This year I got to come about as close as I currently can to feeling all the seasonal feels. We spent three weekends at Ticonderoga this year, in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. We would have rounded out the winter with another weekend this coming weekend, if it weren't for coming down with strep throat this week. Each of those weekends we worked on similar interpretation, but with a varying climate and happenings of history going on. For this weekend, I was working through Christmas season thoughts on what they would have had during the Christmas of 1776. How I could reproduce the creature comforts for officers to eat while having a limited cooking set up, in the frontier of New York state. I was enjoying other historic sites setting up their own Christmas programs and the photos that they were sharing. I may not have been able to produce all the fancy things the finer house museums would have had, but I think I would have been able to make a fine Christmas out of not much. Items like a Christmas stolen and a fine fruit pudding would have made use of dried fruits and could be made in a bake kettle or a soup kettle over the fire. Pies of custard, pork (tortiere), or mince could also be made along a similar fashion. My planned menu was all of items that I could have made in the few days prior to Christmas day, and kept with very little problem.
I was also thinking of our clothing, what we would wear, what we would need. What would we look like, two servants to the officers, within their space, but not of it. Pierre was going to wear his black wool suit, nice enough to serve in; black, and would hide any dirt from cooking. I have a serviceable blue wool gown under construction; again, nice enough to serve in, dark enough to disguise any dirt.
Through this year, I have been producing all the clothing items that we would need to live our lives as eighteenth-century people. There's very little left now that I think we would need. The final items are things I will need to buy to round out our impressions of working class people. Shoes are next on the list, as I really miss being on heels when we've been in the eighteenth-century, my work shoes are flats and quite honestly, fugly. I live in heels in my modern life. Women in the era lived in high heels too. The extant women's shoes are predominantly heeled, not flats.
The other items are for serving, so platters, another big cooking kettle, and I'm still on the hunt for a couple of table spoons.
Someday, I might get to actually run a year of interpretation programming somewhere, or maybe multiple years... Then I can truly get my nerd on and study the wear patterns of our clothing more fully, and get further into character than I have ever had the chance to before.
Until then, I will live vicariously through social media and photographs, and maybe make a syllabub and some custard tarts for Pierre and I to indulge in this weekend, while we sit home and recover from the dreaded pox of the throat.
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| waiting to serve, Saturday July 21st 2018, Ticonderoga |
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