Morning Cheer

Amish Farm on Zuercher Road

The trees are all bare now, and the Amish farmer’s crops are all harvested.  The only thing left in the fields are corn shocks standing tall and straight as sentinels.  Every day since April the view on my walks changed almost imperceptibly as spring melted into summer, summer into fall, and now winter.  Every season is a gift.  Seeds are planted with hope.  Crops are harvested with thanksgiving.  Now the land rests.  

This time of year it is possible to see a great distance with open fields and bare trees, so when my walk reaches the crest of the Zuercher Road hill, I can stand on top of the road bank, look west across the fields about three-quarters of a mile, and see the backside of a very familiar farm.  Juanita's home farm.  A lot of Nussbaums and Neuenschwanders around Kidron have roots that go back to that plot of ground.  My dear mother-in-law Esther (Nussbaum) was born and raised there, and returned with her husband Marcus (Mike) Neuenschwander to raise nine children.  My own memories from that place are rich with wonderful family times too.  

I’ll never forget my first visit to the Neuenschwander home, November 4, 1970, to pick up a very lovely seventeen-year-old Swiss girl named Juanita.  It was our first date, and we were headed to Canton to see the movie “The Cross and the Switchblade”.    When I went to the front door, I had no idea it was not normally used as an entrance.  It was a tiny closed-in porch that was used for sweepers, brooms, and such.  Juanita was kind, and let me in that door anyway.  I was so nervous that it didn’t even seem unusual to step over a sweeper and trip over a broom while trying to get into the house.  Then, before my eyes was a sight that is forever ingrained in my memory.  Seven children and a very pregnant Mom sat facing my direction, and between us was a tiny thirteen-inch TV that they were all huddled around.  

“This is my family,” Juanita said.  

“Hi family,” I said.

That was all I could choke out.

You have to know one thing.  I was extremely shy.  I loved girls, but speaking with them terrified me.  To actually have an official date was almost beyond imagination.  But I had set my eyes on this girl, and she had happily accepted my request, and there was no turning back.   We went to Canton to see the movie with another young couple, as a double date.  This took some of the pressure off my conversation predicament.  During the movie we held hands for the first time.   It was magic.  The movie was really good, I think.  I don’t remember much about the evening except for Juanita’s pretty little hand in mine.  And… I hoped she was the one.

Now where was I… oh, yeah… the farm.

It seems amazing now, but my connection with the Neuenschwander farm started back quite a bit further than when we began dating.  As a young boy growing up near Elida, Ohio,  we knew very little about Kidron, and nothing about the Neuenschwanders.  What we did know, was that one of Dad's cousins, a pastor named I. Mark Ross, lived there.  

Mark was an entrepreneur of sorts, a preacher, and an evangelist.  He was well respected in the Mennonite communities, not only for his fiery gospel preaching, but his love of four-part singing - and his gift for teaching others how to sight-read it.  His travels to teach and preach always came with a load of cooked cereal to peddle.  ‘Morning Cheer’, he called it, and it was his own invention.  We learned that he would make trips to Kansas to bring home the hard red wheat that was the main ingredient in the cereal.  Along with the ground wheat, the cereal contained a mixture of several other grains.  As I recall, our family ate it primarily in the winter months.  Along with fresh whole-milk from our Jersey cows, the Morning Cheer really stuck to our ribs, keeping us energetic and healthy.  

Mark Ross lived in a modest home in Kidron, and didn't have a good place to grind the grains that made up Morning Cheer, so he found a family on the south end of Kidron who had a shed well suited for that sort of endeavor.  You guessed it.  The shed was right there on the Mike Neuenschwander homestead, the very place where a little blonde-haired Swiss girl was growing up, picking apples, tending to chickens and pigs, helping with her younger siblings, and thinking about boys.  Of course, she didn't know that somewhere about one-hundred-forty-five miles west, a little boy was growing up on a small farm, feeding calves, teasing cats, and eating the Morning Cheer that originated on her farm.  Neither of them could know the rest of the story - that time and providence would bring them together…

And that’s why these walks are never dull.  So much to see.  So much to remember and be grateful for.  Every day is a gift.  

We’re about to wrap up another year, and God has been with us.  So with peace in the present and hope for the future, we’ll roll up the sidewalks and say good evening from Kidron, Ohio, where the men are still boys at heart, the women are beautiful and patient, and most of the children will find their way back home.