I just had to laugh, trying to imagine what would happen if we dried our laundry this way. With countless chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys roaming the yard -- not to mention the cats, dogs, and goats -- I seriously doubt the laundry would be very white by the time we picked it up. ;-)

Glad it works for you, though! And Yehoshua is so cute, as always. :-D

I was recently reading an embroidery pamphlet from the 1800's by an Italian company. The company mentioned that they dry their embroidery cloth on the grass according to tradtion. They claim that the 'new' bleaching processes to whiten cloth strips the fibers and causes them to be weaker and irregular, resulting in not as fine cloth.

When I saw this post, it made me think of that :) I think it is probably not a chemical reacion with the grass (though it could be?). Mainly, I would guess that it's the powerful bleaching rays of the sun at work. When you lay something flat, the sun rays strike the entire surface at a direct angle, which bleaches, heats and dries it evenly and quickly. I think it's the same reason why you can walk around in the sun for a long time and not get a sunburn anywhere except for your shoulders (or a tan for some folks who are lucky enough to have inherited pigment in their skin :). But if you lay flat in the sun, then your whole body gets evenly 'baked' pretty quickly.

I think it's 'traditional' because it's just easy and doesn't require a clothesline. The grass lifts the fabric off the ground so that air can circulate under it to keep mildew away, and I'd bet stuff dries faster because it gets hotter quicker laying flat.

I bet the ancients had a lot less laundry that we did. :) I imagine that they would wash their tunic, lay it to dry in the grass, and then take a dip to wash themselves while their tunic dried.