Showing 61 results

Sketch of a newly-built ice cellar by a corner of Marta's family's housebarn circa 1395
"Finally we have an ice-cellar! It is built somewhat like a semlin. Other summers we hung our cream and butter in the well for cooling. If then sometimes the big cream can accidentally spilled, we'd have to pump out the whole well!
Milk buckets on a post - to drip (dry)
Circa 1935"

Sketch of a house on fire, and the community rallying to put it out with buckets of water
"The dogs are suddenly barking like crazy, horses neigh, cows bellow, and there's a banging at the window. "At old Frank Groening's is fire and pass on the word!" Father jumps out of bed, runs across the yard to Penners... and so the news goes through the village. People run, call to each other, some with lanterns, buckets.. there's pouring water, carrying out what can be saved, thanking God no one is hurt. Next morning so much is brought together, Greet says, "Groenings are better off after the fire than before!""

Sketch of Marta and her sister playing dress-up in the pantry of their home
"All Beginnings
Mary beckons me to the pantry, "Close your eyes: Suprise!" She has basted together a "brassiere" for me, of flour sacking, and dyed it pink with beets; I look so funny with it on, we "sneeze" out into laughter."

Sketches of Marta and her siblings dealing with fleas in their bedclothes.
""Look how the beasts hide themselves in the seams! There - you must be quicker than they - get 'em between your thumbnails and squish them before they hop away!" says Greet. No one seems to know where these fleas come from that spread through the village now and then. Some say from the hay, some say from Mexico. We chuckle at those who still wear old-fashioned clothes. We call their high collars flea collars because they hide the telltale red dot flea bites!"

Sketch of Marta's father and a government worker hauling ice in the winter
"This winter we have a government worker, Jacob, eldest son of the widow, Mrs. Fred Thiessen, from the village end. The government pays Jakob a few dollars a month, and something to father for providing the work and for his food. He eats with gusto (doesn't fuss), is always friendly, and helps willingly enough. We like this arrangement! Here he helps father haul ice from the (woods)creek..."

Sketch of a woman and two girls in the yard in front of their housebarn
"Grandmother's Sorrel Soup
Simmer smoked pork with bay leaf and peppercorns until done, then add cubed potatoes and coarsely cut greens - sorrel, onion, parsley, dill. When done add heavy clotted cream. Now, two generations later, whole milk yogurt does quite well too!
Sketches from a Canadian prairie Mennonite village childhood.
Picking sorrel in Grandmother Katharina Fehr Neufeld Reimer's backyard, Schanzenfeld
Coming to Canada from Russia at twelve in 1874, Grandmother Katharina Fehr married widowers John Neufeld and "Ütroopa Reima" successively, 1881-1901 and 1904-1923. Besides numerous step and even step-step children she bore twelve of her own of whom, however, only five survived to have families half the size of hers. Her only child by Ütroopa Reima, a son, was Watkins salesman in the Mennonite villages of southern Manitoba for many years. Auctioneer
Among other favourite foods grandmother made were yeast-raised Pāpânāt. Spice buns they are called in some recipes now. She used to bake them on large darkened pans and keep them covered with tea towels in the pantry by the backdoor. It was a most welcoming aroma to greet us in. Translated from her intuitive homemade yeast and honey sweetened one can still come close:
Crumble and sprinkle a fresh Fleischman's yeast cake into warm honey-sweetened water, stir in unbleached white flour, add a bit of salt, stir until batter slips off mixing spoon. Wait until bubbly, then stir in corn oil, pepper, and cinnamon with caution, keep adding flour while kneading to soft dough. Let rise covered in warm place, shape into buns, let rise again and bake in rather slow than fast oven..."

Sketches of a woman making yeast by hand in her yard
"Greet makes yeast: swirl honey and hops+ and flour in a crock with warm water and hang it in the back boxelder for fermenting. Every day she checks, swirls and smells until it is 'ripe'. Then she takes it down and uses a bit of it each time to set the yeast sponge for bread-making. Lisa and I have to upend manure sod (mennonite coal) for further drying...
+rather the water from boiling hops..."

Sketch of a family and the interior of a rural Mennonite house in Manitoba

Sketch of a panoramic view of Marta Goertzen's childhood farm in Chortitz, Manitoba.
"Our Canadian prairie Mennonite village home recalled and drawn from memory of 1930 or so..."

Sketch of a family pressing manure into bricks in front of their housebarn, circa 1933.
"Manure Pressing in Spring. Chortitz by Winkler, Manitoba circa 1933"

Sketches of a family cutting chop and discovering mice in a stack of oatsheaf
"Towards spring once, when cutting chop, we found one oatsheaf stack (was) riddled with mice. What a squeaking, squirming and scampering - ranging from naked new-borns to stunned old ones! At first our barnyard cats leaped, startled, about among them. But soon, not knowing which ones to follow, bewildered quite, they turned tail and fled...
When the cats fled from the mice!!"

Sketches of the funeral of Marta's mother.
"Our mother dies March 6, 1928. The aunts want to divide us among them, but father says no. "I'll keep them together..." Those village women who do that, have washed mother and put on her white dying-dress. The aunts have put mother's own red, pink, and white geraniums 'round her."

Sketch of cows in a field with a small shed in the background, on the Manitoba prairies
"Well... the Pembina Hills still rise. Our hen-barn, a few of the many giant poplars, the gate; other cows and heifers stand, and stare at one, and do not see, and do not hear, what I: our former Goertzen stead, bedwelt, betoiled, bewept, beloved..."