The Garden and Our Raising

I/we (Kerbers) call it “dad’s garden” because he tilled, planted, weeded, and protected it from both insect pests and from kids’ feet chasing after errant plastic whiffle balls. He nurtured it until it was ready for harvest. And while he would bring in a few radishes or a fallen tomato, he didn’t really harvest it. That was mom’s job. Or, I should say, it was her job to wrangle us kids into doing the picking and then help her with the canning.

Dad’s garden is an important north star for us Kerbers. It is an embodiment of much of our make-up, an intrinsic part of who we are. We hold the image of their garden fondly inside ourselves. It is a thing that brings dad, and also mom, into sharper focus.

When mom and dad bought 828 Spruce Street in 1950, most of the large back yard was garden. For the first couple of years, dad tried to plant all of it. His brother owned a greenhouse and tilled our garden with a tractor and plow. It didn’t take but two seasons for them to realize the garden was too big for the lot and (maybe) not yet enough kids for the harvest. Plus, the kids that were needed room to play, so dad shortened the garden by a third. Then, a few years later, mom and dad realized us kids needed more room, especially for a plastic whiffle-ball park, so he shortened it by another third. The lesson I take away from this is one of balance – kids need a place to play as well as food.

It was after this last shortening that dad looked offsite for more gardening space, finding it first at his mother’s house, then at a friend’s house two streets over, and later in a vacant lot across town
After the first shortening of the garden, the tractor and plow became impractical, so dad spaded it shovelful by shovelful. Those shoveled clumps needed busting up with a hoe and smoothing with a rake. Dad usually had one of us boys helping him with this. It
usually wasn’t a bad job (for me) because it meant doing something with dad in the cooler evening air after supper.


Dad planted everything himself, using a string to align the rows. After the little plants shot up, it was time for hoeing. He explained to me that hoeing was both to remove weeds and to help keep the soil moist, by breaking up cracks and holes in the soil that tended to dry the upper layer. I believe hoeing was a kind of meditation for dad, and a way for decompressing after work, grabbing a hoe and heading to the garden before going into the house.

It was only much later after leaving home and planting a garden of my own and canning and freezing the output that I realized the greenness of dad’s thumb and the organizing ability of mom. To me, the harvest they achieved from two gardens was a wonder of nature. How they produced so much from so small an acreage is a mystery – 150 quarts of beans, 150 quarts of tomatoes and 75 of juice, plus tomato catsup some years and 25 pints of chili sauce. All of this on top of what we ate all summer long. 

The best harvest that I achieved from my early gardening and canning was a realization of the thought, work, and (dare I say) love dad and mom put in to the yearly need to stock up. Remembering their garden is a compass point that brings me back to mom and dad. It reminds me of their effort to raise up us kids to become not flowers, but hardy, purposeful plants.  

-- Bob

“How Does Your Garden Grow?”

For the first time in 40 years I am without a backyard garden. It’s kind of weird not having one, for I always looked forward to putting my hands into the soil each spring. There is something truly rejuvenating watching green buds poke through the earth after a cold and colorless winter.

My husband, Steve, and I decided to tear down the raised beds we built, in part because the old wood frames no longer held the dirt the way they were suppose to, but also because we plan to move from the family home within a year and wanted to give the newly planted grass a summer to grow.

Still, I hated to see the garden go. It felt like letting go of something that has been important to me for a long time. At 65, I get that feeling more and more, of realizing that it makes sense not to have so much stuff or to live in a house that is too big for us. It’s all part of moving towards life’s final phase. Some days it’s okay, other times I don’t like how it feels.

I got my love for gardening from our father, as did many of my siblings who garden. On many summer evenings after dinner, Dad would walk to his garden. Maybe he’d pull a few weeds or pick whatever was ripe, or, if it was a particularly dry summer, water the tomatoes. I don’t think he ever watered the entire garden, probably because water cost money, but he’d water the tomato plants. The watering paid off, because for many years Mother canned more than a hundred quarts of tomatoes.

Garden 1950

The size of 828’s garden varied through the years, first taking up most of the back yard, and then, as the kids grew and needed space to play, was shortened, and then shortened again, until it took the form I remember most: currant bushes at the back and two bushy rows of rhubarb on each side. Dad always planted lettuce in the row closest to the house, Black Seeded Simpson, and on many summer days our dinner (lunch) was a lettuce sandwich between two pieces of buttered bread, Mother’s favorite.

Garden: 1958

Tending and harvesting the garden was very much a part of my growing-up years. Dad always did the planting. In fact, as the garden shrunk, he planted in several other locations, most regularly behind his parents’ home on Foraker, but only until 1960, when Grandma Kerber died and the house was sold. Then he had a garden two streets over on Chestnut, behind Mrs. Farrell’s house, and, for a short time, one across town up Court Street hill, near Dingham.

828 and Dad's three other gardens

And from Dad’s planting came much of the kids’ summer labor, picking currants and being careful not to get stung by the bees, breaking grocery bags full of green beans, coring baskets of squishy red tomatoes.

One of the gardening jobs I disliked most was turning the Foley food mill, from which was wrung the tomato juice we drank throughout the winter. I can still remember the tiny stings on my forearm turning the crank when the mill was full. It was hot sweaty work, and I could never grind the tomatoes dry enough to satisfy Mom, for when I was finished, she’d give the handle some swift hard turns and out would come the thickest pulp.

I’ve been tending a garden of my own ever since I was married 40 years ago, and like my mother often canned and froze the harvest.  But not this year. That’s over…  kind of.

It wasn’t long after Steve and I dismantled the raised beds and seeded grass that I bought two large containers for our deck and planted some herbs and a half-dozen tomato and pepper plants. They won’t produce enough for preserving, but at least I won’t be buying store-bought tomatoes yet.

Sixty-five is a bit too early to let go of something I’ve enjoyed for so many years.

—Text by Linda

—Graphics by Bob

Silk Purse From a Sow’s Ear

Brother Bob and I vacationed together recently at Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada. Our families have been going there since the early ‘80s, along with our sister Nancy and her family and a few friends from our college days. We usually go every two years, and there’s anywhere from two to three dozen of us. It’s a tradition that began with the Schmitmeyers in 1957, when my husband Steve first went there with his family. (He’s 65 now.)

Preparing for a Rice Lake vacation is no simple matter, as we coordinate bringing a week’s worth of food, bedding, and fishing and play equipment—shovels and buckets when the kids were younger, but a sailing kayak and jet skis now that they are older. Steve also takes his 14-foot fishing boat, powered by a 1958 Johnson motor, similar to the kind his dad had when he was a kid. Before going, he puts it through several performance tests to make sure it’s still working, first in a 50-gallon drum in our back yard and then at a nearby river. After weeks of preparation, we haul everything 400 miles north to Rice Lake.

These vacations seem like elaborate affairs compared to the Kerber family vacations of my youth, when each year we headed to Lake Loramie for a day, a far simpler tradition but one no less anticipated by my siblings and me than my kids looking forward to Rice Lake.

Dad only had a week off each year from his job as a baker, and most of that time was spent doing home repairs, painting the house or some inside remodeling project mother wanted. He was busy throughout the week except for Thursday, when our family “vacationed” at Lake Loramie, a small man-made lake 20 minutes from 828.

Vacation day always started early, with Mom waking by 3 a.m. to fry chicken and pack coolers with potato salad, pickled beets, baked beans, and lemonade. Mom and Dad brought play equipment, too, baseball bats and gloves, sand toys, and fishing rods and a tin can with worms that Dad and the older boys dug from his garden. As the sky lightened in the east, we’d be on our way in our red and white ’56 Pontiac station wagon, loaded for a day’s worth of fun.

I loved being outdoors as the sun rose, listening to the sounds carried on the moist morning air, birds chirping, water lapping on the beach, cars making their way along Route 362 as people headed to work. Vacation day always felt special, open-ended and carefree, so unlike the purposeful manner in which we usually lived.

Once there, Dad would fry bacon and eggs over a charcoal fire. When breakfast was over, he’d sit at the picnic table and read the newspaper while my older brothers went fishing. Under Mother’s watchful eye, we girls and some of my six younger brothers would search the empty beach for unclaimed treasures—broken shells, a forgotten towel, and if you were lucky, a shiny coin.

There was always a morning baseball game as we waited for the lifeguard to come on duty. We always ate “dinner” (now we say lunch) early, so we had the necessary hour between eating and swimming.

But by three o’clock, we’d be packing up and heading home; several of my brothers had paper routes, and even on vacation, there was work to be done.

The Kerber family “vacation” began and ended within the span of a half-day, a far cry from the planning and preparation that goes into our week-long stay at Rice Lake. Our annual outing at Lake Loramie is one of many fond childhood experiences that came about through the ingenuity and hard work of my parents, for surely they put a great deal of effort into planning the day. How wonderful that they could create something so special from something as simple as a day trip to a local state park.

—Linda

Playing at the Altar

Let’s return to the games we Kerber kids played upstairs. Most of the games I remember were with my brothers, except for board and card games, which I played with my sisters. The delineation seems to be the degree of fantasy the game involved. If there was some form of fantasy, I played with my brothers – tents, pirates, slow motion football (see May, xx posting), block forts or castles that needed to be knocked down, etc. There was one game I remember playing with Linda and Nancy however that did involve fantasy. It didn’t have a name that I remember.

We only played/did it a couple of times, and it involved recreating the ritual of the Catholic mass. It always included some of my younger brothers except John, the one just younger than me. And neither of my two older brothers played. Maybe this was because I was not only the instigator (along with Linda) but also because I got to be the priest. Or maybe it was too weird for them and John. But play mass we did, in my sisters’ bedroom.

Why there I cannot say, except that’s where mom kept her cedar chest, and it made an acceptable base for an altar. To decorate the altar, we placed some kind of tabernacle made out of a box and also some statues of Mary or Joseph. On top of the tabernacle was a crucifix. There were cloths covering everything, disguising the ordinariness of the cedar chest and box tabernacle. These cloth coverings must have been a light color, a pale yellow or blue, or maybe white, definitely not black or red.    

Building the altar is the part I remember best. It’s unlikely we performed the entire ritual of the mass, perhaps just the best parts, whatever those were. I do remember that Linda and Nancy pretended to be nuns, and of course I was the priest, and the younger boys were the congregants. I imagine I wore some kind of vestments, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders or a large shirt with a towel as a stole around my neck.

My favorite memory was that I fabricated an incense burner, a thurible, from a string and a metal teapot from my sister’s toy tea set. I swung it mightily, blessing the altar with incense as I had seen the priests do. I probably even intoned some Latin phrases, part of the ritual I learned from being a server.

These rituals of play took place somewhere in the late-50s, well before any changes from Vatican II in the early 1960s. Looking back, I can’t imagine that the “fun” would still be there after then. The altar facing the other way, a guitar mass, I can’t picture it. [Give me that old-time religion!]

Even now, with my beliefs and thoughts so different than they were in the 1950s, there’s something missing in my life regarding this. I wish my life had more ritual in it. I do have some, but it’s secular stuff – coffee and a book in the morning, painting or drawing at the end of the day, family dinners.

I would like to have something that would acknowledge and honor the sacred, and the forces in life that are larger than the individual. For me, though, it’s not Catholicism. That wound is too deep and has taken too long to heal.

--Bob