Would you be calm with 1,000 or more expected for dinner, bringing with them big appetites and even bigger expectations that your cooking will be just as good as it’s always been for over 40 years?
You are if you’re a Valley Harvest Maid.
On a sunny August afternoon, a half-dozen women from the farms and towns of the Pembina Valley area are gathered in their kitchen at the Pembina Threshermen’s Museum between Morden and Winkler, calmly slicing and dicing a mountain of fruit for pluma moos, making desserts, peeling cucumbers, rolling out dough and baking fragrant buns.
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They chat and laugh and make lists. The pace in the kitchen bustles, but it’s extremely sociable, serene and very well organized.
It’s also a scene reminiscent of days gone by. They call the food they’re making “old fashioned” but the lively kitchen of the Valley Harvest Maids is no museum display.
Each summer’s end sees hundreds of visitors gather at the Pembina Threshermen’s Museum on Hwy. 3 between Winkler and Morden, for its reunion days weekend. They come to see the live threshing, sawmill and blacksmith demos, antique tractor parades, rope making and corn grinding — and of course, the food.
It would probably be, um, a thinner crowd if the Valley Harvest Maids weren’t serving the meals visitors line up to eat.
“Old-fashioned food is what we’re best known for,” said Katharina Peters, who has just taken over the volunteer job of leading the group of 16 women most directly involved in the Valley Harvest Maids right now.
They routinely turn out vast quantities of home-baked bread and buns, large vats of borscht and bean soups, and tray after tray of carrot cake and other desserts.
What’s the most popular meal they make? Peters says she can’t be certain. Possibly it’s a toss-up between their cottage cheese perogies with rhubarb sauce or their handmade kielke noodles served with creamed gravy, and sausage, corn and fried onions.
What everyone loves is that these mountains of comfort food made by the ladies that doesn’t taste batch made, but homemade. The secret lies with what they quietly talk over together as they prepare and cook these meals — just exactly how much of this or that to put into the recipe.
(Video editing by Greg Berg)
It’s a constant learning experience to be cooking together, says Peters.
“It’s very good to be together like this. You always learn more and more from each other. It’s amazing how much you learn from each other.”
In a day and age when volunteers are worth their weight in gold, the time the Valley Harvest Maids have cooked together is equally amazing. They first organized in 1966, when a group of local ladies began cooking on a farmyard for men doing an old-time threshing demo.
That was the early beginnings of the Pembina Threshermen’s Museum, which has been home to the Valley Harvest Maids and their kitchen and dining room since its beginnings in 1968.
The non-profit group has kept the museum’s coffers well fed too all these years. (Right now the women are fundraising for kitchen upgrades and improvements to the entranceway of their dining hall.)
“If it wasn’t for the Harvest Maids this place probably wouldn’t be here,” says Jake Buhler, vice-president of the museum, who last week was lending a hand in meal prep for the weekend festivities. “They raise the most money for us to operate.
“They do a fantastic job and we’re very happy to have them here.”
Their time with the group varies from woman to woman, but decades volunteering is the norm. Some say they’d have to check their cookbook Past and Present Recipes – Share them Today to be sure of the precise amount.
At 60, Peters thinks she may be the youngest.
“The oldest lady we have here is 88,” she said.
“She works all morning, then we have a coffee break, and then she’s working over lunch, then she’s serving soup.
Cooking for the reunion weekend each fall is an annual highlight, but the Valley Harvest Maids are regularly sought after to feed groups at other events throughout the year. They will cater for groups on request.
“Whoever wants a meal, we’re here,” says Gert Hiebert.
Their reputation for good food served during the reunion day weekend is matched only by their fish fries, held the last Friday of every month beginning January to March. Their fish dinners are so good, people plead for their batter recipe.
They’re not divulging, says Peters, with sly smile.
“People really want our fish batter recipe, but these ladies say we’re not giving it out,” she says. “We make our own coleslaw and dressing. We don’t give out the recipe.”
But as skilful home cooks, and keepers of the “old” recipes, they are teaching the next generation. It is a bit of a challenge though, says Peters. Children are preoccupied with school and so many other activities that take up their day. It can be tricky to find time in their busy day to show them how to bake bread, for example.
“By the time they come home you have almost everything done,” she said. “They don’t learn how to deal with dough and then they get frustrated.”
Yet, their families haven’t missed eating the traditional foods, and would definitely miss it if no one knew how to make this food anymore, they say.
When they’re together cooking it feels like family too.
Tina Friesen has been volunteering with the group for 2-1/2 years. She loves the group and enjoys the work.
“My granddaughter was working in the office here and they were making perogies, and she said, ‘Grandma, wouldn’t you want to come and help me make perogies here? I said sure, why not. I’m retired now. I tried it and I really enjoyed it.”
“I love cooking and I love serving people and being with the other ladies to cook. Doing things together is fun,” adds Peters.
