Small Beginnings

By Cassie Merko

EBOOK. A farm girl from Manitoba writes about her life as she grew up with her siblings, parents, husband and children. This humorous and touching recollection of her existence, including senior moments, that she experienced will take you back in time and into the present.

"Small Beginnings" is a second volume to the first book called "Roots ~ A Life in Review" which is an all-text ebook and a quick download. "Small Beginnings" includes photographs, some B&W, some in color, so this ebook may take about 6 times longer to download than "Roots ~ A Life in Review."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781105645877

Book preview

Small Beginnings

Small Beginnings

by Cassie Merko

Ebook

ISBN-13: 978-1-105-64587-7

Copyright © 2012 by Cassie Merko

All Rights Reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief excerpts.

Prologue

This is my second book of memories. My first book called "Roots, A Life in Review", has some of my early memories, as well as many recent events, particularly our life on the farm while our kids were growing up. It, however, contains less background information about our family. In this volume, I have endeavoured to fill in the gaps with more family history if someone in the future wishes to delve further into our family tree.

Like "Roots", this book contains some funny adventures as well as serious life stories. Certain events are interlinked and some may overlap with "Roots" so a few areas may repeat. For this I apologise.

I dedicate this book to my descendants, particularly those that wish to delve into our family tree and our history. I hope this helps in some small way in your research. I know how difficult it is to trace roots when most of your information sources are deeply buried.

I wish you Good Luck and ultimate success!

Just Another Heifer!

My name is Cassie. I’m a first generation Canadian. My parents married on April 28, 1914. Dad came to Canada in 1909, at the age of 22 years, after being discharged from service in the Austrian Army. He arrived in Canada, secured a homestead stake of 160 acres, cleared some land, built a house, sought and found a wife, and married her. Together they set out to eke a livelihood from of the sandy soil and bush country that was the Ukraina area some thirty miles north of Dauphin, Manitoba and about twelve miles east of Ethelbert.

Like many other new settlers of their time, they started out with few possessions but a great deal of stamina. Houses were built with community spirit and the Ukraina area of Manitoba had been settled with mostly Ukrainian immigrants from the same general region, so lifestyles were familiar. Toloka (accent on last ‘a’) was a common way any big job was accomplished. Often the community got together to help construct a house or other buildings, (barn raising); clay plaster buildings to insulate against the elements; make quilts; butcher poultry for market; prepare for weddings or funerals; or help with whatever other project as required. That was a way of life, neighbours helping neighbours, giving each other a hand.

My mother had come to Canada at the tender age of not quite four, back in 1902 with her parents, Oleksa and Katerina Palyshnuik, plus her younger brother, Wasyl (Bill), and an infant sister, Anna. Mom often told us how her brother Bill, had been reared on tea and honey or potato water and then on food chewed by his mother because milk was unavailable as Grandmother was nursing the infant sister. With them also came Mom’s grandparents Nykola and Horpyna Boyko and grandmother’s siblings, Ivan, Kondra, Tykyna, Marczia and Demko Boyko.

Grandmother and grandfather and their family and grandmother’s brother Demko, settled in Manitoba, in the Mossy River municipality north of Dauphin, but the four other siblings, two brothers Ivan, and Kondra, and two sisters Tykyna and Marczia, went on to Saskatchewan into the Norquay, Pelly, Arran, Swan Plain areas. Grandfather secured a homestead in the bush country ten or fifteen miles east of Ethelbert in the Zelena District where my mother was raised along with her other ten siblings that were born after their arrival in Canada. By the time my father arrived in 1909, my grandparents were established. When Mom and Dad married in 1914 my grandparents were able to supply their newly married eldest daughter with a cow and a few chickens to start them off.

After clearing the land, building a house and putting in the crop, my dad went out to work on the railroad or hired himself out to wherever he could find work – anything that would bring in an extra dollar to help him launch himself and support his growing family. Mom stayed home and took care of the children and the farm. (When we checked the 1916 census, dad was not even listed as a resident of the region as he was out working. Mom was listed as the head of the household with a daughter Nellie, (my oldest sister who was born in 1915).  It was thanks to these outside jobs and earnings that they were eventually able to buy some machinery and livestock to establish what they deemed a reasonable livelihood. They raised a family of six children, Nellie, Nick, Mike, Anne, Helen and Petrunka (Betty). My dad served on the Skala School Board where my older siblings attended classes.

Resourceful and self-reliant, Dad not only erected the buildings on his homestead, but he also made most of their furniture, utensils and anything else they needed. He constructed a little boga (kind of little open carriage) utilizing old wheels that he salvaged from old discarded farm equipment. They utilized that boga for transport to town, to the neighbours, or wherever they had to go. Pulled originally by one horse, then, later by two, it was not big enough to hold more than two adults and a child or two, but they used it till they retired in 1950 when they sold the farm, the equipment, the cattle, and retired to the village of Ethelbert. That boga was unique. There was not another one like it in the whole area.

That’s me reading on the boga.

Another significant memory of that original farm yard in Ukraina was the zuravelle (a mechanism my Dad fashioned to help Mother to draw water out of the well.) It was a long pole balanced on the fulcrum frame.  On one end of the pole was a pail full of rocks and the other end had a hook and a rope that hung down. This served instead of a pulley. Mom would pull the rope down, attach a pail to the hook, and lower it into the well. When the pail was full of water, she drew it up easily using the pail of rocks as a counterweight. I thought (and still do) that this was a resourceful way to ease an otherwise difficult chore.

I can also still picture the wooden baby bath that Dad had carved out of a big log. He hollowed it out deep and smooth and it served to bath each of his eight children till the age of three. I recall also, that huge round deep wooden mixing bowl (a makeetra) another piece of his handiwork that Mother used to mix the bread in. With a big family, mom baked bread often, as many as 20 to 30 loaves at a time using the Pyets, an outdoor clay bake oven constructed out of logs and a lot of clay inside and outside to make it durable and able to withstand the elements and the heat from the recurring fires that they built inside whenever mother had to bake anything. When the fire was down to just embers, these were carefully levelled out on the floor of the oven. The loaves would then be placed into the oven by a big, long wooden spatula (lopata) that dad had fashioned out of a long tree trunk. The door to the oven was then tightly closed and the bread or other food was left there to bake or roast until done. I can still smell the delectable aroma of that bread as mom lifted each loaf out of the oven with the long lopata. Occasionally, we even had some fresh butter, from Dad’s home-made churn, to put on the bread, but most often it was the ever plentiful wild cranberry jam that accompanied that, hot from the oven, staple delicacy.

Mom didn’t have jars at that time so the cranberry jam was stored in big earthenware crocks that were sealed with wax at the top. Because there was no refrigeration, Dad had dug a deep hole in the ground, framed it with logs inside to keep it from collapsing and covered it with about four feet of sod on top. This created an underground cold storage. We called it the Root House. In the spring, he always cut big slabs of ice and packed it with sawdust along the walls. This kept everything either solid frozen or just close to it so we had decent food refrigeration in summer. A pig was slaughtered every few months but during summer time, the meat was further prevented from spoilage by marinating it in salt brine. My jowls still cringe at the memory of that salt pork. No matter how much mom soaked it in clear water before cooking, it was always salty. We ate a lot of salt in those days. I guess it was a common and easily available preservative. Garden produce and wild fruits, (strawberries, saskatoon, raspberries, chokecherries, pincherries, nannyberries, cranberries), wild mushrooms, (especially morels in the spring, red tops in summer and pidpenky in the fall), as well as vegetables and wild hazelnuts were always utilized to supplement the diet, either fresh, preserved or dried. Mom always put up a full 45 gallon wooden barrel of sauerkraut with some whole cabbage mixed in among the sauerkraut. The whole cabbage was used later for leaves to make holoptsie, (buckwheat or rice cooked with bits of bacon and onion and then wrapped in a sour cabbage leaf and placed in a roaster and baked.) My mom never used tomatoes or tomato juice like modern folks do.

We never had wild meat because my dad never went hunting game as he could not walk long distances because of the leg he had broken early during their marriage while trying to bury a huge rock on the farm. He had dug a hole in the ground to bury it in but before he could get out of the hole the rock fell in and crushed his leg. After that accident, that leg, though it mended eventually, left him in much pain and with a profound limp for the rest of his life. They could not afford a doctor or hospital to set it right so he convalesced at home. However it limited Dad’s mobility for distance walking. Our meat, therefore, came from pigs that they butchered themselves or freshly killed chickens raised on the farm. Occasionally we also raised turkeys, geese and ducks and, for a few years, Dad even raised some sheep, but the meat staple was always chicken and pork. We never had beef because cattle were for milk or to be sold for cash (though prices for cattle were cheap and freight cost for shipping was high). Cattle were also seldom slaughtered because large amounts of meat could not be safely refrigerated for long periods.

Cucumbers were also dilled in a 45-gallon wooden barrel. (Because dills could not be frozen, the dill barrel was kept in the hay corner of the horse barn. That place was cool and clean. The sauerkraut barrel stood frozen outside, behind the house. When mom wanted sauerkraut, she simply took a big knife and chopped some chunks of frozen sauerkraut, brought it into the house, thawed it out with hot water and she was ready to prepare dinner. The barrels were always empty by the time next summer rolled around, even when we moved to Kulish and there were only five of us. We must have consumed an awful lot of dill pickles and sauerkraut during those years. Dad’s favourite meal was sauerkraut and salt pork, served with mounds of mashed potatoes. I don’t know how our older siblings enjoyed this fare, as they were out working in the city by the time John and I were old enough to understand) but neither John, nor I, perceived this as such a treat. Growing up, I remember those robust meals, also, perogies, lots of chicken (freshly killed, of course) and only occasionally, lamb, turkey, goose or duck. I recall rabbit sometimes (snared), and young pigeons.

Dad milled his own flour by taking a load of wheat every fall to the Sifton Flour Mill. He would come back with bags and bags of flour, grits, (which we used as breakfast cereal), bran for baking (and for feeding to young pigs, because there was always a lot of bran.) These were apparently long-standing traditions in our family that started early in their marriage but they continued on into Kulish when I was growing up.

We never bought coffee. Mom would roast barley in the oven. Then we had a little hand mill that Dad would specially set to remove the chaff as one of us kids cranked the wheel that worked it. Then he reset the mill to grind and out came freshly ground coffee that Mom mixed with chicory (bought at the store). Because that coffee was caffeine-free, kids could drink it along with the adults. (I still enjoy Caf-Lib and Krakus because it’s made from roasted grain. I avoid regular coffee because caffeine raises my blood pressure.) Thus, through determination, hard work and perseverance, my folks established a good life for themselves. Things were going well in spite of the dirty thirties that, to me, were only stories I heard in later years.

It was 1933, (still on the original homestead) when tragedy struck. My brother Nick contracted polio. He was fifteen at the time. I can still recall, when I was fifteen, my oldest sister, Nellie, and my brother Mike sobbed out pieces of the story how my frantic parents hitched up the horses to a wagon, made as comfortable a bed as possible for him there, and drove Nick, screaming in pain, to the hospital in Dauphin some thirty miles away. With medicare totally unheard of at the time, they knew that this could cost them everything they owned just to pay for Nick’s medical care but they were desperate to save their son and knew that keeping him home would cost Nick his life.  Still, after a couple of distressing weeks, their beloved son passed away from a disease that claimed many a victim during those awful years. Mom and Dad were devastated and to add to their sorrow, they had incurred a mountain of debt in doctor and medical bills. This meant almost starting from scratch again, but, with five children still requiring care, they could afford neither to lax in their resolve nor to wallow in their sorrow. 

With the dogged tenacity, they fought their way back to master their destiny. Dad went back to work off the farm to earn extra cash and mother remained on the farm. With the help of the older kids she managed to keep the farm operational and, with Dad’s earnings on the railroad, they started to pay off their debts. Dad hated those railroad jobs where he had to bunk in cabooses full of other desperate men. These makeshift living quarters were infested with rats, bed bugs and other kinds of other pests. Dad often related horror stories about being in bed and as soon as the lights went out the creepy creatures would emerge, biting, tickling and not letting them sleep. (The very thought of those bed bugs sends shivers up my spine even now, though I have never actually seen the creatures myself, and I hope I never will.) Still, Dad could not give up. He persevered because he had debts to repay and being a proud and independent man, Dad hated being beholding to anyone.

Through it all, Dad could not forget Nick. He mourned his lost son and could not be consoled. Nellie married the spring of 1934 and Mike, into his teens then, was left to carry much of the load of farm work. With Dad still brooding about his lost son, Mike felt hurt.  Why could his father not just appreciate the son he still had? Dad did not realize how much distress his unrelenting sorrow for Nick was causing for Mike.

When Mom became pregnant in 1935, Mike realized Dad was still trying to replace his beloved lost son in spite of their advancing age. Mike must have felt like chopped liver. Just fourteen years old then, he packed his bags and left home, vowing not to return because he was not appreciated. Dad felt Mike was being unreasonable. Mike felt his feelings of rejection were equally valid.

Still, according to my sister, Nellie, Dad was excited about Mom’s pregnancy because he fully expected another son. Only he was in for a bitter disappointment. The morning after I was born, when Dad came to tell Nellie that Mom had delivered, she asked what they got. Very dejectedly, Dad informed her, Ehh, drooha telychka. (Oh, just another little heifer). My sister always teased me about being Dad’s telychka (heifer). Anyway they tried again and my younger brother, John, came along in September, a year and a half after me. Mike never came back home till I was seven years old. He just could not get over the pain of Dad not appreciating him when he was there.

John and I grew up together, almost as a second family. I was proud of being older, even though it meant I often got blamed when something went wrong because I was supposed to be taking care of my little brother. Still, John and I got along well. I did not feel unappreciated or neglected. I was proud to be the older sister, especially after my birthday in February, when I would get two years of age between us. Then, in September, after John’s birthday, he would be right behind me again. I was always afraid he would catch up to me in age. We knew our older sisters only