Women generally worked closer to the house. On most farms, houses were a place of work, not merely comfortably decorated homes. The women cooked three large meals a day in the kitchen for a family that could number more than 10, and with resident laborers could number more than 12 to 14 per meal. All the wood for the cookstove came from the farm and had to be split as it was used. Farm wives tended large gardens, raising and preserving most of the family's food. They sewed many of the family's clothes.
