Around the ranch house, daily work centered on preparing meals, tending the garden, preserving food, and managing laundry. Fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs were harvested from the garden for each day’s meals, with different crops grown through the year and flowers planted to attract pollinating insects. Nothing from the garden was wasted: excess produce was dried or canned for later use, and compost heaps turned melon rinds, potato peels, eggshells, and other scraps into fertilizer. Before mechanized washing machines, laundry was a dreaded chore usually reserved for one day each week, often called Black Monday, with ironing done the next day after clothes had dried on the line. To reduce this labor, dark printed clothing was preferred over white so garments could be worn longer before washing. On this ranch in 1900, a ten-year-old’s chores included helping wash, hang, and iron clothes, taking food scraps to the compost pile, collecting chicken manure and spreading it on the garden for fertilizer, picking vegetables for dinner, and weeding, raking, and hoeing the garden.