Bachelor Bess Winter Story

March 6, 1915 / Van Metre, South Dakota
To Mrs. M. M. Corey

You never in your life saw such a bunch of weather as we're having. It has been snowing for about a week almost constantly. There hasn't been much wind but I never saw so much snow in my life. Last Wednesday morning it was so deep that Mr. Newlin went ahead of me to the railroad gate to break the way a little for me and it was so hard to get through then that I knew by night I couldn't make it so I just camped at the school house. Mrs. Seieroe heard about it Thursday so Thursday evening Andrew [Seieroe] came for me. He took me to school yesterday morning but I had no pupils except Peter [Seieroe] and the Mathews. The whole bunch looked like boys for the only way the girls could make it was to put on overalls. Andrew came for Peter and I last evening. We like to never have got here. If this keeps up I don't know what will happen. Stock is suffering now in places. Mr. Putnam and Andrew started to walk to Wendte on the track but got in up to their waists and gave it up and came back. Am afraid it will be to omuch for the snow plows if it keeps on. Won't the river howl when this goes off.

BB

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 edited by Philip L. Gerber

Winter Gardening

Saturday, February 25

Everybody's talking about the springlike temperatures, including me. And why not? Today was so warm—in the upper fifties to low sixties—I didn't even need a sweater. But how about the sun? Nobody's been talking about the astonishing show it's been putting on this month. Out and about for twenty-two consecutive days, during a period when it normally shines no more than fifty percent of the time. Oh yes, some days, like yesterday, the sun's been visible just half of the day and off duty the rest. And some days, it's been flickering on and off as rapidly as the moving clouds. But many of the days, like this one, it's been luminous from start to finish, as if it were July rather than February.

I've been paying special attention to it not only because of these reports but also because of my gardening. The green world, after all, is a gift of the sun. And when it disappears as it did for almost two months during the flood of '93, the harvest is grim. Dead fruit trees, shriveled grapes, thwarted melon vines, rotting onions, diseased tomato plants, smutty corn. The rains contributed to those problems, of course, but the rain alone would not have been so damaging had it alternated with even brief periods of sunlight. Sometimes, I think the deepening depressiveness of that long dark summer could only have been cured by the long sunny fall that followed.

From Carl H. Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook

Winter Sport

Even when the backwaters of our part of the River were still icebound, we would see small flocks of Canada geese—vanguards of the thousands that waited downstate in Little Egypt, conscious of the growing duration and intensity of daylight and chafing to be on their way north. No sooner had ice left the Alton Pool than diving ducks began to arrive—the scaup, goldeneyes, and buffleheads that would soon be augmented by redheads and canvasbacks. Pintails were among the first of the puddle ducks, up from the Lacassine and Sabine country of Southern Louisiana, pulled up the ancient migration routes by clouds of lesser snow geese. Mallards were coming in, too, and in a few weeks the smaller puddlers, the teal and wood ducks, would be arriving. So would the shore birds, the killdeers and sandpipers and the big Caspian terns and delicate least terns, the great blue herons and white herons. On my first crappie expedition of the year, a yellow-crowned night heron stalked to within thirty feet of me and we exchanged unspoken pleasantries—one fisherman to another.

Muskrats and beaver are out again and working; our eagles are gone, but the bull cardinals are hollering from the treetops and Doc Kozicky opines that he'll trade a winter eagle for a spring cardinal any day. From upriver comes word that a near-record walleye has been boated during a late snow squall. Spring, as Horace Walpole once observed, has set in with its usual severity.

We'll take it any way it comes.

From John Madson's Up on the River: People and Wildlife of the Upper Mississippi

Comfort Foods from Iowa

Beef Stroganoff

2 pounds round steak, cut into strips or cubes

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 cup butter

4 green onions or 1 tablespoon minced onion

5 tablespoons flour

1 can beef broth

1 teaspoon prepared mustard

1 6-ounce can mushrooms, drained

1/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup cooking sherry

Brown seasoned meat in butter; add onion and brown slowly. Stir flour into meat and onions. Add beef broth and bring to boil, stirring constantly. Turn heat to low; stir in mustard. Cover and simmer for 1 hour or until meat is tender. Add mushrooms, sour cream, and sherry. (Heat just to boiling point.) Salt to taste; serve with hot rice or noodles. Serves 6.

Neighboring on the Air: Cooking with the KMA Radio Homemakers, by Evelyn Birkby

Winter Bird

Downy Woodpecker
Picoides pubescens

In fall and early winter, male and female downies maintain separate territories. Each bird excavates its own roost. In late winter, each member of a pair selects its own drumming post and the drumming duets begin. Over the next several months, the mates will increasingly synchronize their activities. After beginning several excavations, the pair will finally agree on a nest site in dead wood twelve to thirty feet above ground. Both sexes excavate the cavity, which is usually camouflaged by surrounding lichen or moss. The four to five eggs hatch in about twelve days. Both adults incubate and later brood and feed the nestlings. The male may do most of the brooding. The young leave the nest at about three weeks of age and remain near their parents for around three more weeks. In winter, adults and juveniles often forage with other small birds.

Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest, watercolors by Dana Gardner, text by Nancy Overcott

Bachelor Bess Winter Story

February 14, 1914 / Fort Pierre, South Dakota
To Mrs. M. M. Corey

Plague take that ground hog! We had such swell weather—was as warm as spring. The last day of January they were worrying over not having any ice. The river seemed going out and they say if the ice goes out before the 10th of February it doesn't freeze again. But that ground hog settled that. He put his nose out just at the wrong time. Then it kept getting colder and colder till the night of the 4th when we had a howling blizzard[;] it lasted all day the next day and the following day (Friday) I made it to school tho few did. The cold was intense. Grant froze his nose and toes just going to the barn. I made my twelve miles that Friday and only frosted my feet. Saturday was a fright again but it moderated a little and I made it to school O.K. We had another howling storm all day Wednesday so I stayed at Donahues that night. Stayed again Friday night in hopes that I could get to town yesterday with Mr. D but it stormed to beat the [railroad] cars yesterday and is at it today. They are out of groceries and coal so Mr. D is going to try to make it in this afternoon and out tomorrow but its fierce. Thought I'd let you know I was O.K. and won't try to drive till its better.

Well I must close. Don't worry about me.
Lovingly yours,
Bachelor Bess

Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919 edited by Philip L. Gerber

Winter Gardening

Tuesday, February 14

Thirteen above this morning—a balmy start by comparison with the last several days. A good omen for St. Valentine's. But when I put Pip out on his leash, the air must've hit me the wrong way because it suddenly felt intolerable. So cold, so harsh, I didn't even want to look at the sky or eyeball the backyard or anything else outside. I just wanted to get back in as fast as I could. And when I got back inside, something inside me screamed out what I was feeling just then in every part of my being. "I've had it. Had it with the cold, the wind, the ice, the ice-covered driveway, the ice park over the backyard, the iced-over sidewalks, the iced-up car, my ice-nipped ears and toes and fingertips. And the heavy clothing. And the dry air. And the overheated rooms. Everything." Or words to that effect. 

But Kate was still asleep. I didn't want to wake her up. And besides, the feeling passed so quickly I was left musing upon the suddenness of its appearance, as if out of nowhere. Like the dream I'd had just a few hours earlier about the end of the semester. It was the last week of classes, or perhaps exam week, or the week after graduation. No one around. And I was wandering the hallways, looking for someone to talk to, to have coffee with. But all the offices were shut. And no signs of light or life were visible in the gaps between the office doors and the floor. I was standing alone in an empty hallway, in an empty building. Not an uncommon experience when school is out. And sometimes, in fact, a pleasurable image to contemplate, especially in the midst of a semester when the press of students and committees becomes unbearable. But in my dream last night, I felt desolate beyond belief, with a great heaving in my chest. An anguish so intense I was on the verge of tears. And then I awoke, shaking. And then it gradually came to me that I must have been grieving the prospect of my retirement. A strange twist, given the pleasure I've had this semester, on "phased-in retirement," teaching only one course with just a dozen students and a few auditors, who leave me almost completely free to write my daily reports and to contemplate the time when I'll be completely free to write, travel, and garden as I wish. I thought I'd adjusted to the chilly side of retirement just as I thought I'd adjusted to the harshness of winter, except, of course, for a few qualms now and then, like the ones I had a couple of weeks ago. But when all is said and done, it must be that I'm troubled by a long run of bitterly cold weather, no matter where it occurs—wide awake or in a dream, in an empty hallway or right outside the back door. This winter watch is getting closer to home than I imagined.

From Carl H. Klaus's Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook