Getting ready for the Oregon Trail

A good way to start thinking about vacation is to go to a family reunion and what better thing to do, in addition to visiting with everyone, is to have homemade ice cream. Katie, Aaron, Sarah - my stars!

Then you must take care of the produce from the garden. This is all that grew well enough to freeze or can. The hot and dry weather took it's toll.

This was my mother's recipe which was probably her mother's recipe. It calls this hamburger relish. The Ball Blue Book calls this cucumber relish. My recipe calls for 4 mangoes. The Ball book calls for 4 green peppers. I have no idea why people in northwest Indiana 80 years ago called green peppers, mangoes.

              We have our covered wagon ready to go. Wheels are good and well greased. The horses (we might do better with oxen like everyone else but stuck with horses) have been checked over and run well. They need food but we will wait until we get to Anderson tomorrow morning to feed them well. Their food is 48 cents a gallon less there than here. We hope that we don't have to walk along the wagon but will be able to ride in it the whole way.

         We have all our belongings packed and ready. We heard that we can't have a lot of heavy or fragile things so we had to leave Mom's china and the bedstead in Indiana. We hope we have enough food to last the trip but they say their are a few trading posts where we can get more. I hope so because neither Ed nor I are very good at hunting buffalo or antelope. I have my quilting to do while we go over the prairie and we both have books to read at night around the campfire.