Free Plain Wisdom by Cindy Woodsmall

the wringer washer, and if we didn’t turn it off, like the time we were interrupted by visitors, it would run all day or until the compressor ran out of air.
    To keep the buttons on the men’s shirts and pants from breaking, we rinsed them in clean water and wrung them out by hand. We ran the rest of the clothes through a wash cycle and then through the wringer. After that I filled the mud sink with clean, warm water and dipped the clothes up and down until they were as soap free as possible. After running each piece back through the wringer again, I tossed the articles into a basket to be hung on the clothesline. Memories of watching my mom haul laundry out to the clothesline year after year flooded my thoughts.
    Laundry is hung to dry on a clothesline year-round, and depending on the day of the week, clotheslines are often full. In wet weather laundry is either postponed until a dry day or is hung on lines in the basement or on wooden racks inside the home.
    During a break from laundry, I went into the kitchen to get a glass of cold water and caught a glimpse of Miriam’s foot-pedal sewing machine. I found this amazing since Amish mothers and daughters make all the outer clothing for everyone in the family, from infants’ gowns to brides’ dresses to burial clothes. (Undergarments and socks are usually store bought.)
    My heart turned a flip as I ran my hands across the well-worn oak cabinet. How many pieces of clothing had been sewn on that machineand for how many years? I didn’t ask. It seemed too private. But I noticed a piece of burgundy fabric lying beside the sewing machine, waiting for her to have time to finish making the dress for her daughter.
    At least once a week, Amish mothers will set up an ironing board and iron the cotton shirts. An old-fashioned pressing iron, usually made of cast iron, is heated by placing it facedown on a wood-burning stove or over a low flame on a gas stove. When it’s hot, they iron. When it cools down, they heat it back up. Some Amish women use lighter-weight, modern irons, but they remove the electric cord and heat them in the same manner as an old-fashioned pressing iron.
    The delicate organdy prayer caps the Amish women wear are washed by hand and require careful handling and pressing.

    A lot of Amish kitchens have two stoves: one gas and one wood. Gas stoves are heated with kerosene (called oil) or propane.
    Miriam’s beautiful, shiny, pale green and white wood stove is nearly a hundred years old. She keeps a small box beside it filled with kindling, recycled cardboard boxes, and old newspapers. In winter she keeps the wood stove going all day and cooks meals on it. In spring and fall, she’ll start a small fire in the morning to knock the chill out of the air and to percolate coffee, but by noon she lets it go out. She doesn’t use it at all in summer.
    Cooking on a wood stove presents special challenges. There’s no way to turn the heat down, so Miriam moves items to spots where she knows the stove isn’t as hot, or she holds the skillet an inch from the heat while the food finishes cooking. A wood stove’s oven heats unevenly as well. So Miriam times the rotation of each item that’s baking, whether it’s casseroles or meats. She doesn’t even try to bake bread or cookies in the wood stove. That’s a job for the gas stove, which sits just a few feet away.
    Miriam uses a stovetop waffle iron, popcorn popper, and percolator. I own a top-of-the-line coffee maker and an electric grinder to grind the coffee beans, but, in my opinion, Miriam’s stovetop percolator makes the world’s best coffee. At home I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and don’t want any more. When I stay with Miriam, I drink about six cups—and always want more! Of course, that’s partly because she cooks breakfast in shifts—a necessity to get everyone fed and out the door on schedule. By the time her youngest ones are off to school, she’s cooked three or four rounds of breakfast,