Edna Fern wrote, “Outsiders might not have thought of Mother’s life as rich, but being raised feeling like an outsider in whatever family she found herself as a youngster, she now enjoyed the privilege of keeping a comfortable home for the people she loved: her husband and children and whoever else came within the radius of her service. I think of her as being the very best cook in that community; at least she ranked among them—those who really enjoyed serving tasty meals with variety, in spite of having food shortages.”

Pluma was in charge of all of the indoor chores—most having to do with cleanliness. One of Ruth and Edna Fern’s jobs was to wash clothes with a corrugated washboard. Their mother would put the white clothes into a boiler on the stove and boil them until they were spotless. Edna remembered, “We never had a large enough house to hang the clothes inside so the clothes all froze stiff as a board on the outdoor line in the winter. The legs of Dad’s frozen long underwear looked like a headless man was standing in them. We heated several irons on the stove so as one cooled off another would be ready. We’d unhitch the handle on one and hitch it to the other. Like all of the chores we did, we had to be meticulous in our ironing.

“Mother gave Ruth and me specific jobs beyond helping her with the laundry. Ruth and I would get down on our knees on a small braided rag rug and scrub the bare boards without so much as a bit of linoleum to cover them. Ruth liked to help with the outdoor work, and in the summer, to get out of indoor work, I liked being sent after the cows for their evening milking. A bonus was that the valleys were full of tasty wild fruit available for the picking.”

Edna Fern wrote, “It became my daily job to make sure that the pail kept by the sink in the kitchen always had drinking water; the spring water was pure and cold and that no doubt contributed to our good health. I also had to keep the reservoir on the back of the Monarch filled so there would always be warm water for washing up before meals and for washing and rinsing the dishes afterwards. Near the spring, Dad made a two-spouted flume to control the flow of the creek so that it was easier to fill the water buckets.

“In the summer, Mother put an old wooden box in the creek. The lid of the box was kept open a crack so that there was always fresh creek water running through the box to keep the butter and cream and milk cold. Just before mealtime, I’d go down to get them. Any milk or cream that had soured was used to make pancakes or baking.”

Lela said that she helped out with hauling the water once she was old enough to be able to carry with two hands a Rogers Golden Syrup bucket filled with water: ”the lid fit really tight so the water didn’t spill out. There was a peppermint patch on the bank right above the box. Mother would pick it and dry it; when we were sick she would make us peppermint tea.”

Edna Fern wrote, “Nearly everything had many uses. Of course there wasn’t an indoor bathroom so the big round tub that I used to scrub the clothes in was also the bathtub for our Saturday night cleanup. We often used the same water for a few of us to bathe in until it started to look dirty. I remember that in the summer Dad took the tub out in the yard where he could have his bath with more privacy.

“Mother made her own lard and soap from the fat of the cattle, with lye added. This is where the boiler also came in. Not only was it used to heat up the water for washing clothes and bodies but also it was used to make soap. Mother apparently was quick to learn how to make these farm things.

“Even the outhouse had two uses: if anyone got tired of being with our big family in our small house, we could go out back and lock the door, knowing we wouldn’t be disturbed. We could sit quietly looking through the Eaton’s catalogue, dreaming about what we wished we could have for our birthday that year. Twice a year Dad and Mother sent to Eaton’s for supplies—coffee, flour and sugar, and materials for mother’s sewing—and after they were done looking through the catalogue and had made their order, it was taken to the outhouse for other purposes.”

“Mother sewed as often as she could on her White sewing machine she had brought from North Dakota. She sent away for a course in making patterns for all of our clothes—men’s pants and girls’ slacks, shirts and blouses, nightwear, underwear, coats, jackets—whatever clothes we had she had made following the instructions from a collection of bound books that is now in the Wood Mountain Museum.”

Lela remembered her mother telling her that, in order to make the stiff size-16 paper form she used to get a fit that was just right, she pasted paper on herself and then slit it to take it off. “She named the form Katie, and when she had to leave it behind when we left Canada she missed it something terrible.”

Pluma was recognized as an accomplished seamstress and often sewed for neighbor ladies. She charged one dollar to make a dress, but Lela remembered her mother saying that she wished others would do some of her work while she sewed for them. Sometimes her own chores remained undone when the older kids were off to school and she moved her sewing machine into the middle of the room near the table where she could spread out her patterns and fabrics.

Edna Fern wrote, “I can still see her pinning the fabrics. Ruth and I would always watch the progress of her creations and any new garment in our household was a happy event, even the full-leg bloomers made of flour sacks with elastic at the bottom that came just above the knee.” Each stitch was designed to last. Edna wrote that she was still wearing one of the housedresses her mother had made 25 years earlier: “The buttonholes were perfectly made with her slender fingers and are no worse for wear today.”

Pluma also did a lot of quilting and would get wool from Mr. Bryant, a neighbor who had sheep; she would card the wool and line her quilts with it.

By their third winter, Percy and Pluma had a larger house, though nothing of the stature of the Anderson “palace.” They had been fortunate to have a better crop than usual so there was cash to have a larger house built. The outside of their new home was rough unpainted boards but the inside lath-and-plaster walls were soon covered with flowery wallpaper ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue. They never got the where-with-all to finish their new home but they were pleased all the same because they had more room to move around and everyone had a little more indoor privacy.

You entered the house through the outside door that faced east, just as it had been with the smaller house. A large white granite stone was the only step up to the doorway; this stone with its worn foothold can still be found nearby where the house once stood.

Lela remembered that Percy and Pluma’s bed was tucked behind a curtain of dyed cotton flour bags hung on a wire in the northeast corner of the room. Above them was an attic bedroom where the four older children slept. This room was divided by a curtain so that Lyman and Bob shared one side of the room and Ruth and Edna Fern the other. Edna Fern remembered that she and Ruth cut pictures out of the catalogues and pasted them on the walls for decoration: ”we were so pleased not to have to sleep in the same space as all the rest of the family, and we marked off our territory.”

Back on the main floor, Pluma’s White treadle sewing machine sat under the east window beside the front door, and shelves were nailed on the west wall to hold games and some of Joseph’s books—books that the older Anderson children, including Ernest, would ride over to borrow.

There was a table with benches and chairs in the middle of the room that was used as much for board games as for meals during the long winter nights. The fourth Anderson son, Boyd, remembered being welcomed to play board games, sing songs, and sample Pluma’s baking in the Haverfield home.

The table was near the door that opened onto the small kitchen dominated by the old Monarch cook stove. This room was an addition, a lean-to, with shelves and cupboards, and a sink with a slop pail beneath to catch the rinse water from scrubbed vegetables and dishes. A wooden counter space gave Pluma the surface she needed for the kitchen work that kept the family fed and healthy, even during drought years when there were no crops to harvest and sell.

Canned berries, jams, and jellies were put up from all the berries picked with neighboring families and friends at berry-picking parties. Lela said, “Mother picked everything she could get her hands on—there’s nothing tastier in this world.” Pin-cherry jelly, saskatoon and chokecherry syrup, and gooseberry jam were delicious on pancakes and fresh buns from the oven. But these treats didn’t come without spending hours picking berries in the hot summer sun and keeping covered with long-sleeved shirts, long pants and socks, and hats for protection from sunburn, mosquitoes, tics, snakes, poison ivy, and stinging nettle.

Garden vegetables were brought from the root cellar and prepared for dinners along with roasts and stews and baked beans, or as sandwiches with thick slices of beef, chicken, pork or deer meat for supper or lunches. But at times there were limited meat supplies, and Pluma had to be imaginative—the family ate roast porcupine when no other meat was available.