twenty-four hours.

On the crane hung two or three hooks, and on these, over the fire, mother
did most of her cooking. As we had no oven, mother had what we called a
bake kettle; this was a flat, low kettle, with a cast cover, the rim of
which turned up an inch or two, to hold coals. In this kettle, she baked
our bread. The way she did it; she would heat the lid, put her loaf of
bread in the kettle, take the shovel and pull out some coals on the
hearth, set the kettle on them, put the lid on and shovel some coals on
to it. Then she would watch it, turn it round a few times, and the bread
was done, and it came on the table steaming. When we all gathered around
the family board we did the bread good justice. We were favored with
what we called "Michigan appetites." Sometimes when we had finished our
meal there were but few fragments left, of anything except the loaf,
which was four or five inches through, a foot and a half across, and four
and a half feet in circumference.

Later, mother bought her a tin baker, which she placed before the fire to
bake her bread, cake, pies, etc. This helped her very much in getting
along. It was something new, and we thought it quite an invention. Mother
had but one room, and father thought he would build an addition at the
west end of our house, as the chimney was on the east end. He built it
with a shed roof. The lower floor was made of boards, the upper floor of
shakes. These were gotten out long enough to reach from beam to beam and
they were lapped and nailed fast.

This room had one window on the west, and a door on the east, which led
into the front room. In one corner stood a bed surrounded by curtains as
white as snow; this mother called her spare-day bed. Two chests and a few
chairs completed the furniture of this room; it was mother's sitting room