🌿 Shaw Island Grower of Fruit, Vegetables, and TURKEYS 🌿 Marian Lutz

Happy Turkey Day
Vintage postcard dated 1914.

This piece was originally posted for Thanksgiving 2015 but our island has some new residents in the last three years so let us view Marion and Angel's antique oven stuffed with one fat turkey over again for 2018.

"Marian (1897-1981) and Herman Lutz were pretty much dependent on agriculture like everyone else. They raised almost everything they needed on their 250 acres and sold the excess to buy staples. They canned fruit and vegetables and meat for year-round sustenance.
      Thanksgiving was a neighborhood affair. Marian called it a waste of time to have a holiday by yourself. Each family would bring a specialty to whichever house was large enough to accommodate them all.

Angel's restored wood cookstove;
in the Bryant kitchen on the
former Lutz farm, Shaw Island.
Suspected to be Marian Lutz's
turkey cooker many years ago.
Photo 2015,
by Debbie Maxie, Coastal Mission©

      

When Marian was raising turkeys, a turkey was her specialty. That meant getting up at 5:30 a.m. to start the big bird in the wood cookstove because dinner was at midday. There were no electric lights to brighten an evening feast or light the way home.
      After some years of farming on Shaw, Marian's husband left one day. She said that he had a lot of curiosity about other places, and she never saw him again. But she loved the island farm and stayed on and ran it with the help of her daughter and her neighbors. She said she would never have made it without good neighbors within a half a mile or so whom she could call on when she got into a jam."
      Text from news clipping of unknown publisher and date; suspected to be the Friday Harbor Journal. Saved by long-time FHJ subscriber, historian, gardener,  and Shaw Island booster, Gwendolyn Yansen, and shared with this writer/1998.