Other Voices

Lora Ricketts consults a cookbook, with her rolling pin and measuring cup at the ready. At 83, she still lives on the Hilltown farm where she settled well over a half-century ago after a peripatetic childhood. She finished eighth-grade in a one-room schoolhouse, then went on to high school in Woodstock, Vermont. She fell in love at 17 with Raymond Ricketts. He managed a neighboring farm in Vermont but, at 16, couldn’t drive. He’d take her to the movies on the back of a big workhorse. Together, they raised three children on their 80-acre farm in East Berne and were largely self-sufficient, Ricketts says in this week’s podcast. They raised beef cattle and pigs, harvested hay, kept a cow for milk and butter, and had a big vegetable garden. Rickets did home canning and freezing and, when her children were older, worked for 37 years as a nutrition instructor for Cornell Cooperative Extension — teaching young families and seniors how to make healthy meals. She retired at age 70. Her husband and two of her children have died. “I miss the ones that are gone,” says Ricketts. “You’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got left.” Her life revolves around her family and she takes great delight in her five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.