The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1893-11-25
The rsront,er Farmer,s WIFE.

The women VINO live IN cities can form
no estimate Of the work done day after
day by the farmers wife on the frontier.
There are no convenient %laundries, bak-
cries or stores where she could buy the
ready made articles she is compelled to
make for herself. 1t is %unceasing work
with her from early sunrise until long
after the hours have grown small ut
night. She lights the fires for breakfast.
Nowhere is a man so completely lord
and master as on the farm. His mother
was a farmers wife and lighted the fires;
his wife shall do the same. While the
kettle is boiling she does the milking,
and cases are not rare where a farmers
wife milks as many as 8 or 10 cows twice
a day. The milk is carried into the eel
lar in great heavy pals that would try a
mans strength, and she returns to the
work of getting breakfast. During the
progress Of tho meal she cannot sit back
and eat and rest, as many do. but is kept
jumping up and down waiting on the
men folks and children. 1t Is often a
question to strangers who visit on the
frontier il she ever gets a chance to eat
at all. Then the children are to be start
ed off to school, and though the credit Of
their education falls to their father it is
the mother who does extra work that
they may go, and who pulls them out of
bed and starts them off in time every
morning.
The milk is to be strained and put
away, crooks scalded, butter churned,
and the disher and chamber work still
wait. Dinner and supper and afternoon
work take up her day. Then in their
turns throughout the week there are
washing, ironing, baking every other
day, s%crubbing, sweeping, sewing and
mending. In harvest time she will have
as many as IA to cook for and does it all
alone. 1t is seldom that a farmer feels
that he can afford to hire help in the
Kitchen. She has the vegetable garden
to see to. To brighten the dreariness of
her life she has rlose to the seldom OPEN
ed front door a bed Of half starved looking
floWers-old fashioned cOXc0mb, four
o'clocks, grass pinks and a few other
cheerful looking plants that will thrive
under neglect. She makes everything
that her family wears except hats and
shoes. She has no time to think of rest
or self.
1t is in most cases her lot to welcome
a new baby every other year, and TIE
only time when help is employed to as.
slst her is for a period of two or three
weeks when the little stranger arrives.
The births of the babies are about all that
vary the monotony of her life. Occasion
ally death calls and takes from her tired
a little life and leaves in its place
an added pain in her heart. She is old
and tired on. at 80.
When her daughters reach the age at
which they could assist her, the dreary
prospect Of a frontier life appalls them,
and they seek employment i'll town.
Nothing in her house is of late improve
ment. Her dashboard is of the kind her
mother used, and her churn in its heavy,
clumsy build shows that it belongs to the
date. Improvement stalks all over
jle farm and leaves no trace in the
sltchen. Her pleasures are few. The
that she ts doing her best
seems 10 be all that to rewards her. She
S a heroine in a calico dress, wrinkled
stoop shouldpred-a woman with o
burden who never complains. Late at
light, when all the members Of the fam
ly are in bed, a light will shine ont
lcross the prairie from the family liyiag
1t is by this light the farmers
wife is doing her mending and sewing,
nd it will shine out long after the occa-
lonal travel that way has stopped, and
10 II but the one who blows it out
now at what hour the patient burden
labors cease.