Written by Honeyhush

If my first article had been titled “Why I Entered the Dork Forest”, my second one should be “Why I Never Left the Dork Forest”. In a word, people. I love my fellow re-enactors. It truly is a family community. My group is the 5th Kentucky Infantry CSA and my husband & I are a part of Company E. The companies are divided up in regions of the state. Our company is out of Morehead, Ky. We are a close knit company and do many activities together when there isn’t an event. If you are looking for a group to join, make sure it is a “main stream” group. Otherwise, you will be dressing like a man and sleeping on the ground, under the stars. That’s not my idea of fun.

There are three women in my company that have become my best friends. If you continue reading my articles you are bound to hear more about these characters. MissyK is the ideal of Southern hospitality. She is the best hearted and one of the most unselfish women I have ever met. She wants every body to have their bellies full & a place to sit down. As long as this is accomplished, she’s pretty easy going. Angie is her sister and she doesn’t care if anybody eats! She is the sweetest thing and never fails to make me laugh. Then there is MissyB. Now MissyB is not fussing folks, she is “expressing herself”. She likes to express herself and I’m right in there with her, fussing, um I mean “expressing” myself. The four of us make a great team.

MissyK usually wakes up first and gets the coffee going. The rest of us get up soon after and after a few minutes of “wake up” time, we set to work. We have a company of men to feed! The four of us cook a huge breakfast over an open fire. A normal breakfast on a Saturday is 3lbs of sausage, 5lbs of bacon, 3 dozen scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy. Cooking biscuits in a dutch oven is an art and sometimes we don’t even burn the bottoms! Actually, biscuits baked in a dutch oven are delicious. Everything tastes better when it’s cooked & eaten outside. Leftovers are unheard of because MissyK can always wrangle up enough hungry souls to come eat at her fly.

Then there is the mess to clean up. We have to get a man to go get some water. At events, there is usually a main water source for everyone. We heat the water over the fire and wash and dry all those dishes, by hand. We eat with authentic tableware, so no paper plates for this bunch. We also have huge iron skillets to clean and season. We have a saying that “you can tell how hard someone works by how dirty their apron is.” Let me tell y’all, that isn’t necessarily so. One wrong move with an iron skillet and you can ruin a clean apron. I know this from experience.

I said re-enacting was fun, didn’t I? All this cooking and washing dishes doesn’t make it sound like much fun, but if you are with the right people it doesn’t matter what you are doing. My friends and I have a great time. We laugh most of the time we’re working and it gets done quickly. Then, it’s time to get dressed up pretty and “go to town”. There are always sutlers at these events. During the Civil War, sutlers traveled with the armies to sell the men things they needed. Now sutlers come to events to sell re-enactors things we need or in most cases, just want. There is usually a tea or social for us to attend, before the big battle. In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing more about all these activities. There is a lot going on for women to do in re-enacting besides the cooking. Sometimes we even get to shoot a few Yankees! Pictured are my friends and I loaded for bear @ a recent event. We’ve added a new woman this year, her name is Jessica. It’s yet to be seen just how dirty she gets her apron but she’s a sweet girl and fits right in, with us.