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A lovely day for chores photo by Bob Pennell Hali Frye, a sixth-grader at Jacksonville Elementary School, makes butter the hard way, with a hand churn and a bottle of milk. Kids find early-day housework fun -- but hard By Vicki Guarino of the Mail Tribune JACKSONVILLE -- Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining and a warm breeze rustled fallen leaves. What a great day for housework. Dozens of Rogue Valley youngsters happily wiled away the hours doing chores in a hands-on history program sponsored by the Southern Oregon Historical Society. Using museum exhibits and artifacts, historical society staff set up turn-of-the-century housekeeping and put young visitors to work. In the Children's Museum, visitors made butter, stitched quilts and wove mats. Upstairs in the main museum, they sloshed clothes through tubs sudsy with Fels-Naptha, squeezed them through the wringer and hung them to dry. The free, "Everyday Chores" program was intended to let children feel, not just see, what family life was like at the beginning of the century. Jacksonville sixth-grader Hali Frye's arms went numb with fatigue as she worked up a batch of butter. "It's going to take about a hour," Hali predicted as she switched hands on the daisy churn crank. Nearby were samples of butter from an earlier churn. "We've doing buttermilk too, for the brave ones," said SOHS youth programs coordinator Sabrina Rode. "I tried the buttermilk," said first-grader Morgan Hastings, Central Point. "It was yucky." In a bygone era, youngsters learned, buttermilk might have been a treat earned after the labor of making butter. There was a time, Rode told visitors, when keeping a household going was a laborious cycle of tasks that demanded the efforts of children as well as their parents. Kids not only made the family's butter, Rode said, but commonly were responsible for milking the cow, too. "Long ago, kids had great responsibility," Rode told youngsters lining up to give Hali a break at the churn. Rode designed the program after a leading homemaker's guide of the day. "American Woman's Home," by Harriet Beecher Stowe and sister Catherine, set out day to day what must be done around the house. The book set the standard for accomplished housewives, Rode said. Monday was wash day; Tuesday clothes dried and were ironed; Wednesday was the day for mending and other sewing chores. At a long table in the Children's Museum, Medford third-grader Petra Noble fumbled with a needle and thread, just beginning the tedious process of putting together a quilt. She said she made a pillow by hand once, but couldn't imagine sewing up an entire quilt. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA