Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Sep 26, 2008, at 9:21 AM, <eureka AT hctc.net> <eureka AT hctc.net> wrote:

> We were talking last night about life without
> electricity, and both decided we could make do, if we had
> to, except for one thing: hauling water up from our
> pioneer well would do us in.

My brother, Don and I recently visited the log cabin built for Starker  
Leopold, son of Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac and  
considered by many the father of natural resources conservation. The  
cabin is in Caney Mountain Refuge, about six miles from Heartwood. The  
cabin site is magnificent, atop huge rock formations and looking out  
over heavy woods and creek bottom. Starker was hired to be the first  
manager of the refuge, which is nearly eight thousand acres and where  
most notably the Missouri deer and turkey population was built up from  
very few animals in the forties.

We discovered the negative of living in such an inspiring site. A  
spring box was poured of concrete to collect water from a hillside  
seepage. To get to the spring box there is a long set of stone steps  
down from the cabin. Carrying water up for drinking and cooking would  
mean carrying buckets up those seventy or eighty steep steps, an  
elevation I would guesstimate about seventy feet.

My first impression was that this glorious place would be a total  
delight in which to live. Then the daily reality sunk in.

Nostalgia is nice. Electricity is better.

Who on this list would happily wash clothes by hand?