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May 2011 |
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The newlyweds lived with Anton's parents, and all of Ida and Anton's children were born on the Diethelm farm except baby Dan, and also infant son John who died when only two weeks old. Elizabeth, born in 1924, fourth oldest of the children, knows that her two older sisters Marie and Mildred were born at home, and that the midwife was Mary Diethelm, Ida’s mother in law. "Grandma Diethelm delivered the first two and then Dr. Nagel from Waconia came out to the house to deliver the rest of us,” said Elizabeth. Elizabeth recalls much of the life and times of her mother on the Diethelm farm from firsthand experience. "At first we did laundry on the porch with a wringer washing machine, one my dad made," she said. "We heated water on the cookstove to wash clothes, and we hung the wet clothes on lines to dry on the porch. There was no running water or plumbing or electricity. Water came from our cistern. There was a company – the Menth Company -- that hauled water to fill our cistern.” “Mom made her own bars of laundry soap,” said Elizabeth. “We saved all the grease from frying bacon and our neighbors brought grease over for us so we had enough to make soap. Lye is one of the things we had to buy and it was pretty expensive. We cooked the grease and the lye in a big black kettle over an open fire outside. As it would cool and harden, my mother would be so happy when the soap turned white. You didn't brag to your neighbors if it stayed brown. If it was white, it would be the talk of the area!" "We also had an ice box on the porch," said Elizabeth. "It had a pan underneath to catch water as the ice melted. The ice man came once a week. It didn't cost too much. The ice box was made out of wood and it had a tin lining. It's where we kept the milk and the butter. Dad milked cows and we also had chickens and pigs and a pair of horses. Dad used the horses to pull the plow and the cultivator.” "When Dad butchered, my mother canned the meat," said Elizabeth. "She canned chicken and beef and pork. She would put some grease in the jar, then some meat, then more grease, then another piece of meat, and go like that until the jar was full. The grease preserved the meat. The big zinc lids went on top.” Did Ida Diethelm also can vegetables? "Oh, yes," said Elizabeth. "My dad actually had the garden, a huge garden. We canned the peas and beans and pickles, even peaches and pears when we could afford it. There were no freezers at that time. We didn't use a pressure cooker at first. We used hot water in a kettle and cooked the jars for two hours on the cookstove. We had to keep the temperature just right so it didn't boil. Later we got a pressure cooker." "Mom baked nine loaves of bread in that cookstove every other day," remembers Elizabeth. "My uncle and great uncle lived with us so there were a lot of mouths to feed. Mom often made ginger snap cookies. I always marveled that she would know just when the oven was hot enough for an angel food cake. She'd open the door and reach in to feel the heat and know if it was right. We would tell her that she was smarter than anybody because she could do so many things." "Mom sewed all of our clothes," said Elizabeth, "but she really wasn't a very good sewer. She didn't like to sew but she had to sew. She’d often say, 'I better go and finish that dress.' We weren't too happy going to school in a new dress because it looked homemade. She got fabric at the store in Victoria and she also used the material from 100-pound sacks of flour, which also came from the store, Notermann’s Store. Mom made all of the baby diapers, too, from bolts of flannel goods. She had a black Singer sewing machine.”
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Ida and Anton Diethelm were married on June 17th, 1917, at the St. Victoria Catholic Church in Victoria. |