A Swiss Peasant Home
As a rule, the Swiss peasant has a comfortable home. Here and there, it is true, may be found people living in houses which are little better than rude wooden…
From: 1900 C.E. To: 1911 C.E.
Location: Switzerland
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Peeps at Many Lands: Switzerland by John Finnemore, 1911.
As a rule, the Swiss peasant has a comfortable home. Here and there, it is true, may be found people living in houses which are little better than rude wooden huts, but for the most part the Swiss people build themselves good, strong, handsome dwellings.
A Swiss chalet is both broad and long. This makes it very firm, and enables it to defy the most furious storm which can sweep down from the mountain heights. The first thing the builder does is to raise a strong wall to a height of about six or eight feet. Upon the foundation the upper part of the house is built, and this is of wood. The broad roof is of gentle slope, and is formed of sheets of pine-wood. Upon these pine-shingles heavy stones are sometimes laid, in order that the roof may not be torn away by the fierce gales of winter. Around the wooden part of the house a gallery runs, and this is sheltered by the broad eaves, which spring out well beyond the walls. When such a house is finished it has a very quaint and pleasing look, and it is as comfortable inside as it is charming without.
There are no living-rooms in the stone basement. This part of the house is given up in front to roomy cellars, where the produce of the fields and vineyards and orchards is stored; at the back to stables, cow-houses, and threshing-floor. The living-rooms are above, and open on the gallery which runs round the house. There is a large room, where the family meet for their meals, and where they sit in the evening; and there is a smaller room a kind of parlour where the best furniture is kept, a room only used on grand occasions. Then, there is the best bedroom, and one or two smaller rooms, where the children sleep.
The furniture of these houses is strong and simple large heavy tables and benches and dressers, made by the local carpenter, or very often by the owner himself, of dark walnut-wood. On the dresser in the living-room stand painted plates, the favourite ornament of a Swiss kitchen, and a great earthenware stove, often covered with green tiles, stands in a corner of the large apartment.
In these homes there is, as a rule, very little money, but a great plenty of those things necessary to human comfort. Money is very useful where everything has to be bought, but what has a fairly prosperous Swiss peasant to buy? Nothing save things like coffee, sugar, salt, and spices things he cannot produce for himself.
In a corner of the largest bedroom stands a loom, at which the mother and daughters weave the fleeces of their sheep into strong home-spun cloth and thick warm flannel. Thus the family are clothed. In the garden, where glorious white lilies blossom in June, they grow vegetables. The vineyard gives them wine; the orchards give them fruit; the fields around their home give them corn; and the crops are stored in the ample cellars below the living-rooms. They store apples and pears for the winter by cutting them into quarters and drying them carefully.
Their mode of living, too, is very simple. Meat is not often eaten; in many families it never appears on the table except on Sundays at the midday meal. Very rarely, then, is it fresh; in the storeroom hang pieces of dried beef, mutton, or in some parts, chamois. One Swiss delicacy and it is very good indeed consists of a joint of beef, which is first hung in the chimney and carefully smoked. It is then cured with salt and spice, and finally dried in the cold, clear winter air. When cooked it is very delicate and sweet in flavour.
The produce of the dairy takes a great share in feeding a Swiss peasant family. Milk, cream, butter, cheese, curds all are greatly relished, and a favourite dish is made of sweet cheese-curds stewed in cream, and then baked with fresh butter.
Before the children go to school in the morning they have a breakfast of bread with butter or cheese, and coffee, or a bowl of maize and milk beaten up together. When they come back to dinner they get a hunch of bread to begin with, and then potatoes and butter-milk, and a bowl of soup, in which perhaps a small piece of bacon has been boiled perhaps not. Among the better-off peasantry the dinner is finished with pudding or pancakes. Supper at night is just the same as breakfast in the morning, and on this diet the Swiss children grow up to be rosy, hardy, sturdy youngsters, who will make very strong men and women.
Well, we have dealt with clothing and food; what of firing? This may be had in plenty from the woods which clothe the mountain-sides. But no man may cut where he pleases, not even in his own wood. The forest laws of Switzerland are very strict, for a great forest is a natural rampart against the onrush of avalanches from the heights above. So in the autumn the forester marks those trees which can safely be spared, and the woodmen fell them in the winter, when no other work can be done.
The trees are cut into great logs, and when the spring comes and the snows melt, these logs are thrust into the torrents which dash down every slope. Down whirl the logs to the valley below, with its homesteads, and here they are caught and drawn from the stream. Then they are stacked to dry, and before the next winter, axe and saw go to work upon them, and split and cut them into handy-sized pieces with which to stuff the great stove until it roars again through the long dark days of the bitter winter.
Finnemore, John. Peeps at Many Lands: Switzerland. Adam & Charles Black, 1911.
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