Walk into Bessie Whites home and you are immediately drawn to the kitchen. With warm wood cabinets and an open space filled with light from an eastern facing window, the room is clearly the center of the home, and of Whites life.
White, 80, is the quintessential farm wife. She moves around her kitchen with the ease of someone who knows the place and is accustomed to its idiosyncrasies. As well she should be. The kitchen where White cooks for her family is part of the same house she has lived in for 64 years.
Born in Canada in 1930, White moved to the Pleasant View area with her parents and four sisters in 1934. She has lived within six miles of her current home her entire life.
This is home, White said. This is where my roots are and where they will stay.
White has been a fixture in the kitchen her entire life, first learning to feed her parents and siblings, then her husband and children, and then her community.
We all canned growing up, White said, sitting at her well-loved kitchen table, the scene for many, many family meals. We would pick and snap the beans and pick the fruit. We would help seal the jars after my mother filled them.
Married to her late husband Gene in 1947, White learned the value of putting up canned goods for her family, which quickly grew to five.
When we realized we would be married in September, my mother helped me and I canned a lot and made some jam to stock the house, White said. It is important to have that food.
As the familys dryland farming operation grew, White continued to nurture her family from the kitchen. As with any farm, the Whites lives revolved around the food they grew and the food they made.
Beans found their way from the field to the table, along with all types of garden vegetables and fruit from the family orchard and garden. White turned out numerous baked goods to sustain her family, and if it could be canned, it found its way to Whites kitchen.
In the late 1970s White and her sister, Velma Hollen, realized they had a surplus of produce each year and asked the Montezuma County Commissioners if they would be allowed to sell their goods in the county courthouse parking lot. Thus began the Cortez Farmers Market.
We tried to pass the word around to other farmers in the area, White said. It didnt take too long before people were bringing all sorts of goods to the market.
White is still a familiar face at the market each Saturday, setting up at a table near Main Street, just like she did 40 years ago. Her face lights up as she begins to describe the items she brings with her to the market each week. It takes little deduction to realize how much White loves being part of the agricultural fabric of the community.
Ive had a good life, she said. Ive lived every day of it. Ive been immersed in the farm and agriculture and Ive been richly blessed.
Along with vegetables and beans, White also sells bran, popcorn and jams and jellies at the local farmers market. White has even started her own eponymous business, Bessies, to capitalized on her expertise in jam making.
White has received a label from the state of Colorado, and makes a rainbow of different jams, jellies and butters in a commercial kitchen at her sisters home. The business has been quite profitable and the production of roughly 100 dozen jars a year has allowed White to finance her grandchildrens college education, an immensely gratifying aspect of the work.
In fact, everything White has done in her life as a farm wife has been for the benefit of her family. From driving grain trucks and tractors, to working for nearly 25 years in the office at Pleasant View Elementary School, Whites passion has been her family. The kitchen and the food have been the method by which she has nurtured those she loves.
Today, White still cooks meals for her family, providing nourishment for her son and grandson as they continue to work the family farm.
I probably can count on one hand the days I havent put a meal on the table, White said. It is who I am.
As her kitchen table is filled each day with those she loves and the food she makes, White is fulfilled in her role as mother, head cook and nurturer. It is the only life she has ever wanted.
It is a really good feeling to see a table covered with the finished product, White said. But I do it all for a reason. I dont do this for myself, I do it to help my family.
Reach Kimberly Benedict at kimberlyb@cortezjournal.com.
