What homesteaders ate depended on what they could buy and bring with them, plus what they could harvest and kill. Some of the less fortunate were forced to give up their homesteads rather than starve to death.
This photograph from the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan shows a cook with the stove that kept her family alive in winter.
Welcome to Letters From Windermere, where I write about:
Thank you so much to everyone who has preordered a copy of my new novel about women homesteaders, Finding Flora. If you plan to buy the book, please call or visit your favourite bookstore and order it before April first, which could boost it onto the bestseller list.
A veritable blizzard of book events has been planned (and more on the way). I would love to meet you there, hopefully wearing your best hat! Scroll to the bottom of this page to see current events, and keep an eye on my website for future plans here: Coming Events.
I was excited to see my book promoted in the March issue of Canadian Living, one of our biggest and best lifestyle magazines!
To refresh your memory, a homestead consisted of 160 acres of land which was “claimed” from the government by applicants, who earned title after three years of living on the property and meeting some stringent conditions, which included building a habitable dwelling and cultivating a specific number of acres.
In Canada, 1.25 million people claimed homesteads! And the heroine in my new novel is one of them.
Getting your hands on a productive homestead was a crap shoot, especially for those newcomers who didn’t know what to look for. The lucky ones received fertile land, a source of fresh water, and a location within a day’s journey from a community.
They also needed access to trees for firewood, buildings and fences. A rule of thumb was a family needed a wood pile as big as their cabin to keep their hearts beating all winter.
Sadly, many homesteaders were lured to Western Canada with false promises by our federal government, who painted the prairies as a veritable Garden of Eden. Read more here: Homesteaders Hoodwinked.
The first order of business was to build a house, whether it was a log cabin, a sod shack, or a house made from milled lumber. See my early post here: Homesteaders Built Shacks.
Inside this cabin would be a stove for heating and for cooking. It might be as humble as this small, rusty version, which resides in my own log cabin along with my collected coffeepots. See more photos here: Log Cabin Fever.
Or it might be a larger version, like this stove found on my family’s farm in Saskatchewan, and still used occasionally to this day. See more photos here: Farmhouse Kitchen.
The second and perhaps greater challenge was to feed themselves.
If they had children (anyone who raised teenagers will know how much they eat), they needed enough for an entire family. And people who were working outdoors twelve hours a day needed a LOT of food to stay alive, especially during the coldest months. Nobody can work if they are weak with hunger!
Homesteaders arrived at their property with a wagonload of supplies, including farm implements and enough bulk food to last for a few months. Many storekeepers let homesteaders buy food on credit, hoping they would have the means to pay someday.
Without knowing how far away it was to the nearest store (often many miles, by wagon or horseback), many of them underestimated the amount of food required.
Typically a homesteader would buy flour, cornmeal, rice, beans, canned goods, coffee and tea, sugar and salt.
Flour was an essential item. The mainstays of a pioneer diet were simple fare like potatoes, beans, soda biscuits (or scones), cornbread, and white bread (sourdough, if you didn’t have yeast).
A hundred-pound sack of flour (although this one was marked 98 pounds) had the advantage of a cloth bag which could later be turned into a child’s dress or shirt.
Five Roses not only sold flour, in 1913 it published a cookbook that was distributed free of charge to one million households! At one time it was the most popular cookbook in Canada, and many households (including my own) still have a copy kicking around.
Those who were lucky enough to arrive in the spring immediately planted a garden with purchased seeds. The most popular were root vegetables which would keep over the winter — potatoes, carrots, beets, and parsnips, onions and cabbage. Rhubarb always grew well (some rhubarb planted by those early pioneers is still flourishing 100 years later.)
(This is Albie, Marion, Edward and Anton Horn, early residents of Powell, Wyoming, standing in their garden, courtesy of Homesteader Museum.)
Wild berries were plentiful, and picking them was a task often assigned to children, who brought home buckets filled with chokecherries, gooseberries, currents, pincherries, huckleberries, saskatoons, and wild strawberries. Most wild fruit was preserved to eat over the winter.
If the homesteaders survived that first brutal winter, they might be able to afford a cow for milk and butter, and chickens for eggs. (I can’t imagine living without cream for my coffee, or butter for my bread!)
(This unidentified woman is churning butter, plunging a wooden paddle into a churn until the cream solidifies into butter.)
As if they were not busy enough building, plowing and planting, they also had to hunt for food. Homesteaders, many of whom had never touched a firearm, needed to learn how to use rifles, and how to hunt and kill. If they were near a river or lake, they might be able to catch fish.
If they didn’t own domestic animals, most survived on rabbits, which were so plentiful they could be snared with a piece of wire or even clubbed to death. There were so many rabbits that one homesteader recalls having to keep the cabin door shut or they would hop inside!
(This homesteader looks very pleased with himself. Rabbit stew for supper!)
Others game included deer, and birds such as ducks, prairie chickens and partridges. Starving homesteaders resorted to eating anything with fur or feathers.
Unfortunately meat would spoil in a day unless it was immediately treated by smoking or salting or canning. One of the few advantages of cold winters was that meat could also be preserved by freezing in Mother Nature’s icebox.
Potable water was often the greatest challenge. Slough water had to be strained through a cloth and boiled until the homesteaders found the time to dig a well — and even then, they might not strike water. There are stories of entire families who died of typhoid because they didn’t know enough to boil the water first.
One collection of early pioneer recipes was compiled by Billie Milholland of Edmonton, along with tales of the women who used them, called They Came, Pioneer Women of the Canadian West, A Sampler of Stories and Recipes.
This young couple is John and Verda Niddrie. Coincidentally, they are shirt-tail relatives of mine, since my daughter Katie married their great-great-grandson Thomas Niddrie.
I love this photograph of the young couple, and you will notice that Verda is wearing a straight skirt and high-necked shirtwaist. That was a common outfit in those days, along with a gigantic cartwheel hat. See more photos here: What Homesteaders Wore.
Verda Johnson was born in 1890 and came to Canada with her parents from North Carolina to claim a free homestead near Sundre, Alberta. She became a teacher and married fellow teacher John Niddrie. They had four sons and two daughters. Her daughter Dorothy was still making Johnny Cake (also known as cornbread) for her children and grandchildren until 1995!
In Verda’s day, the oven temperature was measured by putting your hand inside, or a small piece of paper to see how quickly it caught fire. Later she baked this recipe at 375F.
3 cups corn meal, one cup flour, one tablespoon sugar, one teaspoon salt, two heaping tablespoons of baking powder, one tablespoon lard, 3 eggs, 3 cups milk.
Sift together dry ingredients, rub in cold lard, add eggs and beat well. Add milk. Mix to a moderately stiff consistency, pour into a well-greased pie tin, and bake at 375F for 35 minutes.
(Homesteaders were nothing if not resourceful. A tip from the Grain Grower’s Guide of 1913 says that if a leavening agent is unavailable, dry snow can be used for scones. Quickly mixed into the batter and popped into the oven, it would evaporate, leaving small pockets of air that made the scones fluffy!)
This old recipe from my mother June Light Florence is a family favourite. She got it from her own mother, Veronica Scott, the daughter of homesteaders at Radisson, Saskatchewan. It appears in a cookbook that I compiled for a Florence Family Reunion. Read more here: Publish Your Own Cookbook.
3 cups flour, one-half cup sugar, 5 teaspoons baking powder, one-half teaspoon salt, three-quarters cup margarine, one large egg (slightly beaten), one cup milk. Combine as usual, add one cup raisins or grated cheese if desired. Bake at 450F for 12 to 15 minutes.
My granddaughter Juliet enjoys her great-grandmother’s scones.
If you are in Invermere for my book launch at Pynelogs Cultural Centre, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the first day of April, enter the Scone Baking Contest!
Bring a plate of your favourite scones for judging, and you might win a prize. Be prepared to share your scones with the other guests. I will provide the butter and jam!
All other readers, please send me your favourite scone recipe. I’ll reprint one or two of them in future newsletters.
Along with the Scone Baking Contest, my book launch in Invermere will feature a Hat Contest, with a prize for the biggest and most elaborate hat with flowers, feathers and furbelows!
In fact, if you attend ANY of my book events you are encouraged to wear a hat, the bigger the better.
Ladies and girls, feel free to adorn your hats with whatever you have at hand. I will be wearing my grandmother’s wedding hat. And if you want to dress from head to toe like a homesteader, please be my guest!
Gentlemen and boys, you may wear any hat that was fashionable around the turn of the century — bowlers, top hats, flat tweed caps, or even cowboy hats (basically anything except a baseball cap). Or a lady’s hat, if you feel so inclined!
Here’s the list so far. Please visit or bookmark my Events page, which will change as new events are added: Coming Events.
Preorders at any of these bookstores, or your own favourite bookstore if you don’t live in one of these communities, would be much appreciated!
6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 1: Pynelogs Cultural Centre, Invermere, B.C. Hat contest, scone contest, author reading and book signing. Cash bar. Co-hosted by Four Points Books.
7-9 p.m. Wednesday, April 2: Owl’s Nest Books, Calgary, AB. Author talk and signing. Refreshments served.
12-4 p.m. Thursday, April 3: Indigo Signal Hill, Calgary, AB. Book signing.
1-5 p.m. Friday, April 4: Chapters Chinook, Calgary, AB. Book signing.
2-4 p.m. Sunday, April 6: Audreys Books, Edmonton, AB. Book signing.
12-4 p.m. Tuesday, April 8: Indigo Sherwood Park, Sherwood Park, AB. Book signing.
12-4 p.m. Wednesday, April 9: Indigo North Town Centre, Edmonton, AB. Book signing.
7-9 p.m. Thursday, April 24: Huckleberry Books, Cranbrook, BC. Author talk and book signing.
12-4 p.m. Saturday, April 26: Café Books, Canmore, AB. Book signing.
12-4 p.m. Saturday, May 3: Coles Tamarack Centre, Cranbrook, BC. Book signing.
12-4 p.m. Monday, May 12: Coles Cottonwood Mall, Chilliwack, BC. Book signing.
6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 14: Black Bond Books, Vancouver, BC. Author talk and book signing.
2-6 p.m. Friday, May 23: Book Launch and Garden Party at the author’s home, 581 Nassau Crescent, Qualicum Beach, BC. Come and go as you please. Co-hosted by Mulberry Bush Books. Chat with author, book signing and refreshments.
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Riding the wave of Canadian nationalism, I chose a VERY good book written by a Canadian author about our little-known Arctic history. Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae is the best kind of non-fiction book, so exciting you can’t believe it isn’t true.
John Rae from Scotland was a heroic figure who discovered what happened to the Lost Franklin Expedition, but was pilloried for his pains by the British press after he discovered the survivors had resorted to cannibalism.
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Friends, do you have homesteaders in your family tree? If so, I would love to hear from you. In the meantime, please send me your best scone recipe!
All the very best, Elinor
