Welcome to A Victorian Year in Ontario

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, the year is 1865, Her Majesty Queen Victoria has reigned since 1837 and we are in the midst of a prosperous era. The purpose of this blog is to record the daily round of chores, tasks, trials and triumphs of our household in rural Upper Canada (now known as Ontario). We have embarked on an experiment to live a year as close to the way it was done in 1865 as we possibly can. We will post our remarks and await your comments, suggestions and critiques. So join us as we travel back in time.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

January thaw???

Well this is some weather we are having isn't it?
We took advantage of the day to bring in some wood & do some necessary things outside. Inside I washed the walls in the kitchen.They get very dusty with the kitchen stove going all of the time. So if I do not keep it up they look dusty. I remember the mention that the Victorians used old tea leaves to sprinkle on the floors . They sprinkled them then swept the whole mess up. I am assuming this is to dampen the dust. Something I have noticed is the dust level is high especially during the winter months. So I am assuming this is why they did this. Anyone have any ideas on this or comments??
I have noticed that this is the time of year that grand pieces of pork appear in the grocery stores,  especially in Guelph. Sausage making time again. Sure enough I ran into a friends Mother who happily announced "we are making sausage". Now we also want to make sausage and had every intention to do so .My concern is the lack of freezing outside. With no freezer we cannot keep the sausages. Also we haven't had sufficient snow fall to use snow during this January thaw. Normally we would have our meat or whatever outside and it would freeze , during a thaw period we would just pack snow around the container to keep it frozen , this we cannot do without the snow. Our warmer weather surely would have caused a real problem 150 years ago. So that is all I have to say this evening .Speaking of we have longer light during the days now so I can get a few more things done before I am lighting the candles ...which is wonderful. I really miss longer days.
See you soon

5 comments:

  1. I thought there was such a thing as cold cellars or the sort where ice blocks and sawdust/straw were kept like a icebox or freezer sort of function. I never realized you did without the freezer as well. YIKES!

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  2. Hiya ,,,Yes we are intending to dig an "ice house" .Which is what they used to store ice.You are correct that ice whould be stored in saw dust and or straw. But in the mean time we were hoping to rely on the outside "big Freezer" to meet our needs. Oh well winter isnt over yet so we will see.

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  3. Can you salt some pork down to keep it for making sausages later? Maybe the next big project could be a smoke house, then your pork wouldn't need to be kept cold.

    Grainne

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  4. Yes we will have to look into doing that. It has been annoying the lack of snow and freezing this winter.We are really hoping it will not affect the sap production too.We were hoping for a good maple syrup batch this year.Last year was a wonderful year for syrup and we still have some left there was so much. And that is after giving tons away.So we are keeping our fingers crossed. I may still do some sausage and just give it away to the kids . There is nothing like real home made..

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  5. We will also be adding an ice house to the property so that will solve some of the problem..

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