Free Letters From the Lost by Helen Waldstein Wilkes Page A

three books:
    1. Introduction to Vegetable Gardening by Friederich Huck
    2. The Practical Vegetable Gardener by Fr. Saftenberg
    3. The Garden Book for Beginners by Johann Boettner. Wishing you good results, we remain with best regards Yours
    I smile at the end of another letter that Emil Urbach does not sign. His letters are indeed so unique that he need not identify himself. Still, there was nothing in Emil’s world to help him conceptualize the physical demands of life on the farm. He pictured my parents as sitting about on Sundays, eagerly reading horticultural books. The reality was that they worked from darkness to darkness, seven days a week. We ate our evening meal in the kitchen by the thin light of a coal oil lantern. Then, exhausted, my parents fell into bed.
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    BY JULY OF 1939, MY PARENTS had progressed from communal living in Mount Hope to farm ownership with Ludwig and Anny as partners. In a letter from Emil Urbach dated June 11,1939, Emil sends
“a wish that, with God’s help and your own diligence, you become mega-agriculturalists and millionaires.”
Along with congratulations, Emil sends a myriad of new suggestions that might have merit in a modern context. For my overwhelmed parents, it was all too much. They were barely coping, and Emil kept sending suggestions that they could not imagine implementing.
    Dear Gretel and dear Edi,
    Your letter really satisfied us this time because it was very descriptive and contained lots of details that we welcomed. We send you our sincerest congratulations on the advantageous acquisition of the new farm, and wish with God’s help and your own diligence, that you become mega-agriculturalists and millionaires. Of course this is hard when you start small, but slowly but surely it happens , especially if one has the necessary luck in addition and clear-minded determination, with persevereance to last out the setback of all beginnings.
    Before the onset of the rainy season, it would be important to have the roof repaired so that the rain won’t damage the foundations of the interior of the barn. Ask the local authorities whether you can have the water from your well definitively tested. I’msending you (albeit for lack of a German translation) a copy of the Czech regulations regarding wells, so that you will have some points of reference as to how a well should be constituted. The water must not have any aftertaste. If it does, it contains contains abnormal ingredients (perhaps epsom salts or sulphate of magnesia.) This can easily be determined in an apothecary in Hamilton. You then might have “mineral water” to draw off in the house.
    Perhaps you will succeed after all in planting cabbage in the good sandy soil near the little brook. Maybe a small attempt at planting rye in the incipient garden, so that you can find out whether and why it won’t grow there. According to the data in the books on Canada available to me, almost all of our plants grow there, and even several kinds of some plants. Maybe rye too can thrive there, although it is not listed in the kinds of grains that were harvested there in the year 1891.
    If the women do not have to work in the fields, they could accupy themselves with the raising of bees. Then you would have healthful honey in the house. The care and raising of poultry should also be their lot. Maybe you could connect with a veterinarian whose only job would be to supervise the fattening of poultry using kitchen waste. Just make sure to get varieties of poultry that lay lots and that lay early on, so that you can be the first to reach the market with fresh eggs. Whoever brings new or rare things can charge more for them and makes a greater profit on everything. It would be thus for early flowers in spring!
    Unable to grasp the conditions under which we lived, Emil continued urging my parents to install both plumbing and electricity.
    It would be a wonderful thing to get electric lights first, then some sort of reservoir in the