STORY BEHIND SIDER ROAD
The Sider family hailed from Germany and settled in Stevensville, Canada four generations ago. Typically, after the seventh grade, the men worked in the fields and women worked either as housemaids or was a homemaker.
My grandmother hired Lydia Sider as a housekeeper.
Eventually, Lydia married and her sister Emma took over. When my mother married and had her first child, Emma moved in with my parents.
She remained with our family for 40 years sharing her grace, religion, harmonica playing, and love of flowers and cooking. I always will consider her another mother.
Emma and four of her siblings lived together in the farmhouse on Sider Road. Much of my childhood was spent at the 250-acre homestead we called, “The Farm". I spent countless weekends, summers, and holidays roaming the tall grass, wheat fields, and animal stalls. I learned to milk cows, tend to chickens, ducks and pigs, drive a tractor, shoot a gun, bail hay, pickling, planting and "dressing" a chicken.
The five-bedroom, two-story house was heated with a single wood stove and in the deep of cold winters, the hand-sewn family quilts provided all the warmth one needed.
The farmhouse still stands.
There's a point to this story, other than making myself feel good. Although I'm not Mennonite, lessons learned to appreciate others and farming provide a basis of sound decision making.