The Sleepover

“Button, button, who’s got the button?”

My Great-Grandma Deloris Karels repeated this simple phrase as my cousin, sister, and I slowly walked her living room searching for that button. All she did was hide one somewhere and yet, we were so excited to find it.

“Maren is getting colder. Oh, Mackenzie is getting very hot!”

There was no special prize for finding the button and as it was only the four of us in Grandma K’s apartment, there was no audience to applaud our triumphs. Sometimes the winner was allowed to hide the button next, but the three of us usually let Grandma K hide it again. While she did, we would wait in her powdery perfumed bedroom. My sister couldn’t contain her excitement from the suspense and would bury her face in the bed. My cousin and I liked to look at all the old pictures that were stuck in the vanity mirror above Grandma’s silver backed hairbrush, comb, and mirror set.

When Button, Button finally lost its charm, Grandma K had many more old-fashioned games to entice us. She was always fond of games. Three other elderly ladies lived in the building and they all often met Grandma K for a game of cards. Naturally, we had already played a few games of Go Fish and Old Maid. Caffeine from the coffee Grandma K had let us have—or should I say creamer and sugar with a splash of coffee—pulsed through us late into the night. My cousin, sister, and I were meant to be having a special sleepover at Grandma K’s apartment, but it seemed more like we were being encouraged to test our limits without the supervision of our parents.

The caffeine made us all the more eager to try more of Grandma K’s games. We moved on to Clothespin Drop, which is exactly like what it sounds. Each of us took a turn during a round in which we tried to drop old clothespins into a large mason jar from varying heights. First we knelt on a chair and then later we stood on it to make aiming more difficult. I don’t remember who was better that night, but I do remember how much fun the games were.

Once we finally started to tucker out, Grandma K played on her air organ—or did she play some harmonica? She was very musically talented and could play equally well on both instruments. We didn’t want the night to end, but it had to. The three of us squeezed into the big bed in Grandma K’s spare room and quickly fell asleep, dreaming of our somewhat rebellious night, one of the best sleepovers we had all had.

At Grandma K's apartment, 2001.
Me, Grandma K, William, Mom, Maren

A Bit of Earth

Mary in the garden.
Image courtesy of mickiemuellerart

“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.

“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“To plant seeds in–to make things grow–to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.

He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.

“Do you–care about gardens so much,” he said slowly.

“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”

Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.

“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.

“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want," with something like a smile, “take it, child, and make it come alive.”

--From The Secret Garden, Chapter XII, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mary, Dickon, & Colin.
Image courtesy of studentfashionblog

At our old house in Arizona, my sister and I would sometimes play in the entryway courtyard. It was the most random place—a small square of plant life off to the side of the eight-foot walkway to our front door. To get to it, someone would have to enter the wrought iron gate from outside or from inside through the front door. Now that I think about it, it was our own little “secret” green space. 

But what I wanted, what I was enamored of ever since my Dad read the book to me, was a garden like Mary's in The Secret Garden, sprawling, behind a high wall where I could retreat or share in adventures with friends like Dickon and Colin. 

Living in Arizona, though, I was surrounded by the varying browns and reds of the desert, the sand and rocks, sturdy but thin and rough trees with tiny short leaves and of course, a multitude of cactus species.  I mean, it lacks so much true “greenery” that when my family visited Orlando, Florida while my sister and I were in late elementary school, my sister exclaimed “It’s so green here!” as we descended into our landing pattern. The old people seated around us thought she was hilarious. Then I moved to Los Angeles for undergraduate school and there was even less green. I look out my apartment window to the Astroturf in the courtyard below. If I’m on the rooftop, the only unpaved land I see with palm trees and short grasses and weeds are along the sidewalks or the 110 underpass. Of course, just across the street lies the most greenery around: on USC’s campus, with the major exception of properties that lie in the Exposition Park corridor on the other side of campus.

I think this continual lack of greenery drove me to make sure my college apartments always had living color in them. My penchant for weekly Starbucks couldn’t compete with the cheer brought by a bimonthly purchase of a cheap grocery store bouquet. With the right amount of water mixtures and stem trimmings, I managed to keep the bouquets looking beautiful for a couple weeks at a time. When hardier blossoms, like roses, were in the mix, I would sometimes hang them upside down like an old apothecary might to dry them out and later use them in a longer lasting display.

In preparation for college life, one of my roommates, Katherine, bought a plant from Ikea. She thought it was fake her entire freshman year. It was a hardy tropical succulent—named Melvin—but all the same, it needed some TLC by our sophomore year. Somehow I became its guardian. Once we made our final move junior year to the place we live now, we invested in a lavender plant, another succulent, and the small cactus sampler my roommate had inherited from a fellow intern over the summer. That was a surprising challenge. The cacti sampler was one of those souvenir dishes you can buy at a grocery store. They are everywhere in Arizona. It was dying and I discovered the soil was covered in a layer of gravel hot glued together. The “soil” underneath was dusty and full of Styrofoam pieces from who knows where. But with a little trial and error and determination, I saved the sampler but eventually created a monster. While all the cacti thrived under the extra attention, one did more than the others. It was like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Over the next month, it became stronger while the others shriveled up and died, one by one. Each time I carefully removed a dead one and righted the rest of the sampler, I imagined the cactus yelling, “Feed me Seymour!” One morning, I found the cactus collapsed, snapped right at its base. I had stopped watering it about a month prior when I thought it was reserving too much water in itself after sucking the life from the others. It was over indulged; too fat and heavy for its shallow dish and thus its own good. I imagine it died of happiness.  

The cacti sampler was a strange phase and although the lavender quickly died due to lack of proper light, the new succulent (officially belonging to another roommate, Keiko) flourished alongside Melvin, the tropical plant. When Keiko moved out this past semester, she took her nearly one foot tall succulent with her. Melvin, is still thriving and more lush than ever. But my pride and joy lies in the red glazed terracotta pot on the window ledge.

Wall-E, the tiny lemon tree.

One of the ways I occupied myself while I lived in L.A. over the summer, without my roommates around to distract me, was to attempt to grow a plant from a seed. I did it on a whim one night while making pasta, and soaked the seeds from the lemon I was zesting in a mug of water. A day later, I prepared the seeds according to a nursery website in a small jam jar with leftover soil from the dead lavender plant’s tin bucket that I am so glad I kept. I covered it with plastic wrap to create a miniature green house effect and waited. To my surprise and extreme delight hardly a week later, one of the seeds had sprouted and was just poking up through the soil. I was so proud of myself!

I transplanted the growing sprout from the jam jar to a small vase and nursed it all summer and even ventured to the closest Home Depot to pick up more potting soil and a larger container, one meant for plants this time. I went back and forth between the sky blue and burnished red glazed pots, settling on the latter. I found the process of raising the plant from its humble beginnings to be extremely exciting--I still do! My lemon tree has even been christened Wall-E, for the Disney/Pixar robot by my roommate, Selby. To her, my lemon tree represents the hope of the tiny plant in that movie which serendipitously sprouted in a world dominated by trash.

Wall-E and the plant.
Courtesy of Disney Blogs

Can a green thumb and predilection for nature run in the family? I think it must--not only do I come from a family of farmers, but also a long line of people who tend smaller vegetable garden patches and flower beds. I will always remember late autumns at our house in Rochester, Minnesota, when my parents, especially my Dad, would be working hard to cover the flower beds with Styrofoam buckets to preserve the marigolds and roses throughout the winter. At their old house, my grandparents had several huge plots of flowers and vegetables. I always enjoyed the scent of earthy soil on the air when I would play outside. Even at their townhouse, they continue to grow vegetables in a patch right outside the backdoor, which are always so fresh and delicious.

I have attempted to include the basil plants that are sold downstairs at the Fresh and Easy Express in our windowsill garden. I can usually make them last for a couple of months before they deteriorate from the lack of proper sunlight in our inward-facing apartment. That has been a satisfying project. On Saturday mornings, I love to pluck a few of the basil leaves and add them to an omelet. If I could, I would have my own small garden to tend and have the ability to harvest the fruits of my labor, quite literally. But the ultimate dream is still to surround myself with greenery and flowering plants, perhaps in a sprawling English style garden to laze away my afternoons in.

Scenes of Summer

I smile at the smell of freshly cut grass and soil in the air. I am instantly transported back to Minnesota. In my imagination, the grass is thick and green, a lush carpet beneath my toes; not spotty yellow patches that are scorched under the Arizona sun or dying of thirst in the California drought. But the smell I'm thinking of--USC Facilities Management didn’t put that scent on the air. It was my Dad and his small gas-powered lawn mower. It was always him versus the dandelions, though I never understood why they need to go when the marigolds and roses are so well tended.

In a moment, I can be back on that lawn, kneeling in my blue Sleeping Beauty nightgown, trying to perfect the quintessential princess pose. There's my tree swing—before my cousin broke the branch—and the many fallen crabapples from the trees that line the chain-link fence. I climb the bright red porch in Rochester to sit on the striped lounge. I like to sit here. The puffy plastic fabric feels cool in the humidity. I study the nest where we can usually watch the baby birds call for their mom. I taste freshly shucked sweet corn.

More scenes from summer: My sister and I are covered in chalk. I can smell the powdery substance on my forearms. But we are never close to being done. She races our Fisher Price Cozy Coupe down the colorfully doodled “street” in a manner and speed that would have impressed the Flintstones. Our feet are dull grey by this time--a combination of too many colors (and dirt) after walking the chalked rooms of our dream homes and hopscotch halls. But we've finally connected our half of the street mural to the neighbor's, Rachel, my friend who is my age. Tomorrow, we plan to expand even further. Covered in color and designs, the entire neighborhood is a child-artists' colony, rivaled in décor only by the striking kolams of Indian festivals.

And more: I'm back in Lester Prairie where my brother, sister, and I run and play barefoot in the grass, retrieving all manner of summer toys from the musty wooden tool shed. I take a long time to pick out the next activity just because I like to stand inside the shed and breathe its earthy air. I return with hula-hoops and another onset of itches from fresh mosquito bites. But we end up playing a game that involves weaving though the clean towels and sheets on the line as they flap in the breeze. If only detergent bottles could really trap that scent. Purist that I am, I’m always left disappointed in my apartment laundry room.

When we become tired, we flop down on our backs to watch the clouds roll overhead. The mellow tones of the various wind chimes are soon overwhelmed by the sounds of conversation. The rest of the family has arrived. I smell citronella candles and calamine lotion. The sickly pink-purple of Benadryl slides down my throat and coats my tongue in a furry sort of way. But I’ll do anything to reduce the swelling of those mosquito bites. “It’s because you’re sweet” doesn’t make me feel better. But the summer snack assortment does. I return for slice after slice of summer sausage, handfuls of Old Dutch Dill Pickle flavored chips, and especially to the tins of sweet and dense O’Henry bars.

I could simply call my mom for the O'Henry Bars recipe and mix up a batch in my Los Angeles apartment. But would it really taste like summer in Minnesota? Not a chance.

The Minnesota Pickle

My sister, Maren, and I eating pickles in our Arizona home.

Ask anyone what my favorite food is, and they probably will answer with pickles. The other probable answer is chocolate, but that’s a tale for another time. There is never a shortage of pickles at my house or a family gathering. Whether it’s Christmas dinner, a smaller meal or appetizers that are pulled out while socializing, pickles always make an appearance in the nostalgic crystal pickle serving dishes. In more casual moments at my house, when we can’t wait to satisfy our pickle craving, we eat pickles right out of the jar. All you need is a fork to spear your chosen pickle to have the perfect snack.

During my brief stint in a sorority, my shortened pledge name became “pickles”. Due to the food’s unusual place in my heart, at our retreat, I had had to improvise a children’s story about a little pickle lady whose pickles had been eaten. But my outward show for my favorite food had started long before that. I wrote about them in an elementary school assignment, complete with a picture of my favorite brand.

Elementary School tribute to my favorite food.

Everything I wrote then still rings true today. Pickles, store-bought or home-canned, are the perfect combination of a salty and sour, yet somehow sweet, crunch. They are always best served chilled, either right out of the fridge or from the depths of the cool pantry in the basement, though I have been known to pop open a room-temperature jar as soon as it arrives home from the grocery store. When all the pickles are gone, my Dad and I will even scoop the jar clean of its dill and garlic pieces.

As my artwork affirms, my favorite store-bought pickles are Gedney’s Baby Baby Dills, specifically the Minnesota State Fair Award-Winning Recipe of Kathy Earnest. Her recipe won the Blue Ribbon in the Gedney competition and earned her a special place in pickle history, among 11 others whose recipes have won and are sold by the Gedney company. Her picture is right on the jar’s label and I even tried my best to emulate that in my artwork.

While Gedney is one of the top pickle producers in the U.S., its products aren’t readily available out west. My family found this out the hard way when we moved out to Arizona in the summer of 1997. We tried other brands, but nothing could match the taste of Gedney and Kathy Earnest’s dill pickles. When my Dad’s parents would drive all the way down from Minnesota to stay in a friend’s vacation trailer for a season, they would bring us an entire cardboard box packed with jars of the State Fair recipe. That was such a treat. My mom would end up almost rationing the pickles to make the supply last as long as it could.

While these pickles hold a special place in my family’s stories, Gedney pickles hold a celebrated spot in Minnesota’s. Matthias Anderson Gedney had worked in various pickling companies on the east coast and eastern edge of the Midwest. In 1879, he moved to Minneapolis to try his own ideas about pickling. He helped to challenge the idea that cucumbers, a semi-tropical vine fruit, couldn’t grow in the fertile farmland of Minnesota. He and his farmers were successful and opened the first Gedney plant in Minneapolis in 1881. The company has expanded and branched out into various pickle and condiment recipes since.

I believe my family’s continued affinity for Gedney pickles is a testament to their legacy. After all, as their jingle goes, “You betcha, Gedney, it’s the Minnesota pickle!”

Down Central Avenue

My grandparents are waiting for us at the baggage claim in the airport. After piling our suitcases into their cold van, we drive off onto the long road that will lead us all the way to Lester Prairie. I read my new book until we reach the farm where Mom once skidded on the ice into the ditch. It was the age before cell phones and the nice farmer had helped her before it got too cold. When we turn on Central Avenue, I already know my way around. There is a cream-colored house with an attic story painted blue. Mom’s cousins used to live there. Then there is the Laundromat. Jonio’s—I love their pizza—and the bank are on the right. The pretty white gazebo is lit up with Christmas lights on the left in the middle of the snow-covered field. If I look hard enough, I can make out the spooky boarded up house at the far end of the field. Grandpa Larry will keep driving past Angvall Hardware and the tiny abandoned gas station with the broken window across the street from the bar. Ahead of us, I can see the curb where we sat for the summer parade. But Grandpa turns off Central before we get to it so that we cross the train tracks. With only two blocks until we get to their house, all I can think about it how much I need to use the bathroom.

My parents give the warning that we are almost into town. My brother and I power down our Game Boys as we pass the Otto’s farm. We turn onto Central Avenue and I feel a funny sadness that the drive is already over. I had been so busy playing as Mario that I had missed some of my favorite familiar sights down the country highway. But the brown brick buildings on Central are always there ready to greet us. The street is hung with its annual tinsel decorations. Jonio’s is now Scooter’s. I look to the second floor of the adjoining building. The Archery Club is unchanged. First Community Bank’s sign flashes to show the dropping temperature. Though you couldn’t tell in the snow, the railroad tracks are gone. We were here the summer the Great Northern Railroad was being dismantled. I remember it because my parents conspired and stole a few of the old rusty spike pegs and stowed them in our luggage. Imagine the TSA’s surprise and confusion when they unwrapped the bubble wrap to find the heavy pieces of metal tucked away between the dirty clothes.

It feels like summer vacation all over again as we drive once more down Central Avenue. Then I remember why we are here and I feel sad again. It is early August and we have returned for the funeral of my Great-Grandma Deloris Karels. We pass Big Don’s Carthedral and I crave the mochachino slushy the Artmanns mixed in their machine every summer—it always felt like a special service done just for me. I could really use the cheer the sweet drink brings. Further down Central Avenue past Angvall Hardware is the Central Café. Two of my cousins were waitresses in the small but very popular restaurant that serves amazing hearty brunches--my favorite kinds of meals. I could use one of those right now, too. The café is the kind of place where families gather or the older generations still meet for coffee and everyone comes out smelling like the kitchen. But what I really love about this place is the embossed tin ceiling signaling the building’s original purpose as a drugstore. Both my mom and Grandma talk about it as the place to go for a sodapop. I imagine the sunny place as its former drugstore self, serving the sodapop-sipping sweethearts with their full-skirts and slicked hair. We won’t be bringing my great-grandma out of her apartment for brunch in the café this time around. Even the spooky old house I call my own still stands, still boarded up and deteriorating in its copse of trees. I want to think it looks a little sadder on this visit just for me.

We are staying at the AmericInn in Waconia again. We take Carver County Road 30 to get into town. I could do this in my sleep. Our rental car, this time from New Jersey, turns past the Lester Prairie Medical Clinic. We pass through the warehouses that line both sides of the avenue. The bank of brown brick buildings on the right has stood for a hundred years. I recently saw a picture from 1922 of Central Avenue looking up towards North Juniper Street. The only major difference from the sepia-toned photograph and one taken today would be the old motorcar on the street. I was so sad to hear that due to an electrical fire this past year, the restaurant on this old block burned down. But just across the street in Central Square Park stands the new gazebo, a sturdier model that recently replaced the white one dating back to 1932. Though the summer grass is patchy from the hot sun, the gazebo's shade is cool and inviting. The granite monuments and flagpoles of the Lester Prairie Veteran’s Memorial are on the corner of the park.  My grandpas' names are engraved in the stone along with other LP vets. A special committee of women like my Grandma take care of the flowers that surround the memorial.

I know precisely when to look back as we turn onto Hickory Street from Central Avenue to see the perfect view of my house. In my mind, the boards melt away, the paint color returns as if brand new, and flower beds sprout in front of the windows. I liken myself to Ms. Honey in Matilda when she takes back her Victorian house from Ms. Trunchbull. I’ve imagined the place as my own home or a small historical museum. Recently, I learned that it was originally built as the Klatt Hotel in 1910 before it became what my parents remember: the Alice Haney Nursing Home and later a private residence. I add bed and breakfast to my list of possibilities as we drive further from Central Avenue towards my cousin’s house.

Document Chronicles: Christian & Henriette Jaekel, Part Two

As I discussed in my previous Document Chronicles post, the young Jaekel family immigrated to America from their small manorial villages in West Prussia. They arrived in the United States on August 1, 1863. Many relatives traveled with Christian and Henriette Jaekel and their two children including Henriette’s parents, uncle and his family, and brother and his family. The Boettcher research team could not determine which port city these immigrants entered the U.S. from or how they traversed the land to reach Minnesota. However, the main points for Germans in this period were New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans. This ocean journey usually took four to six weeks unless the immigrants travelled by steamship, which cut the entire trip in half. Oftentimes, immigrants then worked their way up the Mississippi River by steamboats. We believe the families then came up the Minnesota River to Carver, Minnesota, where the other leg of their journey began through the forest to reach Waconia.

A bit about the Waconia Township, as researched by the Boettchers:

The first settlers called this lake Clear Water Lake, which remains its official name today. The Sioux Indians used the name “Meyday Wa Koni Ya”, meaning “Lake of the Spring." The Dakot aSiux spelling later became “Waconia” which translates “out of water comes life." Most of the land that bordered the lake was claimed by 1858. Settlers soon realized the value of the lake and also were drawn by the beauty of the lake.

I already consider the Jaekels and other pioneers some kind of hopeless romantics. They journeyed so far to come to a new land and language to find what was called for a long time "The Great American Desert." The Great Plains were sculpted by glaciers, giving the land its characteristic rolling hills and innumerable lakes. Once covered in a shallow sea, the prairie was made up of layers of sediments that later allowed certain crops to thrive. However, while government propaganda spread the word of the gratifying pioneers, they neglected to mention the droughts, tornadoes, fierce blizzards and subzero temperatures, among other things, that these same pioneers had been experiencing. But still the new waves of immigrant pioneers were determined and hopeful that they could make a happy life here.

Carver County Minnesota. The Waconia Township is highlighted in yellow. Carver, MN is highlighted pink right along the Minnesota River.

By the time the Jaekels arrived, Minnesota was celebrating its fifth year as a state. But much of its land was yet unclaimed. Farther out from the lakes lay the treeless prairie, like the southern area just outside the township where the Jaekels’ land lay. Though it had its share of flaws, the Waconia area and surrounding Carver County was, indeed, in a valuable position with great farming potential. Carver, Minnesota, the major town on the Minnesota River was only 13 miles from Waconia.  From there, steamboats that travelled up and down the river, connecting with the Mississippi could easily get building materials, household goods, equipment, etc. to the nearby towns. The rivers and lakes provided plenty of fish and the prairie grasslands were full of wild game to supplement what farming put on the table.

The Patent-Deeds in the Jaekel Family Booklet supply an interesting story about the history and possession of Carver County lands. The experience of reading and decoding them has ultimately been a simultaneous refresher and giver of life to all the American history I have ever learned. Who would have ever thought that territory prairie would pass through several very different hands to become farmland typical of Middle America?

In return for his service in the Mexican-American War, the U.S. government under Abraham Lincoln deeded a Private Matias De Lion of the Captain Lakewood Company of the New Mexico Volunteers land in Minnesota. Privates serving for one year or more received 160 acres of land if they applied for reimbursement through the War Bounty-Land Warrants. The government had been giving away territory lands instead of cash rewards since the end of The Revolutionary War. Land Warrant Acts granted around 60 million acres to veterans or their heirs between 1847 and 1855, when the government stopped the program. Most veterans eventually decided not to patent the land warranted to them. Many even sold their warrants to third parties. Private De Lion seems to have either surrendered his patent back to the General Land Office or allowed a transfer to a Michael Beck. There is no indication, so far as can be read, that Beck was a veteran or veteran’s heir who also would have been deeded acreage through the War Bounty-Land Warrants Act.

Patent Deed enacting the transfer to Michael Beck

The transfer from Michael Beck to Christian Jaekel.

However, Beck did decide to sell his parcel of land. Christian and Henriette Jaekel purchased the land for a grand sum of $1,100 dollars. While public land at that time was selling for $1.25 an acre, the Jaekels averaged at approximately $7 an acre. Oftentimes, veterans sold their bounty-land to agents for very little money since they were unaware of the true value. It is unclear whether Michael Beck knew the value of his land or was trying to take advantage of the newly immigrated Germans. Either way, the Jaekels followed through their purchase. The “north west quarter of Section 34 of Township 116 of Range 25” was now theirs. The Jaekels now did not need to worry about proving their mettle under the Homestead Act of 1862, wherein a homesteader settles and farms 160 acres of land for five years in order to earn that land for free. Like my parents, I have always lived under the motto of ‘better to be safe than sorry’. Perhaps that is an inherited sensibility that has lasted throughout the generations.

The Jaekels 160 acres in the Waconia Township.

These hardy pioneer farmers cleared and settled the land only to face two seasons of drought as well as a summer of grasshoppers all within the first five years on their homestead. But German-American farmers were known for their fierce determination and survival instincts. The Jaekels worked wholeheartedly to make this country their new home for their growing family. I think Christian and Henriette’s purchase proved a worthy investment. The Boettchers found the following information in the Farm Census of 1870: “21 acres of improved land and 140 acres of woods. The cash value of the farm was $2,000. The value of the implements and machinery was $150. The value of the livestock was $325, consisting of 2 horses, 2 milk cows, 5 other cattle, 5 sheep, 2 swine, and the value of animals slaughtered was $150. The harvest consisted of Spring Wheat—170 bushels; Indian Corn—50 bushels; Oats—100 bushels; Barley—70 bushels; Wool—10; Butter – 100 pounds; Hay – 7 or 8 tons. The estimated value of farm produce was $500.”

Deed transfer between father and son.

The Jaekel land in 1898, now owned by Hermann.

Hermann, their second son and first American-born, purchased the land from his parents for $2,000. The land was officially transferred on June 16, 1890. Christian and Henriette continued to live on the land with their son and later, grandchildren. Though the land is no longer among the Jaekel descendants, it is still farmed in Waconia today. I just think that the story of the connection between the land and my family is incredibly amazing. There is so much history there. Yet, it is still existing and progressing under the watchful eyes and calloused hands of farmers, all started by the hopeless romanticism and hard work of my ancestors.

Map of Waconia today, still surrounded by operating farmland.
Courtesy of Carver County.