Flat Stanley Discovers Ide Adobe's 1850s Homestead (pt. 1)

Good morning everyone and welcome to William V. Iadobe State Historic Park. My name is Mrs. Pooley and today when we go across the Bridge of Time we're going to be stepping back into the 1850s and exploring what it was like to live in early pioneer California. Now I understand that some of you have been reading Flat Stanley's Escape to California by Jeff Brown. Well it just so happens that Flat Stanley mailed himself to the park and he's going to be joining us on the tour. You're going to see him along the tour. He's going to be in some funny places. Now in the 1850s there were three big things that they did not have. We have three. Can you guess any of the three? Right, electricity was one and another one was modern transportation or cars and the third one was something that we use in our homes every day and that was indoor plumbing. Now when we cross over the Bridge of Time we're going to be looking for clues to see how the pioneers lived without these big things. So look for Stanley too. Well dog my cats there's Flat Stanley across the Bridge of Time right now. He's waiting for us. Let's go over to 1852. In pioneer times this was wild country and you couldn't just go to the supermarket to buy your food. So many of the pioneers brought seeds across the prairie with them to start their gardens. Other pioneers wrote home to their friends and family to please send seeds to start their plants. Now without refrigeration the plants had to be able to be dried or they had to be able to be stored for some time. So we have a garden right here. Let's go inside and see what's growing. Come on. Mrs. Albano. Good morning. Good morning and Mrs. Hardwick. Good morning Mrs. Pooley. I see you two are hard at work here but do you mind taking a moment to show us what's growing in your garden? Absolutely. So we have bullnose peppers, yellow tomatoes, cayenne peppers and the three sisters growing. The three sisters? Yes Mrs. Pooley. Corn is the first of the three sisters. The corn grows tall so the beans have something to climb. And then here are the beans right here going up the corn. For its part the beans pull nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil for all three plants to use. This is called nitrogen fixing. Nitrogen is a really important nutrient for all healthy plants. Sorry Mrs. Albano. I was so excited about the squash and here's our third sister. So the squash has two jobs to keep the ground damp with its big leaves and because the stems are prickly it helps keep animals away like raccoons. It is and served together they make a complete meal and we have the corn which then can be dried for later use or you could eat it fresh. We have beans and I don't have any beans to harvest this morning but I have some dried ones to show you. So you can eat the beans fresh or you can dry them for the winter for cooking for later. Absolutely and then that third sister is squash. It is it's delicious and that keeps pretty well without refrigeration. All these together when you serve them together in a meal gives you the complex carbohydrates it gives you fats and it gives you protein. Complete. Now the only thing is it gets a little tough being able to eat this every single night day in and day out for supper. So Mrs. Albano solved that for us. She planted marjoram, rosemary and mint so we can flavor our meals and make them more interesting. Is that Mr. Stanley I see climbing the corn like a bean? Maybe he's trying to help with the harvest. Stanley is always trying to help in his own way. Well let me tell you Mrs. Albano is a real clinker when it comes to harvesting and putting things up for the winter. Well it looks like you two are going to survive out here on the frontier. Yes thank you. Thank you for sharing your garden with us this morning. I must be going but it's wonderful to see you Mrs. Albano. And thank you Mrs. Barber. Thank you Mrs. Cooley for visiting. Goodbye. Bye-bye. They grew their food and what they grew was a big clue to us about no electricity and so no refrigeration. Let's see what other clues we can find. What do we have here? Well in the 1850s indoor plumbing was not common and so pioneers had to find other ways to go to the bathroom. So what they did is they would dig a big hole and they would build a small little house like this over it far and out and away from their house so as to distance themselves from unpleasant odors. Looks like Stanley might need a little private time. Let's see what else we can find. What do you suppose this big adobe or actually little adobe is for? Any guesses? Well the pioneers used to hunt and raise animals for meat but without refrigeration they had to preserve it. So sometimes they would use salt and they would draw water out of the meat or sometimes they would build a smokehouse and they would hang strips of the meat inside of the smokehouse from hooks or on a rack and they would light a fire and they would make it really smoky and they would smoke the meat over a period of a few days to really draw out all the moisture and preserve it. What they finally ended up with was something like like beef jerky. Look at this big cauldron. This is a big clue. In the pioneer times with no electricity they had to find other ways to make light within their homes and so they made candles and they would use a big cauldron like this. They would fill it with tallow which was animal fat and they would heat up that tallow and make it really melted and then they would take a willow stick or some sturdy stick with twine on it and they would repeatedly dip it into the melted tallow adding layer upon layer to their candle. Now it looks like Mr. Stanley is ready to make his own candle. Let's go inside the adobe. Come with me. Here we are at the adobe home. Come inside. This adobe was built in 1852 and the pioneers used materials that they found right here to build the adobe bricks. They used sand, clay, and hay to construct the bricks and build the home. Now many pioneers lived in this home. The children would sleep upstairs in the loft. That's Stanley up there already and the parents would sleep down here with the babies. This is a rope bed so it has a wood frame and then ropes that the pioneers made themselves that are suspending the mattress of the bed. Now as you already know we don't have So they had to haul water to the house every day and this was a common chore for children. If they were lucky they had a yoke like this one and they could haul two buckets at a time carrying it on their shoulders. Now they used water just like we do for washing and bathing. So if you wanted to wash your hands you would have a bucket full of water and a ladle for getting your hands wet and then you would have some soap made from tallow just like your candles for lathering up. You might also have a pitcher instead of a ladle. We would also have a wash tub for our weekly bath. We would use this wash tub for also our wash day for washing our clothes. We would use the scrub board and a brush and get that Stanley in there. He's always willing to give a helping hand. And then another thing you would notice is that we know there's no electricity in this house so they would use the hearth here for cooking their food. The pioneers used Dutch ovens for cooking their food and cast iron pots. Now they made a lot of things themselves but they also had to bring some things in from other places and you might be asking yourself how did they get in here? How did the pioneers get here? Well let's go outside and we're going to look at a highway that the pioneers used at that time for helping them bring people and things to the homestead. During the gold rush you might have headed to the northern lines by traveling on the Sacramento River. This natural water highway was used by pioneers who would hop on a ferry boat San Francisco and then travel up to Red Bluff. They would use that to get people and supplies up here. But as you know many of the pioneers came here by covered wagon. Now imagine you're on the last leg of your journey and you get here with your wagon and there's this big river. How are you going to get across? Well some of the pioneers built platform ferries and what they did is they would make a wooden platform and they would have ropes attached to it and then they would be able to pull animals carriages and people across the river and ferry them from one bank to the other. There used to be a ferry right here called the Adobe Ferry. Look at that flat Stanley over there he looks like he's headed to the ferry boat landing but I suppose he could just turn himself into a kite and fly across the river. So people got supplies here on this natural water highway but sometimes like we talked about before they made things themselves and I wonder how did they make things themselves without electricity? I think I hear somebody in the blacksmith shop. Let's go see what's happening in there.