Our March 24, Palm Sunday begins the start of Holy Week for many faiths and observances continuing through Good Friday, with anticipation of Easter Sunday on March 31.
As included in previous columns and referenced in my published cookbooks, traditionally, Polish families like my own believe the annual planting of onion sets and potatoes is best done on Good Friday, often a rainy, gloomy weather day, as painted from symbolic lore. In our farm garden, tended by my 94-year-old dad Chester, he already has a few rows of sprouting “volunteer” green onions pushing through from last season.
Onion fields popped up as a topic of interest recently from reader Brian Capouch, 73, of Raub, Indiana, which is a small farming community about an hour south of our family farm.
Earlier this month, Brian, whose late parents Don and Shirley Capouch were dedicated fellow members of our tiny All Saints Catholic Church in San Pierre, planted nearly 100 pounds of potatoes, with varieties including Kennebec, Norland and Yukon Gold, in his vast garden patch at Sunny Crest Farm.
As shared with me, and with his own fascinating “journal entry updates” posted on Facebook, Brian began his late-in-life farm revitalizing adventure just before the start of the 2020 pandemic.
“It was in late February 2018, that I got a message from a former student, linking to a post on a Facebook group dedicated to identifying abandoned and neglected old houses,” he explained.
“It was a moment that completely changed the course of my life. I bought Sunny Crest Farm later that day. It is a homestead just north of Raub, Indiana. Designed and built in 1916 by architect Fred Friedline for Josiah and Stella Portteus, it had been abandoned. The main house is almost 6,000 square feet and had its own electric plant and an elaborate rainwater collection system. And our own family homestead, where my grandmother was born, is just over a mile away.”
In addition to the main house, he said the farm has seven outbuildings, including a brick “three-seater” outhouse, a chicken coop structure, an early-1800s post-and-beam storage shed, and a three-bay barn, as well as the original 1860s frame home still standing on the property.
Brian describes the garden soil as “among the best in the whole U.S.”
The home and property required years of work to renovate and restore, which is still “a work in progress.” Originally, Brian lived in a camper parked on the property during this “labor of love” journey since 2018.
When Brian, a respected historian and retired assistant professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, recently wrote me, it was because he was doing farming research about his agricultural landscape surroundings.
“I hope I can pick your brain on a family matter,” Brian wrote.
“A few days ago, a friend told me: ‘You do know that Hank Blaszczyk used to farm in Walker Township, not far from the Gehring Farm operations?’ And I had never heard such a thing. My friend said he could remember the precise place they lived, ‘in a house no longer standing right on Jasper County Road 100 West.’ Could you see if your mom and dad might be able to verify or refute that?”
The name “Hank Blaszczyk,” defined in my mind, is the fun-loving, fishing, talkative late Uncle Hank I so fondly cherish my memories of from his more than 60 years of marriage to my mom Peggy’s twin sister, my Aunt Patty, who died at age 91 a year ago on Feb. 21.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of Uncle Hank’s passing at age 84 in March 2014.
“The context of my question about Hank Blaszczyk is because a group of us were discussing how folks from the North Judson and San Pierre area came to the ‘Gifford Marsh’ area back in the 30s and 40s,” Brian explained.
“Names like Bill Gehring, Art Gumz, Carl Benson, Lou Jachim, all of them started out in Starke County, and so my friend said, ‘I wonder if Hank’s roots were over there too, since Hank would have farmed near the Jachim Farm, later taken over by Otto Born, who was also from North Judson.’ I thought your parents could help clarify. There was an ‘onion craze’ in the first two decades of the 20th century around that time. At one point, so many people flooded to the Newland area to grow onions that they erected ‘tent cities’ to house them. It’s a wild story, and it would be cool if it included Hank’s folks were part of that era.”
My parents complied to share recollections and some background.
Uncle Hank and his parents, Stanley Blaszczyk and Helen (maiden name Malinowski) moved from Chicago to a farm in the Newland area in the mid-1940s, as did so many Polish families looking to establish a life away from the city.
Hank, the youngest son, was a standout athlete, playing both football and basketball, and he also “stood out” because of his already formed “citified persona,” including his trendy urban attire, a contrast to the rural social life and trends of those days. He graduated from Wheatfield High School in the Class of 1948, and “the Green Twins,” Patty and Peggy, graduated a year later in the Class of 1949.
Hank and Patty married in July 1951 and originally started married life in a small trailer parked behind the main house of the farm where in-laws Stanely and Helen Blaszczyk lived, and my dad confirms this as the location described by Brian’s friend.
While Uncle Hank might have helped his dad with some farming, within a short time after marriage Uncle Hank and Aunt Patty soon moved to Wheatfield to be closer to my Grandma Green to continue the start of their family (what would be their four children), and “a preferred home in town,” originally moving the trailer to town, and then soon after, buying a house across the street from Grandma Green.
Rather than farming, for most of his career, Uncle Hank’s occupation was as a member of the Local 150 Operating Engineers District 7. Uncle Hank’s older brother Casey Blaszczyk eventually moved from Chicago to live at his parents’ farm, but my dad confirms neither did Casey continue the farming tradition.
My dad, who spent the late 1940s and early 1950s working at the Jasper County Game Preserve raising pheasants, said the Stanley Blaszczyk Farm property included “some very wet farm fields, difficult to farm because of flooding, along the border of the game preserve, which eventually the Jasper County Preserve purchased from the family.”
On the subject of onions, one of the most delicious “dark beer infused” rich onion soup recipes I’ve ever tasted comes from southern Indiana from café owner Robert “Rosie” Rosenblatt of Huntingburg, Indiana. I sampled it with my late friend Irene Jakubowski in 1997 while reporting on assignment.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Dark Beer Infused Rich Onion Soup
Makes 8 servings
6 medium onions
1/3 cup butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon paprika
1 bottle (12 ounce) dark beer of choice
8 cups beef broth
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese to garnish
Directions:
Cut onions lengthwise in half and then lengthwise again.
Place onions in a large soup pot with butter over medium heat and cook about 10 minutes until limp.
Add garlic, flour and paprika to onions and stir to blend mixture.
Remove pot from heat to add beer and broth. Return to heat and bring to a boil, stirring to blend.
Reduce heat and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve soup ladled into bowls and garnished with parmesan cheese served with crusty bread.