• Available in 2022 for Local Pick-up
  • Snapshot

Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Category Archives: Feminist farmer

Bits and Bobs

26 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Feminist farmer, Reduce, reuse, recycle

≈ Leave a comment

I have a weakness for vintage sewing thread. Well, ok, I have a weakness for vintage. I scoop my flour and sugar from 1950s Kromex copper canisters, I cook on a 1953 Moffat Coronation stove, we eat from vintage-style Fiestaware dishes at a 1930s oak kitchen table in a humble 1970s farmhouse and when I started making butter, well of course I had to try a vintage butter press.

My romantic brain is drawn to the ‘good old days’ when life was simpler, even as my logical brain reminds me that no, of course it wasn’t. Humankind has always struggled, and today, for all its troubles, the world where I am blessed to be living my quiet little life is truly a wonderful place. I, along with billions of my fellow humans, face much less struggle, toil and suffering than our forebears faced throughout most of history. Yes, even in a pandemic.

I spent much of yesterday sewing masks. I am onto my third pattern now, waylaying various-sized family members and test fitting as I go, weighing the alternatives of elastic ear loops (good for short stints), shoelace or bias tape ties (best fit but complicated to get on), satin linings (sumptuous) and which cotton print for the outsides? Funnily enough, it is the men in my life who are the most worried about fabric colour and pattern. They prefer the somber, serious look.

Much to my delight, I am finally using the many small bits of fabric that I have held onto over thirty-plus years of sewing projects. I knew they would be good for something some day! Even better, I am finishing up some of the bits and bobs of thread of all colours that I have collected.

I have a particular weakness for vintage thread, and am incapable of leaving behind any small plastic bag of wooden thread spools discovered at the local thrift store. Laboriously sorted, packaged and labelled by intellectually challenged workers sifting though long tables of donations in vast charity warehouses (I imagine), these little dollar-or-two bags often include some real treasures.


Pure silk thread from the late 19th century in a rainbow of colours, my best-ever find. Boil fast depression-era thread from back when boiling laundry was what women did, every toilsome laundry day. Heavy duty cotton, for mending thick coveralls and denim. J. & P. Coats, like Mom had. All on solid wood spools and many with their original, delightful labels.

I can’t help thinking these threads are a cut above what I can buy today. Some are a hundred years old, and still sturdy and brightly coloured. Incredible, beautiful, useful talismans of the past that link me, in a chain reaching back through the mists of time, to who knows how many incredible, beautiful, strong women. Women who like me lived their quiet lives, but with probably much less freedom, much less comfort, much less idle time and much less healthcare than I enjoy today. Woman like me who sat sewing for loved ones, listening to the radio, or the rain pattering on the roof, with hot cup of tea at their elbow, mending basket at their feet. Snug, and for the moment, content.

Priorities, Obligations, and Vintage Silk Embroidery Thread

05 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Feminist farmer

≈ 1 Comment

I took the last couple weeks off work; a much needed break from a role that can be quite intense at times. I love my work, but some days, most days actually, it feels like I just sit down in the morning, plunge in, and when I finally come up for air another day has sped by. Gone forever.

Home offices are lovely, but there are no water cooler conversations or coffee moments with co-workers to break up the day. So I am grateful for the barnyard crew who leave me no choice but to head outside around noon to hand out lunch and free / pen various groups. My barnyard obligations force me to break entirely, for a good ten minutes, from my screens and documents and email and meetings.

ED61E153-C400-45E1-AD70-4ED30C394756

In my late fifties now and aspiring to some form of “semi-retirement”, part way through 2019 I started booking Wednesdays off. So far it’s been great but doesn’t always work. Although my amazing team works hard to deflect, and my calendar is blocked from all-but-urgent meetings, I often end up with an hour or two’s work to do anyway. Priorities. Obligations. Self-imposed, of course.

This year though, I’m starting things off right, with no work and all play, which for me translates to getting a bunch of personal projects done. I am my father’s daughter, and have inherited his “industrious” gene. Yesterday, while organizing my office closet, I rediscovered a bundle of silk embroidery thread packets that I had gotten sometime last year at the thrift store. Two bundles actually, one all creamy shades of white and the other a riot of intense jewel tones, picked up because I saw the word ‘silk’, brought home and tucked away in anticipation of magical stitchery projects to come, some day when time would permit.

6AD234A1-DE9F-4B25-917D-721F6BB3884E

A little tattered at the ends from being stored who-knows-where for many, many years, but still hanging in there, the paper skein holders date from 1894 to 1903. And when I unfold and carefully press one open, the silk inside is pristine, shiny, vibrant.

8B402463-5BB2-4212-AAA2-9A4390E8C33D
7FF30A0F-2C62-47DC-BF8C-071B3219F23C

They “cost no more than Poor Silks – so why not use them?” asserts one of the ads, offers and instructions filling every corner of the considerable real estate on the forty inch long papers. Why not indeed? I bet the copywriter who penned those words had little idea that in the year 2020, a future customer would read them and reflect “yes, quality and here’s proof, 125 years and still going strong.”

981B48B1-EB29-49C7-B9DD-9EC1A482DBEA

Who bought them, I wonder? Based on the available information, it would have been a contemporary of my great or even great great grandmother’s. Someone who dressed in full length gowns with leg-o-mutton sleeves, at least until the turn of the century.

9A9C245E-A746-4475-ADF5-D09E5B26FD87.jpeg

This embroidery silk has far outlived not only its purchaser’s priorities and obligations, but her as well! 

This is a good reminder; time pauses for no one. I am back to work tomorrow, with all its myriad joys and frustrations. I shall take care to ensure I stay true to my priorities, as I carefully delegate away my obligations and thereby gain the time to embroider my retirement projects with vintage silk thread.

And make up for the sobriety of my youth, with, say for example, this lovely purple.

F9B433D0-FC24-40DC-B72D-B44FAA9644F5

 

A Woman’s Right

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Jodi in Feminist farmer

≈ Leave a comment

TL;DR It took 84 long years for all Canadian women to win the right to vote. On Monday October 21 I will go to my local school gym, and cast my vote. I can’t wait!

D18E5EED-9C48-4AD4-A164-1D199DD98911
514B35DF-6098-4798-904A-B5953F8FEF74

Almost 150 years ago, in 1876 in Toronto, Ontario, Dr. Emily Howard Jennings Stowe started Canada’s very first women’s suffrage organization.

Born in 1831, Dr. Stowe was a woman ahead of her time. She had been refused entry to the University of Toronto in 1852 because she was female. Not until 1886 did U of T change that policy. So she got her teaching certificate, then taught public school, eventually becoming the first female principal in Canada.

17732943-2658-4791-9FC4-C83E87B34CED

After marrying and having 3 children she tried to enter medical school in Canada but was refused because, you guessed it, she was a woman. So she went to med school in New York instead, graduating in 1868 at age 37, then moving back home to Toronto where she became the first woman to practice medicine in Ontario.

It took eight years, until 1884, for Dr. Stowe’s Dominion Suffrage Club to achieve their first victory, winning the vote for women in some Ontario municipal elections. But only for widows and spinsters. Married women didn’t need the vote you see…they had their husbands to take care of all that!

4F5F6DAA-4577-4F50-A6C9-A9C8E716E644

Dr. Stowe and the suffragettes didn’t stop there.

  • In 1889 they petitioned Canada’s Conservative Attorney General to give widows and spinsters the federal vote. They were refused.
  • In 1903 Dr. Stowe died and her daughter Augusta, Canada’s first female MD trained in her home country, took over the club presidency.
  • In 1905 and again in 1906 the club petitioned Ontario’s Conservative premier for the vote and were refused.
  • In 1907 they organized a thousand person march, presenting the Ontario government with a 100,000 name petition. For a third time they were refused.
  • In 1912 the club petitioned Robert Borden’s Conservative federal government. “No”, they were told. Not until all the provinces say yes.

So they focused on supporting efforts to gain women the vote at the municipal level, and by 1915 women had won the right to vote in a few more Ontario municipalities. Then the suffragettes went back to the province to try again. But the answer was still no.

Between 1915 and 1917, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba women all won the right to vote provincially. But not in Ontario, where Canada’s suffrage movement had been born. After yet another monster petition the provincial Liberals made the womens’ vote one of their election planks. But the Conservatives stayed in power.

And then finally in 1917, with the First World War raging, “a change came over the hearts of men”. Canadian men and women were making untold sacrifices for the war effort. In the spirit of the times, Premier Hearst’s Conservative Ontario government endorsed a private member’s bill, the Premier intoning solemnly:

6E51E592-362B-46C9-8BB4-B6AD7767F61D“Having taken our women into partnership with us, in this tremendous task, I ask, can we justly deny them the right to have a say about the making of the laws they have been so heroically trying to defend? I think not!”

The Liberals united with the Conservatives, (can you imagine that happening today??? 😳🤣🙄) and Ontario’s women’s suffrage bill passed.

In Ottawa, where Mr. Borden’s wartime Unionist Party (an amalgam of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals) had won a landslide election victory the previous year, on April 12, 1918, a bill was passed to extend suffrage to “all women in Canada”. But they really only meant non-quebecois caucasian women. 😠

When the federal bill passed, the remaining provincial and territorial hold outs gave in. Except Quebec, where women did not win the right to vote provincially until 1940. Oh, and except for women of colour, who couldn’t vote in federal elections either, until the 1940s. Oh and except for First Nations women covered by the Indian Act, who couldn’t vote federally until 1960!!!

All in all, it took 84 years; from 1876 to 1960, for all Canadian women to win the right to vote in any election in Canada. Close to a century of prejudice, of hard fought battles and rejection, of being knocked down and getting right back up, of derision and scorn heaped on the suffragettes year after year.

I am so grateful to the women (and men) who fought for this right on behalf of all of us, so tenaciously and for so long. Our society is the better for it.

On October 21 I will be thinking about Dr. Stowe and all the women whose shoulders I’m standing on, as I again relish the freedom, as a woman, to engage fully in our participatory democracy.

Voting is awesome and good for the soul. I can’t wait.

D9D1262C-10EF-4061-ADBA-0D92C0C5034E
867F6DB5-D319-44F5-BDBD-AE316DD14FF5

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • May 2022
  • February 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • December 2014

Categories

  • Chance
  • Chickens
  • Equines
  • Equipment
  • Farm Improvements
  • Farm Life
  • Farm Produce
  • Feminist farmer
  • Gardening
  • Liza and Arrow
  • Preserving
  • Reduce, reuse, recycle
  • Seasons
  • Uncategorized
  • Weather
  • Wildlfe
  • Wildlife

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Muddy Valley Farm
    • Join 64 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Muddy Valley Farm
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...