My grandma literally rode to and from the one room school house on horseback. And we were in the museum this summer with my mother-in-law when the kids started laughing at a horse drawn caboose with a little stove in it to warm it. "Who would ride in something like that?" To which my m.i.l. pointed out it's how her family had traveled in the winter when she was a child. She recounted her tale of theirs tipping over on the way to church when it fell through the crust of an especially deep snow. She told them of her fear as her father jumped atop it, flung the door open, and yanked them all out to get them free of the coals spilling out of the stove. My kids were dumbstruck. Frankly, I was dumbstruck.
Oh my gawd, that would have been so cool, to be able to afford steak. We didn't often keep our cows. And if we did, steak was a rare luxury, as butchering is cheaper done into roasts, and sliced roast stretches further for a family than steak does per ounce. Plus the meat we did keep was usually from downed cows, so the meat wasn't as good. Broken legs, frozen hooves, stuff like that stresses the steer or cow and makes for tougher meat that you need to slow cook.
