My Grandmother

Updated on September 15, 2025 by Elizabeth

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My Grandmother died this week. She was 96 years, 5 months, and 18 days old. And she is so, so sorely missed.

My Grandmother has been a steadfast fixture in all our lives. Hard working (she semi-retired in her 80s. Retired retired in her early 90s). Generous. Talented. Opinionated. A bit mischievous. Definitely set in her ways.

She is the reason we sell baked goods today. One day her husband backed into a crate of eggs (30 dozen) and cracked them…. Rather than just crying over split eggs (although I’m sure that occurred) and feeding the mess to the pigs, she rolled up her sleeves, pulled out her bowls, and got to baking. And fruit breads for the store was born. (Don’t worry, we skip the backing into the eggs with a truck part now).

grandmother-724x1024 — She even made the fruit breads and pies in her kitchen for decades. Eventually we added a commercial kitchen to the farm, but for a long long time, everything was made in her kitchen.

My grandmother is also why we’ve had “just for fun” animals. She loved animals. In the house, out of the house, typical, atypical, she loved them all.

She’s the reason why we have George, the peacock. “Why a peacock” you may ask (as many have before you). And the full answer is, she wanted one. So we got two.

At one point she showed cats – and won many ribbons.

My grandmother didn’t just bake and pick out fun animals.

She worked in the store. Some of you may remember her sitting in the corner shelling peas or lima beans in the later years (when she was “taking it easy”).

email-3 — *She was very particular about how berries were sorted and transferred from the picked-in container to the sell-in container.*

My Grandmother worked in the fields too.

For decades, she was the fastest raspberry picker. Nobody could pick as fast and as clean as she could. The clean makes sense, because growing up it was her job to go behind her sisters and pick the berries they missed. But to be able to be clean and fast is amazing.

In the winter (and sometimes spring if they procrastinated), she’d be out there pruning the peaches with her husband.

Even once the grandkids came along, she was still out in there, showing everybody up with her tireless work ethic.

My Grandmother was also known on the farm as The Flower Lady. Her mother grew flowers and she carried that tradition on.

For decades she was the only one who could grow, cut, and arrange them. Eventually, Matt was allowed to help with staking them (so they’d have straight stems. They must have long straight stems!). And then Ruth was allowed to help cut the flowers (with a few grumbles and rearranging in the beginning. (I certainly don’t know where my “this is the right way and that’s the wrong way” beliefs came from. It’s not like I had any role models for that…)).

email-6 — *My Grandmother is 90 years old here. Still cutting flowers. And then she’d go in and arrange them.*

email-7 — *Also 90 here. In later years we’d try to encourage her to use a stool when arranging the flowers. She rarely heeded that encouragement.*

And even while doing all that, my Grandmother still found time to continue her music by playing in the bell choir, singing in choir, and accompanying her grandchildren on piano.

email-8 — *Growing up, she and two of her sisters were known as the Webster Trio and played in churches, concert halls, and the like. Elaine went to college on a music (piano) scholarship*

My Grandmother’s mother was a seamstress. And she taught her girls to sew the second they could hold a needle.

My Grandmother continued sewing the rest of her life. She made clothes (the dresses you saw her wear). She made dolls and stuffed animals.

And then for the last 40+ years, she made sleeping bags for the homeless. She’d use donated fabric – or scraps from her projects – and after working all day, would sew in the evenings, churning out up to 4 sleeping bags a week. In the later years, as she slowed down, she added in knitting a hat to go with the sleeping bag. Even days after being in the hospital, you could count on her getting back to her dining room table and pulling out her sewing machine and getting to work.

She loved babies and would happily give a cuddle to any kid that came looking for one and include them in whatever she was doing. We all learned how to multiply fractions when we helped with the baking. Nothing like figuring out 2 1/2 tsp times 8 is how many tablespoons (in your head) to stress a kid out in the summer.