some people, but I know it is good as I still have a couple of bottles from the last batch that Mawmaw made. I also made a batch of sheep sorrel wine[4] since there were fermentation locks available sitting dusty and unused in Dunn’s equipment shed.
I tried not to be anxious that it was two weeks and still no sign of Dunn, so since there was not much new to forage, and I’d already canned and dried what I could, I got back to being serious about the house. Most of the rooms were empty and just needed a good cleaning, dusting, and polishing. If there was damage, I did my best to repair it. The little bit of wood damage was mostly cosmetic. I was able to repair the sash on a couple of windows, but some would simply have to be propped open as needed. The walls mainly needed scrubbing; it wasn’t easy, but I did it. The old indoor bathrooms (one upstairs, one down) I did the best that I could with; they were clean, just not operational. The downstairs bathroom didn’t even have any kind of reservoir in it so I knew what bathing took place had to be done outside in a trough or in front of the fireplace. I put that, and a hot water reservoir for the kitchen, on a wish list in my house account book that I had already started for the pantry inventory. That is something else that Mawmaw had taught me to do and more than once it had come in handy, so I decided to continue the practice.
It is when I reached the attic that I was nearly stymied. I was certainly conflabbergasted. I could barely keep stuff from falling on me when I got the door unstuck – the door wasn’t square in the frame. It looked like a Chinese jigsaw puzzle waiting to become a disaster if you pulled the wrong thing out.
The first thing that came out was a set of ten ladder back chairs piled all higglety-pigglety together. The woven seats on the chairs were less than useful, and the paint was peeling, but the wood itself, as well as the joints where the pieces were put together, were better than sound. I took them and hung them on the wall pegs in what I’ve come to call the summer kitchen. It is a detached building with an old cast iron stove and a large fireplace in it. It also has a long picnic table with a bench on either side for sitting. There are large screened windows with shutters on them that are hinged at the top that lift with a pully system. I hadn’t gotten around to cleaning in there yet but then again, the chairs weren’t exactly pristine either. There would be time after I got the main house brought up to proper living standards.
What came next was an old cast iron table and chair set, the kind you see in fancy garden magazines to be found in the library or outhouse (for obvious reasons). That mess nearly decapitated me. I did wind up with a bruise – and a bad attitude for the rest of the day for whoever stuffed the attic the way they did – but I also became more careful and a good thing too as the garden table wasn’t the last of the traps up there. The two chairs and garden table I put in the front room that was nearly empty since I’d found places to put most everything of mine from the wagon. It obviously didn’t belong there but there it is going to stay for the time being.
After that fiasco/near disaster I ran face first into a large, standing chest o’ drawers that was in very sad condition as it was mostly made out of particle wood. I opened the drawers and found it was stuffed full of linens, some of them looking like they were beginning to dry rot. Shaking my head at the waste I emptied the drawers, separating things out into wash loads for the next day and then started taking the piece of furniture downstairs … in pieces as it all but fell apart on me setting off an avalanche of others things that were backed up behind it.
I decided to use the empty rooms to separate things into kinds and usefulness as they came out of the attic. There was a room for frou-frou like fancy dishes and knick-knacks. There was a room for all the linens and clothes that seemed to come out of every drawer and door of furniture up there. And if the drawers and doors weren’t full of things made of thread, string, and material they were full of books and magazines. And if not that they held “accessories” like belts, hats, shoes, and then sewing whatnots like bags of buttons, lace, ricrac, zippers, and things like that. Poppa’s boxes and crates definitely came in handy to keep the mess somewhat controlled and organized.
In hindsight I wished I had started at the top and worked my way down. I might not have gotten as much accomplished in the beginning, but it would have meant less cleaning as I went. Instead of being able to clean things once I had to clean them over at the end of each day because I kept tracking the dirt from the attic everywhere I went. It was annoying … and tiring.
There was more metal yard furniture, not all of it worth doing anything with but I took it and hung it from hooks in the large, metal shed that doubled as the barn … at least it did on the end that didn’t have a concrete floor. There was a lot of useless nonsense up in that attic (lots of electrical appliances and similar), some potentially useful things (large pieces of furniture I couldn’t move), and a few really useful things (like the apple press I dug out once I’d gotten about halfway through all the flotsam. That apple press alone was going to be worth all the trouble of cleaning out the attic as there was quite an orchard that with the right tending would yield more fruit than I could ever see us using … which might turn into a market item for trading.
Another useful bunch of stuff I found were more jars but the cardboard boxes they were in nearly disintegrated at my touch so I had to be careful how I unloaded them. Those I took straight down to the basement. The jars are filthy but I don’t have time to wash them just yet. I unearthed some old kerosene lamps that were so pretty they were definitely a real antique and I figured as soon as Dunn got back he could decide what he wanted to do with them. I put those lamps and some of the more expensive items in the room that Dunn lays claim as an office. Even if I wanted to keep them all, they are too valuable not to trade to folks willing to pay the cost of them. All of the baking pans and old Pyrex dishes I took straight to the kitchen to put away as there are plenty of cabinets in a room off the main kitchen that Dunn said was an old butler’s pantry left over from the Victorian era when the original part of the house was built. Once I started doubling up too much, I started splitting the duplicates between the house kitchen and the summer kitchen to keep things neat.
There were a few more pieces of junk furniture nearer the attic door, but the rest stored up there for who knows how long is mostly old and good quality. I mean really-old, like maybe from when the house was originally built, or at least from the same era. And if not then, not too many after. I can tell the really old stuff because it has a lot of frou-frou detailing. The next era looks like what Mawmaw used to call “Craftsmen-style” or even “Mission-style.” Sometimes it still surprises me how much Mawmaw taught me just going through her old wish books and magazines. Some of it is useful knowledge and some of it is just as much frou-frou as that furniture is. It certainly didn’t help me do all the heavy lifting that had to be done as I dug stuff out of that mess.
There was one wall clock that was wind up and I hung that on a handy hook in the entry way. It took me building a sundial to find noon but I believe I now have close to the correct time without having to plant a stick in the middle of a circle and then checking the farmer’s almanac. There’s also a grandfather clock but that isn’t going anywhere until two or three strong men are around to move it. Same is true of several pieces of the furniture. Any of the smaller pieces of furniture that I could maneuver – even if that included taking it apart and moving it a piece at a time – I did. Sometimes I would put a piece one location and then decide it was better in a different one, especially those times I found pieces of matching furniture. I had to be careful of how I moved everything as well. The wooden floors need some work and I’ve done what I can but some of it is beyond me, but I don’t need to make it worse by digging gouges in the wood all for lack of a little extra effort and the convenient furniture dollies that I found shoved in amongst everything else in the attic.
It was three weeks and change and I was getting worried. I didn’t want Dunn’s words to be prophetic, so I refused to behave dramatic and helpless. The problem was that I was running out of things in the house to keep myself busy and distracted with. I’d gone as far as I could with emptying the attic except for the end farthest from the entry and that would have to wait because I kept finding small, expensive things that really needed Dunn’s say so on. Boxes that held a coin collection and a stamp collection. Boxes of real silverware. Some god-awful paintings that were so bad you know they had to be expensive, at least when they were first purchased. Then there was the jewelry and an old firesafe of silver and gold ingots, most of them looking like they’d been melted down by hand. Then there was the stuff that looked personal, like old journals written in by hand, or a file of papers that looked like maybe they were old survey maps of this area. Some stuff in that file is so brittle with age and lack of attention that I’m not even sure it is wise to try and unfold them. There are old cookie tins full of photos as well and while interesting, they aren’t any of my business unless or until Dunn makes them my business.
Being that it was the beginning of April I decided to see if there was anything new on sale in the Forest Grocery Store. I was just in time to take notice. The morels were in. And my ducks were dropping eggs like crazy and with only me to eat them I needed to find a way to preserve them. The morels I foraged and dried, canned, made soup with, and lots of other things well into the night to keep myself from dreaming awful things. The duck eggs I pickled the same way I would have pickled chicken eggs. The mallard eggs were about the size of a jumbo chicken egg so not as many would fit in the pickling jars but that was the least worry, so I just did what I had to and used more jars.
The other goodies that I found now that April weather had them popping up and out is wild ginger, more violets, redbud flowers, burdock root, daylily shoots and tubers, some of the bitter wild greens like creasy and cress, and some Japanese knotweed that can take the place of rhubarb if used right. Japanese Knotweed and Kudzu used to be considered invasive plants to be destroyed on sight, but those two plants have kept a lot of people from starving since the Troubles and the forestry and land management people no longer have a hate on for them. In fact, sometimes the government people have to keep civilians out of the stuff so that their grazing herds of goats have something to eat. I know I was forced to feed the boys and I so much of the two that anytime I ran up on one of them “keep out” signs, I was more than tempted to ignore it … meaning I did ignore it a few times. I know what real hunger is … but I also know what to do about it.
Oyster mushrooms, another April addition, were every bit as welcome a sight as the morels have been. Wild angelica and cattail pollen rounded out what I foraged for the most though there were a few other things here and there. The cattail pollen was difficult and time consuming to get but I kept at it anyway. I’m in an area I don’t know and I’m not sure I could find my way home even if I wanted to. I don’t know when or if there is going to be any kind of resupply. Every little bit is going to be important. I think I may have slipped into survival mode. It is close to four weeks since Dunn left with Mr. Mellon. I don’t know what to think.
[1] Cattail Pickles – How to make.
[2] How to Can Sorrel - Valya's Taste of Home
[3] http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/chickweed.asp
[4] Sheep Sorrel Wine Recipe
