First they had a barrel or container which they had to keep in a cave or place inaccessible to dogs or wild animals. In this they put all the refuse grease from cooking and butchering. As soon as a quantity of fat collected, the grease was cooked out and strained through a coarse linen cloth until considerable had accumulated. The lye was made by putting wood ashes into a barrel, probably a homemade one, which was set at a slight angle on stones or logs with a hole bored at the side and near the bottom. The recipe in the Pocumtuc Housewife reads
plug up the hole, then pour on enough water to wet the ashes thoroughly, but not enough to drip, and let stand for several days. Then pour on boiling water, unplug, and let drip into a pail or tub. If the lye is not strong enough, empty the wet ashes, fill the barrel with a fresh supply and proceed as before. The great Difficulty in making Soap is the want of Judgement of the Strength of the Lye. If your Lye will bear up an Egg or a Potato so you can see a piece of the Surface as big as a Ninepence it is just strong enough. If the grease had been kept rather too long, purify it by boiling in water in which a little salt has been added. When allowed to cool the pure fat will rise in a cake which must be allowed to dry before using. If the grease has become at all rancid then put the grease in a boiler or large kettle with three times its weight of water with a tablespoon of potash made from wood ashes. Stir, boil and strain through a cloth. It will take about six bushels of ashes and twenty four pounds of grease to make a barrel of soap. On soap day morning get breakfast out of the way early and plan an easy dinner. Swing the six pail kettle on the crane for the soap and a smaller one for the grease which should be put on to heat with some strong lye. As it dissolves dip it off into the big pot and add more lye and water. Boil and stir until it becomes thick and ropy. Too much lye will make it thin and the soap will eat your hands and clothes. Water will make it jelly but don't use too much or it will not keep. If it does not ‘come’ take out a little in a dish and try first water and then lye until it does thicken. Then add to the big pot whatever seems needed and boil again. When it comes, empty the big kettle and start again. Note: Making soap in the new of the moon may make no difference in its coming, but it certainly does no harm.
The next time the reader picks up a beautifully tinted, sweetly fragrant bar of hard milled toilet soap, he might hold it in his hand a second and think how it might have delighted some pioneer wife who had no time or means with which to be fastidious.
Lye from wood ashes was also used in a weak form for bleaching linen cloth. Wood ashes were used for a scouring powder and for washes or insecticides, for garden plants or flowers, but not for tomatoes which pioneers raised for ornamental effect only, never for eating as they were believed poisonous.
The spring and summer brought relief from living in such small and restricted cabins. Cooking could then be done outside the home and huge kettles of water could be heated over an open fire and the family wash done at least once a month. During the winter it was common practice to do the laundry only once in about three months; woolens would shrink, and there was no room for a lot of wet clothes in the cabin; neither could frozen clothes be brought inside in bitter cold
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