I have deep roots. My ancestors were one of the early families to settle in the place I live. We’ve been here so long there’s a town named for my father’s side of the family, and the original “home place” in now owned by the state conservancy.

My maternal grandmother, for most of her life, lived, died and is buried on the same piece of ground where she was born. Yes, my roots are sunk deep into the soil of this place.

The building where she went to school until the 8th grade stood quiet for many years until it became a Mennonite church, where we attended services on Sunday because making the 25 mile round trip to attend “our church” was a waste.

Six miles up the road you’ll pass another Mennonite Church. This house of worship was where my paternal grandparents attended school until they reached an age where they either married or were needed to work the farm.

My maternal grandfather was an “outsider”. My great-uncle returned from his wonderings in northern Pennsylvania with him in tow. They worked the farm and the local sawmills until the government started the CCC camp to build a dam not far from the farm. As the only girl among the five surviviing children, my grandmother “Jo” was as strong-willed and independent as any woman of today, and wanted her family always within reach.

I was always in awe of the people of my grandmother’s generation. When they were born, most people still travelled by horseback, horse drawn wagon, or you hopped the train at the crossing. Most of your days were spent in the pursuit of growing or preserving food, or it would be a lean hungry winter. There were cows to milk, clothes to launder by hand, bread to make, cream to churn, three meals a day to prepare for a large family, plus all the back breaking manual labor of planting and harvesting the crops. Most were barely literate or had a minimal education.

By the time of their deaths, almost everyone had phones, cars, mechanized farm equipment, cable and satellite TV, that got more than three channels (if you turned the antenna just so and the weather was just right, you got four), and the world was beginning to go digital.

As a child I spent any time that I was not cooped up in suburban schools, on the farm. Part of the house was log and the newer part was frame. The log part of the house had a “kitchen loft” that had been sleepings space in the day, but now was used for storage. I could climb the steep stairs and visit with people who were long gone, but I took the tidbits of information I heard from the adults about Jack, Dewey or Hattie Shotgun, and spin my own tales. There was no indoor plumbing and the electric was not installed until 1965. The water was carried from the spring, we cooked on a wood cookstove, or an LP stove (oh the luxury). The house was heated with wood and coal stoves. Telephones had party lines and you didn’t need an area code. I hand milked cows, churned butter, helped make cottage cheese, worked in the huge garden, harvested hay without a baler, butchered chickens and turkeys, and ran the woods and fields with my dogs, wild as any deer.