Categories: Family, Mikhail Hichanski

What were the household duties of men and women?

So when spring co… came a man knew where, when and what should be seeded. It was necessary to throw the cow dung out of the shed, they worked together. Then they put the cow dung on … on the cart. He took it to the field, put in lots, and then a wife was going behind and distributes it. Later on he tackles up a horse, turned up the soil, women went behind and put in potatoes, and dag them into. So for example, rye is growing, so to have it settled … pollinated they carried such a rope above a strip of land and drag it on the ears of rye to make them touch each other and pollinate. And when the grain was matured women took sickles in their hands and cropped by hand; men helped them to make sheaves. When all it ripened, they took it home, put them in the barn and later … there was the only grain-separator in the village, one and only. It belonged to such a man, Grytskevich Ivan, the people asked him in turns, he came, put this grain-separator in the yard, it had a bringing, there were two or four horses moving this bringing and thrashing , the people put ears into it, then picked up grain, then he moved to another house. So all the village lived that way, thrashed that way. There was a huge washing house behind the cemetery. In this washing house, when flax had already grown they rubbed flax with a «rasa». After that they gathered it carefully, put sheaves, and then dried them in the washing house, later on they came out to dry flax, brushed it with a «myalitsa», then they beat it with such special small boards, and further my mother spanned for people all winter because the landowners didn’t have job for her. She spanned for people and made clews. They paid to her for that, somebody could give her two bowls of rye, barley, someone… She made flour with a millstone, fried pancakes, some kind of plat cakes. This way we were surviving.