The second son, Adam, is also employed on the road project, as an errand boy for the site foreman. [ . . . ] The two sons hand over their entire earnings to their father.
The little daughter, Magdalene, does filet work. She was 7 years when she started to do regular, ongoing work of this sort. Her normal working hours, from October to March, include the period between morning and afternoon classes, and the time from dusk until 9 o’clock p.m. [ . . . ]
Earlier on, the wife had also been doing needlework for wages: crochet at first and filet later on; however, once the men went to work on the road, she was forced by the increased demands of housework to limit that activity substantially. [ . . . ]
By and large, the family’s food is the common fare of the poorer people of the Feldberg villages. Meat and butter are eaten very rarely; potatoes constitute the staple food. They are only prepared in the simplest ways; dumplings and pancakes are seldom made from them, supposedly, because it takes too much time for the wife. The usual meals are potato soup for lunch and boiled potatoes with coffee or curds for supper. Thus N. gives the following as a typical daily meal list:
Morning: 15.6 grams of coffee mixed with 18 grams chicory, boiled in 3 liters of water, ½ liter of milk, and 1 kilogram of bread.
Second breakfast: ½ kilogram of bread.
Noon: Potato soup, consisting of 4 ½ kilograms of potatoes, c. 60 grams of beef dripping, salt, spices, and 4 liters of water; on average, 375 grams of bread are consumed with the soup. Now and then, barley or peas are added to the soup, often sauerkraut as well, in which case the amount of potatoes is reduced somewhat.
Afternoon snack: Chicory coffee and bread, like morning.
Evening: 4½ kilograms of boiled potatoes, served with coffee, as above, or a pot of curds, and an average of 375 grams of bread.
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