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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 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..."

Sketches of the original semlin that Marta's grandmother's family lived in when they moved to Canada
"Semlin-living
The Benjamin Fehr family move to Canada in 1874
This is how they lived during the first years:
Their Katherina becomes my grandmother! The Frank Goertzen, Neufeld, Penner grandparents (1874-75) likewise:
One digs three feet or so into the ground, stacking the sod for walls, lays branches to form and hold up the roof.

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 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."

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"

Sketches of various figures, possibly done as practice

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

Handmade title page for Marta's sketches about her childhood on a rural Mennonite farm in Chortitz, Manitoba
"WHEN THE SUN
IS TWO
HANDS HIGH
SKETCHES
FROM MY CANADIAN PRAIRIE
MENNONITE VILLAGE CHILDHOOD
MARTA GOERTZEN
1923-2008"

This is a drawing called De Pracha or "the beggar" [HR 120].