History – Joys of spring

By Lyn Johnston, Albertland Museum

Longer, warmer and windier days are here, and it makes me wonder if anyone still does the annual ‘spring clean’ of their home as our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers did? Spring was once the time to bring out the heavy winter clothing and bedding to wash and dry in the sunshine after months of cold, wet weather. Kapok mattresses were shaken and put out to air, rugs and carpets flung over the clothesline, and the dust beaten out of them. No laundry detergents, fabric softeners or stain removers in those days, but household hints were plentiful. For example, ‘For boiling clothes, add two teaspoons full of Laurel kerosene to the copper when the water is boiling and difficult grease stains will be more easily removed.’ The clothesline was usually strung between two trees with a long ti-tree pole used as the prop. Imagine the despair if a line broke.

Spring lambs gamboling in the sunshine bring a smile to most faces. Mrs Lily Steventon, of Tauhoa, had a different opinion in the late 1800s. She wrote, ‘We have brought up several lambs by hand, there are two larger ones running about the kitchen now. I think pet lambs are best in books, they are great nuisances in real life. Nothing is safe from them, they take all the young buds off the trees, run over the flower beds, and put their noses into everything.’
Old letters and diaries say that the men were responsible for the vegetable garden, as well as growing farm crops and tending stock. However, the ladies did love their flower gardens and regularly swapped cuttings, seeds and bulbs. Mary Constance Hargreaves, at Oneriri, wrote, ‘Will you let me know if I have ever given you a root of the bronze iris or London Smoke. The other bulb is Hunters Horn, I only got last year and if you like it you shall have some roots. The colour is peculiar, a kind of magenta. I admire that ixia you sent Mother, I think it is the most beautiful one I have ever seen.’

Kitchen and pantry were thoroughly cleaned to prepare for the summer chore of bottling fruit and vegetables, and making jam. Without fridges or freezers to keep food from spoiling, pantries had a ‘safe’ on the south side of the home, with a mesh screen to prevent bugs getting in. One Edwardian cookbook says, ‘In hot weather keep fish and meat covered with wire screens or muslin to keep off flies. A large porous flower-pot wrapped in a wet cloth and turned over the butter, or some fresh cabbage leaves, wrapped around it, will keep it firm.’ How lucky we are to have the labour-saving devices, which make our lives so much easier. Clothes-driers are wonderful appliances but nothing is more blissful than going to bed in sheets that have been dried outside in a sunny spring breeze.