EIF-B_Where We Come From

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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
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