Washing clothes

I got away from the blog this month. the June heat comes and we run off to Yearly Meeting and then back and had a wonderful house concert with Patricia Morrison. So now I can get back into the routine.
Dad is off surveying and washes clothes by hand which reminds me of washing clothes. When Tim, Jenny and I lived in Hillsboro and off grid and newly married trying to figure everything out, somehow clothes washing became a big deal. Jenny and I came with our washing machine, I had felt proud do buy it when she was almost 1, I figured that the machine cost as much as a diaper service. We bought diapers and the washing machine. When we got married the machine was about 7 years old and still good. Being off grid we had no electricity to run it, it sat on our front porch for a few weeks, then one day at the General Store Cafe Ben and Doreen mentioned they were in need of a washing machine. They were the new owners of the cafe and new to town. In a flash Tim had made a deal to trade our washing machine for meals at the cafe. I was in a bit of shock at the speed of the deal, but we had not had any other bright ideas of what to do with it. I think it took us about three months to use up the credit we had gotten from the machine.
Tim had a washing machine which ran on gasoline, it was a challenge to me. It started the way a lawn mower does by pulling a cord, this worked well for Tim (who is 6 ft tall) but for me it seemed to need to be pulled about two inches beyond my 5ft ability to pull it. It was also noisy and smelly. So I bought a James washer. This is a hand washer, a small tub with a side handle you move back and forth. I still miss this machine, we have given away both of these since moving into Las Cruces and bought another electric - low use machine. The handwasher worked well for me and the kids in the neighborhood and those close to 5ft tall, others had to bend over to use it. The best washing was when we had enough rainwater in the barrel to wash the clothes in the fresh rain water.
A long story about washing clothes.