Camp Sanitation

Cook camp sanitation

In many of my docs I have discussed and will discuss, period correct versus common sense and safety and why it’s not a good idea sometimes to carry period correct too far. In the 19th Century in the US, a very common cause of death as well as illness were water and food born diseases, some of them being cholera, dysentery, typhoid, botulism as well as many others. Some may have different standards between being hardcore and being stupid, but anything that endangers my heath and well being as well as others is carrying things just a bit too far.

In this doc a lot of it will be based on diverting from being period correct for a very good reason, but still trying to look correct. This concept seems to be practiced more than many will want to admit and sometimes for just an Ok reason. We’ve all seen someone go into a tent, get into a hidden ice chest and get a cold beer or soda, open the can, pour it into a tin cup and come back out like nothing happened that wasn’t right out of the time period, I’m sure a lot of us have done something similar. I am not hardcore enough to have a problem with it, in fact I’ve drank a lot Gatorade out of cups, both tinware and enamelware and will continue to do it.

A good place to start perhaps would be a list of the non-period items I take with me on these trips:
5 gallon plastic jerry cans for potable water
1 or more insulated water coolers for drinking water, iced tea and/or sport drinks
1 or more large ice chests for perishable foods
Paper towels
Dawn dish washing soap
Chlorine bleach
Spray Cleaner
Stainless steel pot scrubbers
Hand sanitizer
Heavy duty plastic garbage bags
Zip-lock food storage bags in assorted sizes
Dry ice for ice chest with frozen foods
Other items more from the period you will want are:

Cloth dish towels and dish rags
A couple bath towels and wash rag
Bar soap
Two large dish pans or wash tubs
A couple old water bath canners or a large wash boiler
A wash basin for hands and stand
Canvas painter’s tarps to cover and hide stuff you don’t want see

One of our main concerns here is to make sure bacteria and other dangerous microorganisms do not get into the food and drink at our camp and make someone sick. A good place to start is with the potable water supply or in simple terms, the water we are going to consume by either drinking in some form or we cook with. A good place to start is the old saying; “Always drink up-stream from the herd,” most of us I’m sure have heard that or have even said that, most often in fun. Well the thing to remember is today there is no up-steam, plain and simple, if water has to come out of a stream or even a brook it needs to be boiled or sanitized in some way just to make sure.

What I am getting at here is that the water that is consumed needs to be clean and microorganism free, if the camp is off in a remote area then the water needs to be either boiled or a chemical added to it to make it safe. Although some reading this book may be setting up a remote camp somewhere, most reenactments occur where it is much easier for people to haul their gear in and even more important, easy for the people who come to see these demonstrations to get to.

Today most wells have been tested; this is very true in public places such as a Historical Park. For the most part the water in the well provided is fine, if one is not sure, simply ask before hand. If there is no well or it is not safe then water will have to be hauled from somewhere else. The best thing I’ve found for this is the modern five gallon plastic jerry cans, these can be hidden somewhere out of sight, they are easy to handle and for added safety they can be sanitized before and after using quite easily. The clean safe water can then be put into what ever period container desired in small amounts as needed.

Besides drinking and cooking we are going to need clean water to do our dishes with and we need hot water, most of us are used to having an automatic hot water heater that does it at home and only think about it every 10-15 years when the thing dies and has to be replaced. Most likely in camp you will not have that luxury, so the water will have to be heated with the same fire we cook with.

Heating our dish water with the cook fire can be done in either a couple enamelware water bath canners or other similar pots or a large wash boiler. A couple ways to do it are one can just before the dishes need to be done place the containers over the fire and heat them up, my preferred way is have them full of water set close enough to the fire to heat but not to boil and keep them full at all times, this way there is hot water anytime you want it.

I mentioned specifically the Dawn dish washing soap because it is bio-degradable and a lot cheaper than buying the ‘bio-degradable” in a fancy camping store, it is also used to clean the oil off of sea birds after an oil spill and this of course means there is no concern when dumping dirty dish water.

The liquid chlorine bleach is to put in the rinse water, this is perhaps not needed but according to friends in the food service industry a tablespoon of this in the rinse water will go a long ways toward the killing of a microbes that could cause problems and it is fine for dumping on the ground just like the washing water.

For a small group the regular dish pans will work fine, but for my often large crowds I use the galvanized wash tubs, these can still be found at hardware store or can be ordered off the internet. A stand for these would be helpful to avoid having to bend over, but I seem to always go places that have access to a picnic table to set them on, saving weight and space in my gear.,

The cloth dish towels and dish rags; these can be bought and don’t cost much; the towels that work the best are the white cotton muslin ones that are often bought to do embroidery on. These can be found in bulk in places that sell kitchen supplies as well as crafts. I have some of these and some that I’ve made out of muslin. For dish rags the knit bundles of them that can be bought in house wares departments work great.

The only thing I don’t like about the store bought muslin dish towels is that I also use clean dish towels to cover bread while it is rising, since I make bread in the larger dish pans, these towels are often not quite large enough to cover these, also there are times in the bright sun where I try to take a picture and the white towels don’t photograph well. For this reason I now make a lot of my towels out of colored calico, I watch the sales of the odd bolts at the fabric stores and buy anything cheap in a historical looking pattern. I make my towels out of this and make them all different sizes. The really large ones I keep separate for covering bread, the smaller more regular size ones get put out for folks to dry dishes with.

One place I do not scrimp is in the amount of dish towels and dish rags I have, I try to have more than I will ever need even on a 4-5 day trip, at home or in camp I hate to use either that has been used already and not washed. Dish rags especially can be germ breeders, take a dirty damp dish rag and let it sit around damp on a 90 degree day and in a short time it will plain stink. I like to let my dish towels and wash rags dry as much as possible and I have a laundry bag they go into, this bag is separate from the laundry bag I put my dirty clothes in. When I get home from a trip these go into the washer and the laundry bag also and are washed on the heaviest duty cycle and in hot water with some of the same chlorine bleach added to it. The bleach does fade them a lot over time which is no problem and they don’t last as long either, but I am assured when I put them away they are germ free, they don’t stink and there are no spiders or other outdoor creatures in them.

Hand washing is as important as dish washing especially for the cook and any helpers who are handling and preparing the food. A handy wash basin, soap, water and a towel are nice to have in camp, but if we look back at my list of non-period correct items the paper towels and the hand sanitizer are hard to beat for better food safety, I carry both and use them all the time especially after using the outhouse. There is now some debate on if it’s as effective as claimed and that I don’t know, but it has to be far more effective than not using it. Also there is the complaint that the alcohol based ones dry out your hands, well they do a little, make some biscuits and cut the lard in by hand, that will fix the problem.

Another route to trouble is from food that has spoiled because it got too warm and microbes have grown on it, most times this is going to involve meat and milk, it is possible to build a period looking ice chest or the factory made modern ones can be hidden from view. I will add that if one is going to keep beverages (I’m not including milk used for cooking) in a cooler it is much better to have a separate cooler for that purpose hi for a three reasons. The first is simple, a cooler that has beverages in it will tend to get opened a lot, every time it gets opened the cooler warms up some because of the warm air let in, this cause the ice in the cooler to melt faster to compensate for this. The second is that unless the ice is well contained in another container, you end up with a lot of water in the cooler also, so any foods that are not well sealed in a waterproof container, now the food will be wet. The third is, for perishables like meat, the method I use for the cooler is not suitable for beverages.

What I use for my perishables is a good modern cooler with dry ice, at around 140 degrees F differences in temperature ( −109.3 °F Versus +32F) the dry ice keeps the food in the cooler cold much longer, but is not suitable for beverages. When getting ready for a trip, I like to buy me meat ahead of time and freeze it as well as any lard, butter or other items that can be frozen with out damage. The meat of course keeps better if it is frozen, but also it and anything else like the lard add extra cold to the ice chest. I put the dry ice on the bottom of the ice chest and then try to layer the frozen meat with the packages to be used last on the bottom and those to be used first on top. Other items that are not frozen and do not need to be frozen can be kept on top.

This chest should be opened no more than is needed, by keeping it closed and planning ahead you can keep meat and very perishable items longer. Also in very hot weather it is often better if there is a local grocery store near by to make a grocery run once or twice a day, I never take any of these easily spoiled items with me for any period longer than a couple days, the chances are since most folks are going to have beverages on ice anyway an ice run into town once or twice a day will be needed depending on the weather.

The zip-lock bags are mainly for putting leftovers in so they can be saved and warmed up as part of the next meal or to warm up later for someone who comes into camp late and misses a meal. The garbage bags really don’t need any explanation, the period correct way it in most cases to just leave the trash on the ground, it was wrong in the time period it is totally unacceptable today.

I included bath towels (the terry cloth towels we use today were very uncommon in the era) and a wash rag along with bar soap in the non-period correct items; one is welcome to add shampoo as well as modern deodorant to this part of the list. Also take along extra clothing to change into. Many places have a modern camp ground near by with modern showers, these are there for a reason, take advantage of them if they are available, if not water can be heated up and a sponge bath can be taken when the weather is warm, the idea of the “hard cores” that one should not bathe on these trips is both offensive to others and not as period correct as many think it is.

If one reads first hand accounts from the time period most times lack of bathing either involved no place to bath or weather that was to cold for bathing. The bath might be nothing more than a dip in a creek, river or other body of water, sometimes with out soap, but most did take advantage of the chance when ever they could. There are many first hand accounts of cowboys on the trail camped beside a stream taking advantage of the chance. Just like now, there were folks who weren’t always as clean as they could be, there are several first hand accounts of Civil War soldiers who didn’t bath as often as their officers and NCO’s thought they should being taken and forcefully made to bath. There is no reason not to freshen up in camp if there is a chance to and no one in a reenactment camp should smell like they haven’t cleaned up in a week.