EIF-B_Where We Come From

WHERE WE COME FROM
SWEET TRADITIONS
From baking kolaches to
working on the farm, the
Jansa family learned much
from their Czech ancestors
who were among the
immigrants who built
farming communities
in Eastern Iowa
BY NANCY MAYFIELD
EASTERN IOWA FARMER
Cherry, poppyseed, prune and
apricot.
Those were the flavors of
the kolaches baked weekly by
Antonia Jansa, affectionately
known to her grandchildren as Babi.
“We’d go to church and then stop at
Babi’s. She made kolaches every Sunday
morning. And they sure were good,” said
Marjorie Jansa, her daughter-in-law, who
had five children with her husband, Leonard
Jansa.
Darrell Jansa recalled that during those
visits his father and grandmother would
talk Czech sometimes, which he and his
siblings did not speak.
“We’d eat the kolaches and listen to
them, but we didn’t understand,” said Darrell,
who favors the apricot flavor.
Babi, an immigrant from the Czech village
of Javornice, taught Marjorie, whose
family was German, how to make the
pastries, which are still a staple in several
pockets of Eastern Iowa where many
Czech and some Slovak settlers migrated
in the mid-1800s.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia were
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until
they united as the country of Czechoslovakia
in 1918. In 1993, Czechoslovakia
peacefully split into the two counties they
are today.
David Muhlena, library director at the
National Czech and Slovak Museum and
Library in Cedar Rapids, said most of
those settlers came in the 1850s, driven
EASTERN IOWA FARMER PHOTO / TREVIS MAYFIELD
Brothers Darrell and Don Jansa look over scrapbooks containing family farm history with their
mother, Marjorie. The men remember visiting the grandmother, Antonia, on Sundays and being
treated to kolaches. Anotonia and her husband, Louis, both immigrated from the Czech Republic.
out of Central Europe by the Revolutions
of 1848. After the feudal land system dissolved,
people were poor and landless, but
also mobile. And, they knew how to farm.
Cedar and Johnson counties were early
areas of settlement, Muhlena noted. An
area of Iowa City east of the University
was dubbed
Goose Town
because the
Bohemian immigrants
who
settled there
in the 1850s
kept geese in
their yards.
The Jansa
family members
who still
live in the
area attend
St. Wenceslaus
Catholic
Church, the
Cedar Rapids parish founded by Czechs
and their descendants in 1874.
Darrell and his brother, Don Jansa, farm
the family’s original 122.5-acre homestead
that their great, great grandfather, Frank,
and his wife, Ferezie, bought in 1882 for
$4,900, or $40 an acre. They farmed their
entire lives beside their father, Leonard,
with Marjorie and their three daughters
helping with chores as well.
Majorie and Leonard met at a local
dancehall and married in 1951. He and
Marjorie took over the family farm in April
1955 from his late father, Louis. Antonia
moved to town so they could live in the
farmhouse with their growing family,
Marjorie said.
They raised pigs, cattle and crops. She
and her daughters milked their cows, and
she sold eggs. In their huge garden, they
“grew everything” – tomatoes, potatoes
onions, kohlrabi, beans and more.
They were married 71 years when Leonard
died in 2022.
“The boys worked with their dad from
the time they were born until he died,”
Marjorie said, noting that her sons represent
the fourth generation of the Jansa
family to farm the land.
Darrell and Don said they learned a lot
from their father.
He was conservative with his approach,
not wanting to be in debt but “able to sleep
at night,” Darrell noted. His dad never
complained.
Said Don, who lives in the original
farmhouse, “He taught me hard work and
patience.” n
66 EASTERN IOWA FARMER | SPRING 2024 eifarmer.com