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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..."

Text describing the continuation of children spending a Sunday afternoon.
"is as homely as her sister Mary pretty, and those angular features that look so good on Jacob don't on her. Distinctive she is, but it would take a Leonardo to notice it, and we don't know that yet. "Children, come for coffee," Margaret Kauenhofen calls, hurrying us to finish. The three Penners live next door, Annie, Helen and Tina, and go home. Susie Thiessen goes home, next door but one, and takes Nettie and Mary Froese, the Thiessens cousins along. Margaret and Agnes, mine and Betty's freidns respectively, stay. That makes us nine at table. During the week we've moved cooking and eating utensils into the summer kitchen where it's cool. Mary's made a cake and Margaret her usual large white buns. We spread butter and tangy cranberry jam , drink our coffee half milk. The smells are good, on Saturday we've cleaned the coffee kettle, Sunday we start fresh, each day we add some grounds through the week, simmered over breakfast and in between... taken to the fields in a narrow neck crock, picnics at work. The kitchen's fairly fly-free. On Saturdays and whenever delicious borscht and frying ham smell attract them, we chase out flies. Margaret is good at it, taking a dirty towel, shooing high and low like a whirling dervish to the open screen door and beyond, out, out, out!"

Sketch of children playing near and swimming in a creek near their homes, continuing to spend their Sunday afternoon,
"At our place and at Thiessens we talk at table. Penners don't. They are a large family, I think twelve. Maybe that's why they don't often eat elsewhere. They are a "brought together" family. Mr. Penner has lost one, no, two wives, they died, no other separations or divorce exist, and had children by each, Mrs. Penner had a family too and now they have Annie and Helen together. A boy baby in their old age dies soon after birth.
After Faspa it's time to get the milk cows home. We and Thiessens share a fence just outside Chortitz. It's always fun to do this. Sometimes Abram Thiessen and Jake Froese come too. Otherwise we seldom play outside, boys and girls, except in school hours. The boys may decide to strip and plunge into the creek, one hand between their legs, one over mouth and nose. We scream with excitement along with the boys 'tho at a respectable distance and guess who remembers the cows? On Sunday other village children come and it's great fun. They take a running leap to make the muddy water splash, no matter cows do their thing in it too."

Sketches of children going to the bathroom in the cow barn before going to bed
""Now quick: go and pee and then to bed!" says Greet
In Winter we go behind the cows - big eyed and slow - because of the scary shadows...
At night alone on the pot"

Sketches of a cow breaking into the family's garden, and the family chasing it out again
"Greet calls: "Children, come fend off! Yellow (one)'s in the garden! That old beast! That sneak-thief! She needs a ladder hung on her again!" We drive her out gently so she won't panic and trample yet more underfoot. Such a ladder is used only on young stock, and that only rarely..."

Sketch of Marta and her father moving hay into the loft of the barn using a haysling her father rigged
"Among the interesting labour-saving devices father makes is the haysling, designed to hoist hay into the loft. Already in the fields where we load long rows of raked hay, he lays the network of rope in two sections, one on the bottom of the rack, the other of the half-full, clicking the iron coupling dead centre, saying "don't step on it"!
My job today is trampling down and pitchforking it as evenly as I can in between the huge forkfuls father cascades up. It looks like rain. "Is the centre firm?" he calls, "if it isn't, the load will slide out before we get home." Then he comes up to check, sinking to his knees all over, even in the centre! Ah, it's only the beginning: I can't step on it. He arranges and locks the upper section, "Don't step on it;" jumps down and proceeds as before, only now higher and higher. I'm scared to go close to the edge and he tells me not to be such a "rabbits foot", "Here, take it," he calls, I try, but half of it falls back on him. "You musn't be such a fullgeshat stocking," he says, looking at the clouds bearing down from the Pembina Hills...
We get the load in just before the shower! After Faspa we hoist it into the loft, me guiding Maude and Charlie, our most docile horses, diagonally across the large yard. They're pulling a rope attached via pulleys to the rail high along the loft. The top half goes in alright but the bottom one opens! "Whoa" father calls from the hole in the side of the loft though I can tell well enough by the change in tension in the rope and the horses who've gone through this often stop by themselves. But someone has to say something at prospect of getting it up by fork. Looking down on the pile spilled just between rack and loft, he scratches his head shoving his sweat-soaked hat askew, "Schweinarie!" (Schwein is pig. Piggery!)
Margaret comes to the rescue, pitching almost as big forkfuls up as father, and Betty and I carry, push and slide it along the smooth-worn wide plank floor to the back. It smells good, the sun-drenched hay, they dry well-beamed loft, and the freshness left by the shower, spilling in through the hole into the half-light, when our eyes adjust to it. Father comes up and says it's good, and Margaret "Hurry down, it's time to get the cows home!"

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..."

Sketch of Marta and her sister as children on a Sunday afternoon walk on their property in rural Manitoba circa 1929
"Chortitz circa 1929
Tina and I going home for Faspa from a Sunday afternoon wakl over the snowdrifts in the cowfence. Fix, our dog, comes to meet us."

Sketches of patterns from a drawing book that was used as embroidery patterns
"Mrs. Penner has a drawingbook. She loans it out; even though we trace from it until the best pictures nearly fall out!
Corner patterns for headshawl embroidery"

Sketch of the outside of an old colony Mennonite church in Chortitz, Manitoba

"OLD COLONY MENNONITE CHURCH
CHORTITZ BY WINKLER MANITOBA
NOW: MENNONITE MUSEUM, STEINBACH
1) Men's entrance from north with collection box inside lobby 2) Women's, Minister's, Foresänger entrance with Stäftjes (small rooms) 3) and 4) for their use."

Sketches of Marta and another girl playing with baby chicks in front of the stove in their house.
"We enjoy the baby chicks coming out in spring! Lisa and I have to teach them to peck up crumbs and drink water. At first they cheep fearfully! Then, when we cover them in their big cardboard box behind the stove, they nestle together. With now and then a cheep, they sleep... We call them like this: cheep-cheep-cheep!"

Sketches of a semlin like the one Marta's grandmother's family lived in
"Two more early sketches of (earlier) Mennonite Architecture as my (Marta's) great-grandparents lived in their first years in Canada. The parents could not afford a separate "Semlin" for their animals, chickens, etc. and partitioned their habitat to accommodate. Also it was late in the season and so, timewise, it was not possible to put up even a rougher version for them. Circa 1874
Who could have predicted us descendants of the Semlin generation would ever get to live in such a fine penthouse apartment as we do in only a century plus, thanks to you, Vic and Rosemarie, with some sold input by Geschwister Vern and Frieda, and Mary who set up a hospitality tradition here that permeates the whole community. Bravo! Circa 1874"

Sketch of a church service inside a rural Mennonite church
"This church stood in Chortitz and is now in the Mennonite Museum in Steinbach Manitoba
We children sat on the crossbench"

Sketch of a wedding taking place outdoors in rural Manitoba.

A sketch of a map showing the locations of families and buildings in the village of Chortitz, Manitoba (West Reserve) in the 1920s and 1930s. Includes one copy.