How much water will need to be hauled to do laundry? What is more important on the farm, strength or endurance? How many gallons of water are used per day? What is silver skin? Find out on this episode.
You can find full episode notes and links to find more information on each topic at my website: https://alleyhart.com/
How much water will need to be hauled to do laundry? What is more important on the farm, strength or endurance? How many gallons of water are used per day? What is silver skin? Find out on this episode.
You can find full episode notes and links to find more information on each topic at my website: https://alleyhart.com/
How much water will need to be hauled to do laundry? What is more important on the farm, strength or endurance? How many gallons of water are used per day? What is silver skin? Find out on this episode. Welcome to Writing Rural with Alley, a fiction writer's inspiration station for rural and life and life styles from historical to post-apocalyptic, helping you bring your rural stories to life. I'm Alley and this is episode number 54, Five unexpected workouts. Part one. Stick around at the end to find out all the ways things could possibly go wrong. Now, let's get into this. If you're listening to this in real time, it's New Year's Day of 2024. Happy New Year's! With all the New Year's resolutions, the most common being losing weight, there seems to be no better topic than workouts. Today, we will cover five unexpected workouts in rural life. Number one, fetching water. Fetching water, or as we call it here, hauling water, is the act of moving water from the well, streams, cistering, or other water source to wherever the water is needed. This could be for drinking, cooking, watering livestock, watering the garden, washing laundry, and many more. This sounds deceptively easy, but it is more work than most people realize. You see the average gallon of water, which is 3.8 liters, weighs 8.3 pounds, which is 3.8 kg. Typically, well buckets hold two gallons, making it 16.68 pounds or 7.6 kg per bucket. The average American household uses between 80 and 100 gallons per day. Using the low end means that it's just shy of being five buckets of water used in the home per day. Now, the average well is about 100 feet from the house and between 100 to 800 feet deep. That would be 30.48 to 243.84 meters deep. If we take half, that makes it roughly 450 feet or 137.16 meters. Imagine having to pull 16.68 pounds or 7.6 kilograms straight up the 450 feet or the 137.16 meters. Then walk the extra 100 feet or 30.48 meters into the house and then repeat that five times. Tiring, right? But we're not done yet. There's also livestock to think about. Most farmers use a five-gallon bucket to water them, and will pour the water into two buckets to carry the water to the troughs. A five-gallon bucket holds roughly 41.7 pounds or 19 kilograms of water. Let's say that your character has 40 head of cattle. That's pretty common in my part of the world to get meat and milk from and to sell the calves. Cows will need several pastures to graze so they can be rotated around to let the grass grow back after they ate it, and they can save money on spring, summer, and fall feed. Cows will drink between 9 to 12 gallons of water per day, and lactating cows will drink between 30 to 40 gallons per day. With a ratio of one bull for every 100 cows, that would mean that there would be 39 females and one male, called a bull. Cows normally have one calf per year. That means that at the very low end, the herd will need 1,179 gallons of water per day, and at the high end, they will need 18, 720 gallons of water per day. Now, a smart farmer will have a pond or a stream on the far pastures or even all of his pastures, since most troughs only hold 150 gallons of water each. But the ones closest to the home do not always have a pond or stream, although some do. Let's say that your character had to water them in a trough. That means that on the low end, it will take 72 five-gallon buckets to refill the trough. And at the high end, it will take 320 five-gallon buckets to refill the trough. That would take a large chunk of time and equals one serious workout. An interesting story to go with this. When I was younger and pregnant with my second, our well was not deep enough to support our livestock at the time. During the summer months, we would have to fill the back of the truck with 55 gallon rain barrels and fill them in the river. One day, a young bodybuilder who could lift over 1,000 pounds or 453.592 kilograms came to help because I was pregnant and he was trying to be kind. He barely lasted five minutes doing a bucket Brigade where one person hands the bucket into the next person in line and then back. He was strong, but he had never built an endurance. That was the day he learned the difference between the two types of workouts. Number two, washing laundry by hand. I did a whole episode on washing laundry by hand and the many ways it can be done. But let's go with a modern off-the-grid type because I have actually done that one myself. There are two ways that this can be done. One is with a bathtub and one is with a number five, wash tub.
The basic concept is the same:one wash cycle, scrubbing if needed, and two rinse cycles. For the number five, wash tub, it holds only a small amount of clothing at a time: four pairs of adult pants or eight adult shirts or a dozen socks and some underwear. Since the loads are small, the wash and the rinse time are small at about 15 minutes each. Using a moderate agitator that basically looks like a giant stiff plunger, you have to pump it up and down on the clothing for the whole time. Now that sounds easy, but about 5 to 10 minutes in, your arms will be tired. Then you'll have to wring the clothing out. This takes some grip strength. That is hard when you're wringing out towels and is horrible when you're wringing out denim jeans. But you're not done yet. You will have two rinse cycles. That makes roughly an hour for one load, and if you have a large family like me, you'll be doing this for hours. I have also done this in a five-gallon bucket and even plastic totes that are used for storing things. Remember the part about water? Yep, that applies here too. A number five wash tub holds roughly 5.5 gallons of water, but since there is clothing to take up some of the space, five gallons will do just fine. More work if you have to heat it up. As for a bathtub, the standard tub holds 80 gallons of water. It takes much larger loads and many modern off the grid homes still have runny water. I always liked the control of the temperature of that kind of wash. However, your character will likely lose runny water in an apocalypse. While the bathtub is nice, the wash and the rinse times will be longer because there are more clothes, so about 30 minutes each. To top that off, it can take 10 minutes to wring out that much laundry and my hands were always exhausted afterward. That means that this can take two hours. However, there will be less loads.
Number three:millstone. Millstones are two stones that are used to crush and grind up food. Most commonly, it is used on wheat, but it can be used for corn, barley, and more. Many millstones in history were used by villagers, and these could weigh hundreds of pounds. However, the most common ones were for single use, sometimes called hand grinding mills. These are normally one large stone of about 30 to 45 inches or 762 to 1,143 millimeters wide in a circle or square that was flat or slightly dipped in. Think of that as roughly the size of a tire. The second stone was between the size of a basketball and that of a softball with at least one rounded side was used. These can weigh between 12 pounds or 5.44 kg and 45 pounds or 20.41 kg. The idea is to put the wheat or whatever they're grinding onto the bigger stone and use the smaller one to crush and grind with. The smaller stone is a semicircle shape, sometimes called a half disk. This could take hours moving the smaller but still heavy rock around and wiggling it back and forth to grind with. Even the lighter stone will grow tiring after a few hours, making this another type of workout. Number four, meat grinder. A meat grinder is what cut up pieces of meat are placed into and then your character will turn the hand crank to make it work. The meat is twisted and cut up inside of the grinder and out comes ground meat. This is less a test of strength as a three year old can turn the meat grinder, but it is about endurance. I've done this and it can take a few hours to grind up the meat for a deer that's roughly 50 pounds or 22.67 kg per deer. However, earlier grinders took much more time. I know because my first one was a hand grinder from the 1800s. Yes, it had the data it was manufactured, printed on it. It took me about 12 hours to grind up 25 pounds or 11.33 kg of meat. This is because it decided it was not going to take the silver skin going through it. Silver skin is the connective tissue found in the muscle of animals, and it is almost impossible to get the connective tissues off the meat. Number five, churning butter. Churning butter is another thing that's not about strength but endurance. We have all seen the old wooden buckets with a stick that looks like a weird club used to churn the butter in the movies or even cartoons. It takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes of churning the butter at roughly 120 times per minute. That's like two times per second. I mean, it's doable, but keeping up that pace is what is exhausting. Most people slow down, and that means that they're going to be doing this longer. Although there are other ways to make butter that are not as much of a workout.
Fun fact:according to the United Nations, as of 2023, one in four people globally do not have access to running water. Now, if everyone's favorite part, what could possibly go wrong? Well, let me tell ya! Before we get into the best part, if you enjoy this podcast, I hope that you will take a minute to follow, rate, and review on your favorite podcasting platform. And if you are listening on YouTube, subscribe and hit that like button. Don't forget to share with a friend. Now, for everyone's favorite part! Likely to go wrong: your character spends two hours doing laundry by hand in the bathtub. The next day, their arms are sore from all the work.
Also likely to go wrong:your character is using a meat grinder and has to switch arms every 10 to 15 minutes because their arms wear out from the work. your character is pulling the 16 pounds of water in the well bucket up and they have to take turns with someone else because doing this repeatedly is exhausting. your character takes turns with someone else while grinding meat because their arms are sore from turning the grinder for long periods of time.
Possible to go wrong:your character is turning better and has to stop to rest their arms several times as they are not used to making the same movements over and over again for 20 or more minutes at a time.
Also possible to go wrong:your character has to use their body weight to move a heavy millstone back and forth to grind the wheat because they do not have the strength to do it otherwise. your character is carrying a five-gallon bucket of water to water the animals and they find it hard to hold away from their legs. This causes the buckets to be repeatedly bumped into their legs, splashing water on themselves. This could cause them to become very cold in the winter.
Unlikely to go wrong:your character is a strong person but has never had to use endurance in a way that farm work does. They find that people much weaker than themselves can do work better than them because they have built up their endurance.
Also unlikely to go wrong:your character is pulling the well bucket up 100 foot deep well and loses their grip on the rope causing the bucket to fall back into the water and they have to start pulling it up all over again. Improbable, but still technically in the realm of possibilities: your character has a deep 800 foot well and they struggle to pull the 16 pounds of water up repeatedly so that they will have enough water for the day. Also improbable, but still technically in the realm of possibilities: your character struggles to lift a millstone and drops it on their fingers, breaking them. Thanks for listening! You can find the show notes and helpful to learn more on my website, alleyhart. Com. That's A-L-L-E-Y-H-A-R-T. Com. Subscribe and follow for more episodes. Connect by dropping me a comment on my YouTube videos. A new episode comes out every Monday. Until then, happy wordsmithing.