The second thing I learned was that there wasn't one uniform set of details of colonial life that was true for every colonist (or, for that matter, agreed upon by every historian and researcher). What it was like to live in colonial America varied greatly according to a person's geographical location, social class, and religious, ethnic, and racial background. Also many of the activities Mrs. Brown loves weren't strictly colonial; some began as early as the late sixteenth century, and some continued into the nineteenth century, especially on the frontier.

Churning butter was a simple but tiring process. First the creamy portion which rose to the top of a jug of milk was skimmed off and put into a closed wooden container called a churn. Then a dasher - which is a long wooden handle with a paddle blade at the bottom - had to be plunged up and down through a hole in the lid of the churn. Up and down, up and down, up and down until finally the cream turned into butter. This job took at least half an hour of hard work and sometimes as long as two hours.

As you can imagine, this job could be pretty tiring (as Ann discovers in the poem), so I was happy to learn that Benjamin Franklin invented a butter churn that fitted onto his wife's rocking chair so she could churn butter by rocking.

I wrote this poem as a chant poem, repeating the words up and down over and over to try to create in the poem the same kind of repetition that butter churning itself requires, and to show why Ann was feeling the way she was by the end of the poem.

Most colonists couldn't afford to buy candles - even if they lived in a town where candles would have been available for sale. So they learned to make their own candles by spinning plant fiber, usually hemp, into wicks and then dipping the wicks into a melted substance which would harden as it cooled. In a day's work, an experienced homemaker could make 150-200 candles.

The hard fat of cows or sheep, known as tallow, was often used for candles, as was the fat of such wild animals as deer, moose, or bear. (The fat of hogs was usually used for making soap rather than candles because it burned with a thick black smoke that smelled terrible.)

Candles could also be made from the bee's wax found in honeycombs or - mostly in the New England colonies - from the fat that floated to the top of the kettle when the berries of the bayberry bush were boiled. Bayberry candles were long-burning and gave off a pleasant spicy scent, but it took a whole bushel of berries to make one pair of candles.

Other sources of light in colonial America included:

betty lamps, which were special metal containers in which household grease could be burned;

rush lights, made from certain plants called rushes, which were soaked in household grease and burned in an iron holder;

and pine knots (collected from the pitch pine tree) which had to be burned in a corner of the fireplace because they dripped sticky pitch and gave off smoke.

Candles were the best source of light, however, since they were the least smelly and smoky. But because candles were hard to make (and even hard to store since sunlight could damage them and mice liked to eat them), they were generally used as little as possible. In some households, they were saved for company. Most of the time, the colonists went to bed when the sun set and got up when it rose so that their work could be done in daylight.

To learn more about dipping candles and other household activities of colonial women, you might want to read:

The Homemakers by Leonard Everett Fisher

Many of the toys, games, and amusements of colonial kids are still amusing kids today. If you've ever blown soap bubbles, played leapfrog, or jumped rope, you've entertained yourself the same way a boy or girl in early America did. Kids in colonial times carved with jack-knives, spun wooden tops, blew whistles, and played with dolls (often made of cornhusks or rags). They enjoyed kite-flying, snowball fights, fishing, swimming, riding, ice skating, rocking horses, alphabet blocks, marbles, and the jack-in-the-box. Sound familiar?

Hobbyhorses date back as far as the fourteenth century, and European colonists brought the idea for rocking horses with them to this continent. But what appealed to me most about this particular wooden horse was that it was improvised and handmade like so many other colonial toys. Its body was a section of log, its head was a branch, its legs were broomsticks, and its saddle was an undyed sheep's fleece. I was impressed by its age and by the love with which someone must have taken the time to make it for some colonial child.

In colonial times, writing was done with quill pens, which were made from the stiff horny feathers of geese or turkeys, sharpened to a point. Because these were flight feathers, they were only pulled from a goose once (in contrast to the soft downy feathers on the goose's breast, which were collected every year and used to stuff pillows and quilts). The job of collecting feathers was usually assigned to kids, and since the goose didn't like this process much, a stocking was often pulled over the goose's head so it couldn't bite.

The ink into which these pens were dipped for writing was often homemade. Inks were made from berry juice mixed with vinegar and salt, from chimney soot mixed with honey and egg yolk, and from walnut shells or swamp maple bark steeped in boiling water. Fine sand or ground-up cuttlebone (known by the colonists as "pounce") was sprinkled on the paper to dry the ink faster or to soak up any blots.

Thomas Jefferson used a quill pen to write the Declaration of Independence, working by candlelight on a green felt lap desk. He worked on the writing for two weeks and then made eighty-six further changes to it after he'd shown it to the members of the Continental Congress. Because the signers of the Declaration were subject to arrest as traitors against Britain, their names were kept secret for a time. They signed the document, however, proudly. Stephen Hopkins, a signer who suffered from Parkinson's disease, was reported to have said that his hand might waver but his heart was firm. And John Hancock claimed to have written his signature large enough so King George would be able to read it without his glasses.

To learn more about the Declaration of Independence, you might want to read the following books:

Give Me Liberty! by Russell Freedman
The Declaration of Independence by Hal Marcovitz
Independence Hall by Hal Marcovitz
The Declaration of Independence by Lora Polack Oberle
The Declaration of Independence by Jennifer Viegas

A blacksmith could tell how hot his fire was by the color of the iron, which could be heated until it turned red, orange, yellow, or white. He handled the iron with tongs and plunged it into a bucket of water to cool it when it got too hot. If he wanted to make the fire itself cooler, he used a bundle of twigs (called a washer), which he dipped in water and used to flick drops onto the coals.

If he wanted to make the fire hotter, he used a bellows to blast air through a hole in the back of the forge. The bellows, which was made of leather and wood, was six feet long and as big around on one end as a bass drum. The other end tapered to a narrow nozzle. The blacksmith, or his helper, operated the bellows by pushing (or sometimes pulling) on a long wooden handle, which squeezed the bellows together and forced the air inside it out through the nozzle directly into the forge. This could raise the temperature of the fire as high as 3000 degrees.

Becoming a blacksmith required training, and an apprentice worked for as long as six years without any pay while he was learning his trade. Once he was trained, he became one of the most important members of a colonial community because he could use his skill to make and repair so many different useful items: farming tools like hoes, plows, rakes, axes, scythes, and chains; kitchen utensils like forks, spoons, pots, pans, and trivets; and many other necessary objects: hooks, nails, gun parts, door hinges, locks, carriage fittings, candleholders, lanterns, shoe scrapers, horseshoes, and staves to hold barrels together.

To learn more about blacksmiths, you might want to read:

The Blacksmith by Bobbie Kalman
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Blacksmith by Kathy Wilmore

The colonists learned about corn from the Native Americans, who grew a dozen or more different kinds, ranging from the sweet corn still eaten today as corn on the cob to popcorn to a soft corn used for making flour. Native corn came in many colors - black, red, blue, pink, and brown, as well as white and yellow - and the kernels were many sizes, from as small as a grain of rice to as large as a lima bean.

As the poem describes, the corn was planted in large mounds. The number of kernels in a mound varied from nation to nation and often had symbolic meaning. Once the corn sprouted, beans were planted around it so they could climb up the cornstalks, and squash or pumpkin was planted between the mounds, which kept down weeds and held moisture in the soil.

In addition to the dozens of ways corn could be cooked - in soups, stews, cereals, baked goods, puddings, etc. - corn kernels were also sometimes used as money, and dolls were often fashioned out of the corn husks. My favorite corn item is the "corn dodger," which was given its name because it was baked until it was so hard that if someone threw one at you, you'd better dodge!

To learn more about corn planting and other lifeways of Native nations of the eastern woodlands, you might want to read:

A Coloring Book of the First Americans by Wm. Sauts Netamuxwe Bock
An Algonquian Year by Michael McCurdy
Indian Handcrafts by C. Keith Wilbur

Shearing a sheep was hard work. A sheep could weigh anywhere from 150 pounds up to as much as 300 pounds. The colonist who was shearing the sheep had to wrestle the sheep to the ground and then hold it still while he cut off the fleece with a hand shearer, a simple tool that resembled a modern grass clipper.

The fleece needed to be cut close to the skin so the fibers would be long for spinning into wool, and the shearer had to work downward and outward so he could see where he was cutting next. He had to be careful to keep the sheep's skin stretched smooth so he didn't cut the sheep - though if he accidentally did, a sheep's wool contains lanolin, which helps to heal knicks.

A lamb had to be a year old before it was sheared for the first time. Lamb's wool was highly prized because it was so soft.

If you're interested in sheep shearing, you might enjoy reading:

A Symphony for the Sheep by C.M. Millen
Spring Fleece: a Day of Sheep Shearing by Catherine Paladino

After a sheared fleece (see previous poem) was cleaned and dried, the wool was brushed with a wool-card, which was made of wire teeth fastened to a small piece of board. This process, called carding, brushed the wool fibers parallel so they were ready to be spun into yarn. Kids started carding at the age of four or five.

The carded wool was drawn and twisted into yarn by the spinning motion of the spindle part of a spinning wheel. A walking wheel, the kind described in the poem, got its name because the woman using it would step back, pulling the carded wool away as it twisted into yarn, and then step forward, releasing the yarn and letting it wind around the spindle. In a day of spinning, her back and forth steps might equal a walk of twenty miles. She could produce, by a day's work, enough thread to weave one yard of fabric.

As the yarn was spun, it wound around a bobbin spool on the spindle (a corncob was sometimes used as a bobbin). When the bobbin was full, the yarn had to be wound into measured portions called hanks or skeins, the right length for weaving cloth on a loom. The yarn could be wound by hand onto a hand-reel called a niddy-noddy. Or it could be wound onto a mechanical device called a clock reel, which counted out forty windings and then snapped back. According to folklore, this counter was called a weasel and is the origin of the Pop Goes the Weasel song.

Weavers then wove the yarn or thread into finished cloth. Five children aged thirteen and under could spin and weave enough material to keep thirty people clothed.

If you're interested in spinning, you might enjoy reading:

Red Berry Wool by Robyn Harbert Eversole
The Basket Maker and the Spinner by Beatrice Siegel

In colonial times, for the protection of the community, all able-bodied men from the ages of sixteen to sixty were expected to serve in their local militia. According to one colonial re-enactor, the only real requirement for one of these soldiers was that he had to have a top tooth and a bottom tooth directly opposite each other because he had to bite the tip off his cartridges before he could fire his gun. But in fact, many members of the militia didn't even have guns, but used whatever weapons they could find (some men carried only rakes or scythes). They had no uniforms either, and each group created its own flag. But they did practice drilling together, on a schedule which varied from one community to another. In an actual battle, the officer in command carried a spontoon, a pointed spear with a six-inch blade, which he raised in the air so his men could locate him on the battlefield.

If you're interested in the colonial militia, you might enjoy reading:

A Day in the Life of a Colonial Soldier by J.L. Branse

One of the plants used by Native Americans to make cordage for fishing lines, nets, carrying-girdles, and bags was Indian hemp, also known as dogbane. The ropes made from this plant - using only a hammer stone as a tool - were stronger and kept longer in water than ropes made from the cultivated hemp plant. For decoration, the threads and strings could be dyed red, yellow, black, etc. using natural dyes from such sources as nutshells, berries, or plant roots. To make one foot of rope by hand takes about an hour.

If you want to learn more about making rope and thread by hand, you might enjoy reading:

The Indians of New Jersey by M.R. Harrington (which is also a very good story!)
Indian Handcrafts by C. Keith Wilbur

The dream catcher described in this poem was crafted by a Lenape artisan, who explained to me how dream catchers work. The spirit bead in the middle of the net of sinew attracts bad dreams, which are then caught and held in the net until the morning sun burns them up. But the Creator has taught good dreams to slide down the dream catcher's feathers so they can reach the sleeper.

If you like dream catchers, you might want to check out the following:

Grandmother's Dreamcatcher by Becky Ray McCain
Dream Catcher Craft Kit by Suzanne Lord

In colonial days, the kitchen fireplace - which was usually tall enough to stand up in and could take up a whole wall - provided not only a cooking area, but also heat and light for the house. So the kitchen was actually the main room of a house, used not only for cooking and eating but for taking baths and doing all kinds of indoor work from spinning thread to repairing a broken tool.

Because cooking in the colonial kitchen was done over an open fire, cooking accidents were a leading cause of injury and death, and most kitchen floors were made of earth or brick because a wooden floor could too easily catch fire. Pots and pans, like the spider mentioned in the poem, had long handles so the cook didn't have to get too close to the flames. And the crane, a hinged iron rod attached to the fireplace, enabled her to swing the heavy iron kettle away from the fire before lifting it.

Pots and pans also had legs so that coals could be heaped under them since the cooking temperature could only be regulated by adding or removing coals or by moving a pot closer to or farther away from the fire (for this reason, pots could be hung from the crane on hooks of varying lengths). Meat was roasted on a metal rod called a spit, which was suspended across the front of the fireplace between two tall andirons called fire dogs. It was children's work to turn the spit so that the meat cooked evenly on all sides.

It was also the kids' job to release the mice caught in the kitchen's wooden shoebox-shaped mousetraps. Mice were common in colonial kitchens - as were insects. Often the food was black with flies, and molasses or sugar water in a jar was used to attract and collect bugs. One re-enactor mentioned that sometimes there was a cardinal or a crow in a cage since it was considered good luck to have a bird in the kitchen.

The cat James imagines on the hearth, however, would probably not have been too likely to have come indoors in colonial times. While many farms would have had cats outdoors to catch mice and rats, most housewives would probably not have welcomed a cat into the already crowded and busy space around their fireplaces.

If you're interested in kitchens or other rooms in colonial houses, you might want to read:

Home Life in Colonial America by Charlie Samuel

A colonial brick oven was generally built into one side of the big fireplace (see above), with an opening into the chimney to release smoke. It was kept shut with a heavy iron door. About once a week, a fire was built inside it, made of special dry wood called oven wood. This fire was kept burning for two to four hours until the bricks were hot.

The baker gauged the temperature of the oven by holding her arm at the opening; you could always tell a baker because she was missing hair on her arm (it had been singed off by the heat). When the oven was hot enough, the coals and ashes were brushed out, and the oven was filled with pies, bread, and other baked goods like custards. The oven was as big inside as a double bed, and thirty or forty small loaves of bread could be baked at once.

After the food was baked, it was removed from the oven with a long-handled wooden spatula called a peel or slice. Modern pizza bakers use a similar tool for removing pizzas from their large ovens.

I wrote this poem because I loved the wonderful colonial names for various foods. Many of these names you'll find in the poem (and, of course, in the glossary at the end of the book as well). But I also enjoyed learning the origins of some of these names. The kind of cornbread known as hoecake, for instance, got its name because it was cooked out in a field on the blade of a hoe propped over an open fire. Ashcake (wrapped in cabbage leaves to keep it clean) was cooked in hot ashes. Shoo-fly pie, with its gooey layer of molasses, attracted too many flies. A corn dodger was baked in the oven until it was so hard a person had better dodge if one was thrown at him. And hush puppies, balls of corn pone which were fried with fish, got their name because nearby dogs always whined for a bite.

Chomp, the food James chooses to eat, is a dish made of raw vegetables chopped fine; the dressing has a strong flavor of thyme and is so sweet-and-sour tangy it almost burns the tongue. This recipe came from an 18th century Welsh cookbook which a re-enactor found in an attic. At the historical festival where chomp was served, tomatoes were included as one of the vegetables, but in colonial times a person would have been unlikely to eat either a tomato or a potato because both were thought to be poisonous.

Potatoes and tomatoes are not the only foods that were unfamiliar to the newcomers from Europe. Many other foods you probably enjoy eating today were introduced to the colonists by the Native people of the Americas. Those foods include turkey, corn, popcorn, avocados, several varieties of beans, pumpkins, peanuts, pineapples, cranberries, chocolate, vanilla, green and red peppers, and sweet potatoes.

Unlike the colonial activities visited by Mrs. Brown and her class, which are re-enactments of the past, the powwow is part of a living tradition, which Native Americans generously share with the non-Native people who attend powwows and festivals. The powwow described in this poem - held at the Colonial Plantation in Ridley State Park, Pennsylvania - was intertribal and included several dances in which the audience was invited to participate. Before the powwow began, the dancing circle was purified with the smoke of sweetgrass, cedar, tobacco, and sage, sacred herbs which represent the four directions.

While I enjoyed all the activities in which I participated while I was researching A Revolutionary Field Trip, I found the powwow so beautiful and meaningful that I've been attending powwows regularly ever since and am currently working on a novel that is set in southeastern Pennsylvania's powwow circuit.

In colonial times, wild animals of all kinds existed in abundance. Flocks of birds were sometimes so large that their passage overhead darkened the sky. Bears roamed even near cities - in 1725, citizens of Boston killed twenty bears within two miles of the city limits. A single animal hunt in 1760 - within a fifteen-mile radius in Snyder County, Pennsylvania - yielded over 400 animals, including wolves, bears, foxes, mountain cats, and wolverines.

It didn't take the colonists long, however, to reduce this abundance, which had existed for thousands of years before the Europeans' arrival. In fact, the attitude toward animals was one of many stark contrasts between European settlers and Native Americans. Wolves, for example, were so feared and hated by the colonists that some communities paid a bounty to any hunter who turned in a wolf's head. The Lenni Lenape, on the other hand, honored the wolf as a gentle teacher and considered the wolf pack, where every adult member plays a role in educating the young, to be the first school. And a modern-day Lenape was quick to point out to me that there's not a single instance on record of a person being killed by wolves in the United States.

True to the spirit of this poem's attitude toward history ("I'm ready to go back again!"), I did indeed return over and over again to my favorite historical site, the home of the Lenni Lenape Historical Society, where I worked as a volunteer for several years, learning more about the history and culture of the Lenape.