August 2, 2004 Simple Serenity Farm Update

by Carla Offenburger

Someone please tell me it’s not August already! Really, I can’t believe it. That means we’ve almost been here two months, and it seems like two weeks. I hope this is how the rest of my life goes.

I have felt so blessed this past week. Many things are happening around here that just make me feel good – and make me appreciate all the good things and good people in my life. I hope the rest of my life is like this, too!

I was back in Storm Lake twice.

Last Monday, I worked a lot in my beautiful flower beds around our former home there – no, it still hasn’t sold! – and had lunch with my friend Rev. Beverlee Bell, pastor of the United Methodist Church. I was able to visit with our great neighbors Lex and Judy Kazos, who are taking care of our lawn. I also took a few minutes and visited some friends across the street at Buena Vista University. It’s about time for the football camps that BVU coach Steve Osterberger puts on, and I’ll probably find myself missing the noise of those, since much of the activity happened directly across the street from our front yard. I especially liked it when the BVU football players would return in late August to begin practices, and I could have my morning coffee out on the front porch and watch the drills and hear the grunting and yelling. Then I’d give Chuck my very scientific predictions on how good our Beavers were going to be in Iowa Conference play.

On Thursday, I returned for a haircut with the best hairdresser I’ve ever had – and am avoiding giving up at the moment – Margie Ellingson. Of course, she was able to fill me in on some community news. I also got my teeth cleaned, a mere 48 hours before I would have no more dental insurance.

On Tuesday, I had another big week at the Greene County Farmers’ Market on the courthouse square in Jefferson. I did some baking earlier in the day so that I could feature “Maria’s Argentina Stove Top Apple Tart,” a dessert like an upside down cake that our son Andrew Offenburger’s girlfriend Maria Jose Lizardia taught me how to make while they were recently here visiting. I sold all I made in the first hour, and plan now to repeat my baking frenzy this week. I also sold cut-and-cleaned rhubarb in quart-size bags, and those went over well. And why wouldn’t they? They were ready to use, with no cutting or cleaning! I also had green beans and cucumbers from our garden.


Maria Jose Lizardia shows off her ''Maria's Argentina stove-top apple tart.'' Carla subsequently made several of these, and they were a big hit at last week's Greene County Farmers' Market.

This was my best week ever at the farmers’ market, taking in just a bit over $100. Of course, I appreciate the money, but mostly I appreciate meeting many new friends there. I struggle to remember all the names, but that will come with time, I hope.

I also spent a lot of time this last week listening to the Democratic Convention on the Intenet broadcasts from National Public Radio this past week. And even pulled out the television to watch John Kerry’s speech accepting the party’s nomination on Thursday night. I so appreciated Chuck tolerating all my praises for my party during the week, and I’ll probably pay dearly for it when he forces me to listen to his president and party in a few weeks. Perhaps I’ll find it will be a good time for me to go on a solo vacation toward the end of August.

The only bad news all week at Simple Serenity Farm was that new tests on our well water are still coming back reading “bacterially unsafe” for human consumption. This is getting real old, folks! I can’t believe that this has been going on for more than eight weeks! My patience is really being tested. Now we need to find 12 hours when we can be away from home, so that more chlorinating can be done while our water supply is completely shut off. I could take the time to figure out how much bottled water I’ve bought this summer, and how many times we’ve bothered our friends in Jefferson to fill up our water jugs, but I don’t want to because it will only push me over the edge. So I’m just trying to focus on being thankful that I have toilets, showers, a clothes washer and kitchen sink I can use. And that our well driller Gene Hicks is handling this continuing bad news in a professional way, taking the suggestions from the testing labs on how to rectify the problem, doing all the additional work at considerable cost to his small business and being pleasant while he’s doing it.

On a happier note, we took advantage of being only 30 minutes away from Carroll, and drove over on Wednesday evening to see high school state baseball tournament games at Merchants Park. This is the last year that state tourney games will be played there, as next year all games will be played at Sec Taylor Stadium in Des Moines. Merchants Park is a great place to watch baseball and we especially liked seeing two northwest Iowa teams that we were familiar with, the Newell-Fonda Mustangs playing the Granville Spalding Spartans. I was pulling for Newell-Fonda – that’s a neighbor school to Storm Lake – but Spalding won in an explosion of offense. We also watched a bit of the second game, in which the Danville Bears played the Newman Catholic Knights from Mason City. We didn’t stay for that whole game, but we saw the Bears have two solid first innings of hitting and scoring before the Knights came back and won. The whole evening was fun, and I sure hope that Carroll keeps that ballpark filled with baseball games in years to come.

On Saturday, I traveled down to Des Moines to spend a “sister day” with one of my two, Chris Woods. We planned to go to the Des Moines Farmers’ Market on Court Avenue downtown, go to lunch and then make a few shopping stops together. She certainly surprised me at the farmers’ market when I went to buy four craft-made hot pads in a farmhouse theme and she said, “I’m buying. I have $100 ‘mad money’ and we’re spending it!” I felt so loved right then I could have cried. I hope I told her enough times how much I felt blessed by her.

So, what do you readers think of all this?

Glen Packard, Denver, Colorado, after I wrote in last week’s farm journal that I fondly recall when I was growing up that my folks would take us from Des Moines to visit the Packard family on their farm near Polk City, Iowa: “Carla, I’ll bet you don’t know that I started school in Cooper. We lived about in the center of a square delineated by Cooper, Rippey, Dawson and Jamaica. I looked it up on the Internet site ‘Streets & Trips,’ and we lived at the corner of the roads that are now called 315 Street and S Avenue. The farmstead is now gone. When we lived there, the road was just a dirt road and got almost impassable if it rained very much. One year we were snowed in for six weeks. The roads were plowed in those days by a team of horses pulling a plow made of 2-by-12-foot planks shaped like a V. We had a neighbor who skied to town once a week to get the mail. This was during the Depression when nobody had any money. I remember we took the Sunday paper and I would go out to meet the carrier with a watermelon, chicken, honey from our beehives or maybe some vegetables from the garden – to pay for the paper. We would go to Rippey once a week to sell the cream. We would buy just enough gas for the car to get home and to make it back to town the next week. My sister Doris was born there, and the doctor’s fee was $10. My mother told me that they never were able to pay the bill. Just a little reminiscing.”

Janice Packard, Glen’s daughter, also in Denver, Colorado: “I read your farm journal article regarding my family that your mom sent to me. I enjoyed it all, especially the part about our farm. We always enjoyed you and your family coming over to visit. Town seemed quite far away while we lived on the farm, though it was only a 30-minute ride I am sure. When I was born, a couple from Des Moines who could not have children, or whose child had just died, offered Mom and Dad a million dollars for me. I am so glad they turned them down. I think every child in America should be able to live on a farm for at least two weeks in the summer. There is nothing like it. We didn’t have a TV for much of the time we were growing up there. Of course, there was the time Mom and Dad had one in their bedroom that Dad had to throw out the window after it caught on fire. We were outside most of the time, occupied with life, not unreal TV. We’d build tree houses, climb our pines to as high as we could go, build dams on the creek, have mud fights, catch crawdaddies, ride my horse or walk the beans. That had to be the hardest part for a kid to do on a farm. Walk the beans. You must try that at least once. I can say one thing about my dad, he had the cleanest looking farm, fields and ditches in Iowa. There is a saying that corn must be ‘knee-high by the 4th of July.’ Dad’s was about six feet high by July 4. Anyway, we were outside until way after dark, whether it was 90 degrees or 25. If it was cold out, we stayed out until our face, hands and feet were almost frozen. We’d come in and lie on the floor with our feet on the furnace. It is hard to believe that the furnace in the dining room kept the whole house heated. We used to stand on the vent above in our nightgowns and laugh as they billowed out and made us look like fat ladies. I am sorry you didn’t think my dad and your dad tipping the sailboat over on purpose was fun. We loved it almost more than sailing. It is hard to believe my dad made that sailboat. Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to say thank you for the kind words and I am glad you had a good time on our farm and still remember it.”

Glen Packard, in a second message: “Is the original brick schoolhouse in Cooper still there? It was a brick building of two or three floors. Probably the first consolidated school district in that area. I was in first, second and third grades there. Maybe part of fourth grade. There was no kindergarten in those days. There is an ancient graveyard right next to the farm where we lived. It is clear at the backside of the farm, near the northeast corner. Probably no one around there even knows it is there. When it was hot in the summer we would go down to the Raccoon River to swim in the evenings. We didn’t have electricity or running water. We had a wood stove. We had to cut and split all of our wood from our pasture next to the river. We were as poor as church mice but I didn’t know it then.”

Lisa Wagner, Carla’s former colleague at Buena Vista University, in Storm Lake: “How’s your house? Do you like the area you are living in? I enjoyed reading your last farm journal entry, and I like your logo! It’s really pretty and promotes relaxation.”

Send your comments to carla@Offenburger.com or chuck@Offenburger.com

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