36. The Checkup and the Catalog ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

“Mr. Coffman’s here!” Charles announced, loudly enough for Joe, Ida, and Robert to understand every word, no matter where they were in the house.

By the time Charles reached the front gate of the white-board fence surrounding the yard, Mr. Coffman was already standing there with his friendly smile and a clipboard under his arm. His neatly ironed shirt was worn outside—not tucked in—as if he were at a picnic.

“Are you ready for me?” he asked, while Charles unlatched the gate.

“I think so,” Charles replied. “What do you want to see first?”

Mr. Coffman checked his 4-H clipboard. “I have Robert down for a gardening project. Let’s see the garden!” Mr. Coffman’s smile widened.

By this time, Joe and Ida had joined their sons. Everyone walked along the edge of the garden, Ida’s pride and joy.

The garden lay between the Rhode family house to the east and Cecil Gray’s house to the west. At one time, Cecil’s house had belonged to Joe’s mother’s family, and Joe had been born there. The rows of Ida’s overly large garden were arranged from south to north. As people drove past on State Route 26 or walked beside the school playground, they could look up and the down the rows of lettuce, beets, carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, beans of all sorts, pumpkins, and sweet corn. Throughout the spring and early summer, Ida worked tirelessly to plow and hoe the weeds, leaving clean, straight rows of vegetables. Now that Robert was in the 4-H Club and enrolled in gardening, she had a constant helper.

“Are you keeping good records?” Mr. Coffman asked Robert.

“Yes, I am,” Robert said proudly.

“That’s good!” Mr. Coffman smiled. “We like good records!” He turned to Ida. “Everything is coming along nicely.”

“The rows are starting to fill in,” Ida agreed.

“Will you can again this year?” Mr. Coffman asked.

“Yes,” Ida said with a smile as big as Mr. Coffman’s. “I always have more jars in the cellar than we can get to. I’m planning to make sauerkraut again this year. I didn’t make any last year because the cabbage looked wilted. I guess it wasn’t, but I didn’t trust it.”

“Do you make it in crocks?” Mr. Coffman wanted to know.

“Blue crown crocks,” Ida answered, “without lids. I keep them in the cellar under the smokehouse. I put plates on top and weight them down with bricks. Then I drape cotton towels over them.”

“The kraut you make yourself is so much better than the kind sold in the grocery stores,” Mr. Coffman said.

“The taste is different,” Ida agreed. “It’s not so biting. The flavor of homemade kraut is richer.”

“It’s more complex,” Mr. Coffman offered, “but subtle, too.”

“If my sauerkraut turns out well, I’ll make sure you get some,” Ida volunteered.

“That would be very nice of you,” Mr. Coffman returned.

Throughout this conversation, the group had been ambling up and down the garden and admiring the plants bathed in sunshine.

“You have a beautiful garden,” Mr. Coffman concluded.

“Thank you,” Ida said. “Robert has been a big help.”

Mr. Coffman turned to Robert and said, “You can take pride in a job well done.” Glancing at his clipboard, Mr. Coffman asked, “Dairy?”

“I have Charles’ heifer in the barn,” Joe said.

While Ida returned to the house, the rest walked the dusty path between the chicken houses, through the gate beside the raised gasoline tank from which Joe fueled his tractors, and into the center aisle of the barn. The air was redolent with the fragrance of new hay.

As soon as Buttercup saw Mr. Coffman, she walked right up to the front of the stall and held her nose over for Mr. Coffman to pet.

“She’s a friendly heifer!” Mr. Coffman said, as he patted her velvety nose.

“I think she looks good, too,” Joe hinted.

“Have you been taking good care of her?” Mr. Coffman asked Charles.

“I’ve been teaching her to lead,” Charles said.

“I wouldn’t think you’d have any trouble with her,” Mr. Coffman smiled. “She’s too friendly to be a nuisance.” He turned to Joe. “If there were a sweepstakes ribbon for congeniality, I’d give it to her.”

Mr. Coffman looked toward Buttercup. “The Mitchell boys have some good-looking heifers,” Mr. Coffman commented.

Joe’s smile flickered for a moment, as if a small cloud had passed before the sun.

“The Mitchells always have good stock,” Joe said.

“I think Buttercup will do very well at the fair,” Mr. Coffman said, rocking back on his heels and putting a big check mark on the page in his clipboard.

After Mr. Coffman had driven away, Joe entered the kitchen to have a cup of coffee. Ida looked up from where she sat at the table with the Spiegel catalog open to a page depicting a dress and hat combination similar to the style that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wore.

“I’m thinking about ordering a dress like that,” Ida said. “I would have to get some new gloves to go with it on Sundays.”

With coffee cup in hand, Joe stood peering over Ida’s shoulder.

“Does the hat come with it?” Joe asked.

“Of course not!” Ida exclaimed, laughing. “If I order the dress in blue, I can wear my blue hat, which will be close enough, once I take off the beaded thingamajig and the veil. I am going to have to order gloves, though. Mine aren’t like these new white ones. It won’t be long before Della will be visiting the Cheesmans, and, when she comes here and all of us go to church, I’ll have a new dress that’s more in style.”

Della was Ida’s sister that had lived in Fort Lauderdale and had moved to Atlanta a year earlier. Della, Harold, and their daughters, Sally and Becky, were coming to see the Cheesman family in West Point, Indiana. Della had developed close ties to the Cheesmans long ago. Della’s family would be coming along to Pine Village afterward. In her letter, Della had said she was looking forward to seeing the Rev. Lowell Morris and Mrs. Morris.

Ida and her family always looked forward to visits with Della, Harold, Sally, and Becky. … and, on this occasion, Ida also looked forward to a new “Sunday best” blue dress and white gloves! 

Gardening 2

“The influence of her taste was seen also in the family garden, where the ornamental began to mingle with the useful; whole rows of fiery marigolds and splendid hollyhocks bordered the cabbage beds, and gigantic sunflowers lolled their broad, jolly faces over the fences, seeming to ogle most affectionately the passers-by.”

     —“Wolfert Webber, Or Golden Dreams,” in Tales of a Traveler by Washington Irving

A few years ago, I had the happy inspiration to surround my vegetable garden with a floral border mixing “fiery marigolds” and “gigantic sunflowers.” My thought was to cut as many bouquets as I might like, and I have gathered armloads of blossoms from the prolific display of flowers surrounding my beans and squash. Even so, I have experienced an irrational reluctance to turn to my borders for blooms. The profusion of petals is so spectacular en masse and such an invitation to butterflies and birds that I am hesitant to claim any zinnias or cosmos for my kitchen or living room. To demur is silly. After all, at the end of the season, the flowers will have gone to seed and, in the spring, their stalks will be plowed under. I might as well remain true to my vision and cut flowers at will.

My Garden on May 12, 2016

Unlike the character in Irving’s tale, I have no cabbages for my flowers to accompany. While I like cooked cabbage—especially on St. Patrick’s Day—I seldom have enough use for cabbage to justify growing any in my garden. When I was growing up, my mother planted rows of cabbages. For exhibits at the annual 4-H fair, we walked up and down in search of the largest cabbage, a heavy one with great waxy leaves spread so wide that it was all I could do to hold it in front of me and to lug it back to the house. In retrospect, I wonder what my mother did with all that cabbage. When I was very young, she made sauerkraut in ancient crocks that huddled in the darkness of a cellar beneath our smokehouse, but, by the time I participated in the gardening projects at the county fair, she no longer made kraut. Our family ate plenty of cooked cabbage, but we could not possibly have consumed as much as my mother grew. A cabbage conundrum!

Sunflowers I have in abundance! Small and large, yellow and red, my sunflowers may not “ogle most affectionately the passers-by,” but they serve as banquets for birds and squirrels. At precisely the moment when their diamond-pattern seed cushions become ready for shelling, the birds come to help themselves to the bounty. In only a day or two, the seeds are pecked loose. The birds are not tidy. They drop many seeds on the ground. The squirrels do not pause to thank their feathered compatriots; rather, they busily comb the ground to scavenge every seed abandoned by the birds.

Alas! I have no hollyhocks. I admire them in the distant yards of neighbors, but I grow none of my own. Up close, they are so dry, dusty, insect-ridden, and full of spiders that I am loath to plant any.

My borders feature the delicately arching cosmos, the frankly sturdy marigold, the utterly dependable zinnia, and the wonderfully robust tithonia in rainbows of hue and tint. Going to the garden to fetch a batch of beans is a treat for the eyes!