If you could spend an hour with Ma Ingalls, what questions would you ask her? These are my questions. The answers are what I imagine she would say, loosely based on the era and technology of the time. Enjoy!
image by gary j. wood
10. What is your favorite cooking utensil?
Answer: Dutch oven because they’re versatile and very durable.
9. When traveling, how do you stay fresh and clean?
Answer: Wash cloth (durable paper towels) with mixture of baby wash and water. Not a substitute for a bath, but it’s better than nothing.
8. What do I do if I run out of toothpaste?
Answer: Use baking soda. Pile a small amount on your toothbrush and clean those pearly whites. It will also whiten your teeth.
7. My child has a cut, and I have NO Neosporin. What do I do?
Answer: Garlic and honey are both excellent natural antibiotics.
6. Would you ever eat a squirrel or an opossum?
Answer: Yes, absolutely! If Pa could catch a few, I’d pan fry them in my Dutch oven with some olive oil and garlic. If you don’t have olive oil, try some lard from the pig you slaughtered last winter.
5. How can I treat a boil, without lancing it with a hot knife?
*** If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll get the lancing comment.
Answer: Place tomato paste on a compress. The acids from the tomatoes soothe the pain and will bring the boil to a head.
4. What do you use to soothe a sore throat?
Answer: Mix ¼ cup of vinegar with ¼ cup of honey. Take 1 tablespoon six times a day. The vinegar kills the bacteria.
3. How do you get stains out of your laundry?
Answer: Lemon juice and baking soda. Combine the two on the stain and let it sit for a few hours. Wash as usual.
2. Is it difficult to raise chickens?
Answer: No. Build them a coop to lock them up at night and keep dangerous critters from killing them. Feed them from your garden. They also love rice. It naturally re-hydrates them.
And the #1 question I’d like to ask Ma Ingalls…
1. How do you pass the time during those long cold winters?
Answer: Find a hobby, or two, and accumulate all the supplies you’ll need. I prefer hobbies that are beneficial to my family like quilting and knitting. The quilts and afghans are also great for snuggling with Pa in front of the fireplace!
Guest post by Right Wing Mom.
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I Love this, useful and creative. I am working on the coop 🙂
We're trying to get our county to approve chickens, then I'm totally getting chickens. They eat ticks!!!
I love this! My 7 year old daughter and I are reading the Laura Ingalls series right now. It’s amazing to me all of the things Ma and Pa knew how to do to survive and thrive in the wilderness. From cooking, house building to digging a well safely (lower a candle down the hole to check if the air is safe before climbing down) and storing food for winter. These books are must reads for kids and adults alike!
This is actually my favorite of the top three. When boiled down to the basics, the basics keep you alive. Frontier living was a harsh life. Pioneers were able to prosper in the middle of it because of what they did, and what they DIDN'T do…
They didn't stop living life….. without a LIFE, what's life worth??? I'm SOOOooooooo on board with simplifying things to a level that allows me to watch the rats run their course.
Thanks Lisa. I've always enjoyed the Laura Ingalls books. I hope that in a TEOTWAWKI scenario, I would have the grace, dignity, and resourcefulness she and her family displayed.
The comments are great. I hope this list is a catalyst for other Q&A. It would NOT hurt us to spend a few minutes thinking like Ma Ingalls.
Random fact: I grew up devouring these books as a young girl because of one (very cool) fact: The Ingalls are in my family tree! I have the entire collection saved for my daughter. I see it as a family tradition, literally. We also have Clara Baron blood…makes me wonder what "emergency medical skills" I would ask her about if I could!
P.S. Maybe that is a good List topic? "Questioned I'd ask Clara Barton"??
What are some Pioneer books you suggest we read? I am just starting out and my "common sense" needs some inspiration!
One of my favorite DIY books is my 1981 edition of Reader’s Digest’s Back to Basics.
Here’s a link to the one I own. (Funny…my mom picked it up for 50 cents from a library clearance table.)
http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Editors-Readers-Digest/dp/0895770865/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330640238&sr=1-4
There are more current editions I’ve heard are JUST as good. Here’s the 2008 Third Edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330640238&sr=1-2
I went to pioneer handbooks and it was written in a different language what happened
It looks like that site no longer exists. Sorry about that. I removed the comment left by Jess with that link.
Whoops! I meant "Questions"*! That teaches me to write in a rush, hahaha!
funny, I just started to read the Ingall’s books as they are not part of my upbringing and I find they give such a good view into life without modern conveniences. As does Anne of Green Gables. Notice how civilized those folks were without electricity.
No toothpaste, take a dogwood twig, chew it into a little brush, like a paintbrush and clean your teeth with it.
Lemon juice and baking soda, what if you have neither…? wet a stain and place it in the sun.
repeat if needed. You may wind up having to live with some stains.
I live very natural and have few stains. I do have a lot of dirt on my clothing.
The idea back then was to avoid stains and dirt.
If you have it, make a paste of white vinegar and sugar and detergent. It gets out most stains.
Love it! Just what I thought she would say.
They didn’t have lemon juice! It’s a tropical plant. They most likely didn’t have baking soda unless they bought it in town. They only had tomato paste if they cooked it down themselves, but they probably didn’t have canning jars. They didn’t have olive oil, so they would use whatever fat they rendered out from whatever animal they caught. They didn’t have baby wash. Honey would have been an extra special treat.
Two things I sort of took issue with –
1) likely they would not have had olive oil. Butter and lard were the go to oils.
2) lemons were not plentiful and would have been very expensive. Most likely the stain would have been scrubbed hard and allowed to dry in the sun. The sunlight would have lightened the stain.
Ever notice that during all activities except going to town and church, Ma Ingalls had on an apron? Aprons would and could get stained but the few dresses, blouses and skirts did not or rarely did. Women back then might only have 3 outfits unless they were very well to do. So, the apron was a necessity and they probably had 4-5. Also, the girls wore pinafores (the precursor to the apron as they became women) to protect the dresses underneath. Those dresses were passed down, resized for the next sister or cousin. When they were so worn that this was not likely to happen again, those dresses were then cut into pieces for wiping up spills and if not faded too badly or torn or stained, might have then been added to quilts.