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Saturday, July 15, 2006

The Good Ole Days

Most women couldn't be paid enough to make biscuits from scratch with kitchen supplies from the 1860s.
But for Laura Daugherty, a graduate student interning at the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm Historic Site in Olathe, cooking in the summer heat with old-fashioned kitchen implements is just part of the job.
Daugherty is conducting hands-on cooking demonstrations in a summer kitchen, an outbuilding at the Mahaffie site.
The summer kitchen is in operation until the remodeled cellar of the Mahaffie home opens in the fall.
'Last year, the Olathe Junior Service League Sustainers helped us purchase an original Leavenworth cook stove, patented in 1866,' said Tim Talbott, site manager at the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop. 'The summer kitchen is now another feature of our living history program.'
On a cooler than usual July morning, Daugherty makes biscuits with the help of young visitors who pour ingredients, stir batter and cut out biscuits.
'Do you see a place where I can just turn the dial to 350?' Daugherty asks. Her kitchen helpers silently shake their heads as they cut out biscuits. 'To tell how hot the oven is, I hold my arm in and count how long I can hold my arm in,' Daugherty says. 'If you can't count until 20, it's too hot for bread and biscuits.'
Daugherty demonstrates not only how Lucinda Mahaffie, the female head of the Mahaffie household, would have cooked her meals, but also conveys just how difficult cooking for dozens of people would have been.
Megan Aholt helped Daugherty cook biscuits.
'It was just like being a prairie girl and living the hard life,' Megan said. Megan was astonished with the quantity of food Lucinda had to make each day.
'In the hot summer months of 1866-1867, there may have been as many as 70-100 visitors a day,' Talbott said. In 1865, the farm produced 600 pounds of butter.
The Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop functioned more as a wayside tavern than as a hotel in its five years of operation from 1865-1870.
The Westport Route of the California, Santa Fe and Oregon trails ran right by the site, and the Mahaffie farm was the first stop on the trail for many travelers.
'I tell kids, it was like a truck stop,' Talbott said. 'The stagecoach doesn't need gas, but it needs new horses. A blacksmith here would 'repair' horses.'
Visitors can ride on the Mahaffie Stagecoach, drawn by two horses and running most any Friday, Saturday or Sunday over the summer.
On this July morning, as visitors take a ride on the stagecoach, the sound of a nearby train pierces the air, a reminder of the modernity that made the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop obsolete in 1870.
But as the biscuits come out of the oven, Daugherty holds a reminder of the way things used to be.

Copyright © 2006 Kansas City Star

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