Irene Supalla fondly recalls life as a farm wife
RIGHT AT HOME — Irene Supalla feels right at home living at Whispering Oak in Ellendale, and looks back fondly at her many years as a farm wife. (Star Eagle photo by Rachel Rietsema)
By RACHEL RIETSEMA
Staff Writer
The Whispering Oak assisted living facility and Irene Supalla are pretty good buddies at the moment. I mean, for crying out loud, the sunshine beams in her bedroom in the daytime and the sun sets outside her living room windows.
Even just kicking it back on the couch with crocheting tools is good enough for Supalla.
“I’ve made all three of my daughters table clothes and doilies,” Supalla said.
“And, how do you like my new curtains?” she asked.
Well, you see, she called her oldest son Michael and asked for her sewing machine so she could whip up some new ones. She absolutely didn’t like looking at bare windows anymore.
“My oldest son will do absolutely everything for me,” she said. “So, two days later, he and his wife had put up new curtains. I love them and when asked if I wanted them exchanged I said, ‘Don’t you dare take them down!”Whispering Oak owners Jim and Margaret Deml liven up her Sundays as well. She feels pretty special, let me tell you.
“A while back, a few girls asked me in the entry, ‘How do you like it here?” she said. “I said, ‘I like it just fine. I don’t know how I go to church though.’ And don’t you know, they take me to church every Sunday. It is wonderful.”
This “Wells girl” also loves to reminisce about farming days gone by. And, according to Supalla, she and her husband Lawrence just couldn’t get enough of it.
“My husband and I bought 680 acres from O.B. Anderson way back when,” she said. “We raised 200 or so chickens for a while after we first lived there. But soon enough, we sold those because of the farmland duties.”
So, with little time left for chores, they figured it might be time to add to their acre total.
“Now my son Michael and his wife Gretchen live on the farm,” she said. “Gretchen grew up in the city and now she is the best farmer’s wife any farmer could have.”
Of course, as a veteran farmer’s wife, she too learned to like everything entailed with the planting and harvesting time. She even had the kids tag along.
“Those kids went along with me in the tractors too,” she said. “We had a little tin can for them to sit on in the tractor.”
As a kid, she didn’t participate too much in her family’s farmland operation. All she remembers really is getting pecked by chickens.
“We had everything there too like pigs, cattle, chickens and all that stuff,” she said. “There were seven of us kids. I had two older brothers, an older sister and two younger brothers.”
Supalla herself followed suit and mothered a family of five. There is Betty, Barbara and Chris. For boys, she had Randy and Michael.
“Randy has a cattle farm up in Bemidji,” she said. “One daughter lives in Florida, another daughter lives on Beaver Lake and the other lives west of the Cities.”
Add husband Lawrence and that makes seven mouths to feed.
“Oh gosh yes, I always had to garden,” she said. “I did a lot of canning and freezing. I always had to grow flowers. I like all flowers. Even fake ones.”
Life on the farm always suited her. It was almost as if fate led her to that exact spot.
“I had a cousin who owned a restaurant in Easton,” she said. “My dad was going over to see my cousin and asked, ‘would you like to ride along?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll go and see him.’”
Upon arrival, she spotted some of her friends and sat down without a second thought.
“Then, I saw this guy come in the store and I swooned,” she said. “He sat down with us and asked, ‘Where are you going from here?’”
A dance of course!
“He said, “Well, that’s where I’m going to,’” she said. “He wouldn’t let me dance with anyone else when we got there. We kept in touch after and it was the two of us forever.”
She still holds him near and dear to her heart, after his passing in 1999.
“Irene moved into Whispering Oak in the fall of 2012,” said Whispering Oak Director Maryann Schlaak. “She and her family have been a delight to get to know better. She has a friendly outgoing personality that is an asset to our community.”