Garden
Where do Springhill Colony’s fresh fruit and vegetables come from? The garden provides approximately 95 people in Springhill with vegetables and some other foods every year. What do we do with our produce? We eat, can, or freeze everything we need for the winter and sell the remaining.
A garden this size needs lots of skilled and capable pairs of hands, so most of the girls over 15 and women come to the garden to work. Joe and Lena Hofer have been working in the garden since 1978, 23 years. In 2003, they finally retired and Harry and Carol Wollmann took over the garden.
“I like the feeling of freshly plowed soil, fresh air, and the amazement of a small seed growing into a small plant or vegetable!” commented gardeners Harry and Carol.
“I dislike the bugs that you have to watch all season long, especially on certain vegetables,” says gardener Carol. “And have to use chemicals, because it’s not healthy for people, and I dislike working when the mosquitoes are out and bite you.” explains Carol.
Challenges are also a part of the garden. Some of the challenges associated with the garden are trying to make sure the plants get enough food and fertilizer throughout the year. The weather can also be a challenge. When it rains too much, the seeds rot. When it doesn’t rain enough, the seeds don’t grow. And hailstorms wreck the plants. The gardeners always hope to get just enough rain and not to much sun.
In the 80’s and 90’s the women and girls over 15 used to get a ride to the garden. The gardener used his tractor to pull a trailer with seats on there for the garden workers to sit on, then the gardener drove the tractor to the garden. But the trailer broke down in 1996 and no one bothered fixing it. After that, everyone started walking and riding a bike to the garden. We usually transport our produce with a gator and trailer and sometimes and tractor and trailer.
The equipment that Springhill colony uses in the garden changed a little, but we still have some old equipment. In the 80’s, we had a 1070 John Deere tractor, which we traded for a KUBOTA tractor. We have had 4 different gators, but we still have a 50-year old potato digger and a 20-year old tiller. We also have new trailers that we transport our produce with. We store most of our equipment in our garden shack.
The use of chemicals has really decreased in the Springhill Colony garden. The gardeners try to use as few chemicals as possible and strive to grow more organic foods. Organic means to get more natural. The pair fertilizes the garden every 2 years.
“We irrigate the garden at odd times, only if we have to, on certain plants,” states retired gardener Lena, “We also depend on rain for irrigation.
I hope you learned very much about Gardening. Garden is very important in Hutterite colonies, because it supplies the colony with fresh vegetables.
Caleb Wollmann
