Amana Freezer

In the late 1950’s, Dad and Mother accepted their fate (seven kids and another to follow) and bought a giant freezer made by craftsmen at the Amana Colonies in Iowa. The Amana Colonies [www.amanacolonies.com]  were established by a group of German Pietists who came to America seeking religious freedom, arriving in Iowa in 1855. Until about the 1930’s they lived a truly communal life, but then had to adapt to more family-driven work with profit-sharing for their farmland and larger businesses. They have always been known for their craftsmanship, and are still known for the refrigeration appliances they manufacture.

Several towns in east central Iowa near Cedar Rapids are part of the Amana group. In the early 1960’s they already understood that tourists might be interested in their way of life and crafts. We visited the communal kitchen, a general store stocked with old-fashioned items, the meetinghouse and the blacksmith shop. And for almost the only time I can remember, Mother and Dad bought a restaurant meal for all ten of us. It was served family style at a long table, with many dishes of wonderful home-grown meats and vegetables, great bread and salad. I no longer remember exactly what we ate, but I have a mental picture of my proud father at the end of the long table, treating his kids to an experience he probably could ill afford.

The freezer was at least six feet long, three and a half feet high and opened from the top. It could hold a great deal! I remember it stocked in the fall with sweet corn after we had spent an entire day in our big farmhouse kitchen, parboiling cobs of corn and then cutting the kernels off them and putting them in freezer bags. We did the same with some of the other produce from our half acre garden. Dad sometimes bought part of a cow or a pig and had it butchered and frozen, available for future meals. Occasionally Dad's congregations would give us a “pounding”, i.e. contribute pounds of food which we gratefully stored away for use by our big family. This would often include frozen meat.

During hunting season, I remember gifts of whole pheasants and wild ducks in the freezer, something Mother wasn’t too happy about! Us kids weren’t very used to gamey-tasting meat either. But when Dad shot a deer with a bow and arrow, the venison that resulted filled the freezer for some time.

Rather than canning, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, people believed in frozen food. And we certainly ate plenty of it. At Christmas, each of us girls chose a favorite cookie recipe and baked up huge batches of them, to be frozen for unexpected guests. The essence of hospitality at the time was Norwegian gasoline (weak coffee) and cookies, and it might be needed at almost any time of day. The freezer was a great help in living up to this social norm! At this very moment I am recalling how delicious a chocolate chip cookie just pulled from the freezer was, though none of my chocolate chip cookies are around long enough to need freezing these days!