From Boise State Public Radio
Sign at the Monastery of St. Gertrude's annual raspberry festival
(HOST INTRO) On August 1st, The Monastery of St. Gertrude, north of Grangeville, held its 18th annual raspberry festival. This year’s festival was dedicated to Sister Wilma Schlangen, the festival’s original inspiration and most devoted raspberry picker. Sister Wilma died this spring at the age of 94. In tribute, we revisit an Edible Idaho episode where correspondent Guy Hand meets Sister Wilma, at 91 still faithfully working in the Monastery’s raspberry patch.
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(Crowd sounds) (Martha Kehoff) We have raspberry wine, raspberry salsa, we have raspberry poppy seed dressing, raspberry mustard, raspberry grilling sauce . . .
(Hand) The sisters of St. Gertrude are famous for their raspberries and here at their annual August raspberry festival, it’s easy to see why.
(Martha Kehoff). . . then we have raspberry carmel corn which is made here at the monastery and raspberry jam that’s made here at the monastery.
(Hand) Festival volunteer Darla Anglen (ain-glen)-Whitley says the raspberry festival has grown into a major event.
The raspberry patch behind the monastery at St. Gertrude's.
(Whitley) Usually around 1500 to 2000 people are here for six hours of craziness. (Hand) Do they come from all around? (Whitley) They do; they come from Montana, Washington; we’ve had people from foreign countries, they just see the sign from out on the highway and drive in to see what a raspberry festival is. (Laughing)
Crowd sounds fading to wind, bells, and the nun’s singing . . .
(Hand) As important as the raspberry festival is to St. Gertrude’s, the celebration is only the most outward display of the deep inner connection the sisters have to food and faith. Dr. Susan Swetnam, food scholar and professor at Idaho State University, is here at St. Gertrude’s studying that connection.
(Swetnam) Someone was telling me this morning that . . . each monastery seems to be known to the others for something, these are the intellectual ones or these are the people who do this or that . . . and these are informally known as the group of Benedictine sisters most closely tied to the land. . . .
(Hand) Dr Swetnam has learned that the Monastary—which the sisters helped build near the town of Cottonwood nearly a hundred years ago—was once almost self sufficient.
One of the silver buckets the nuns use to pick raspberries
(Swetnam) In the old days, they kept their own cattle and pigs, chickens, honey bees, you name it, they did it. I even heard a story today, and had the recipe, for making beet wine.
(Hand) Swetnam says gardening fits perfectly with the Benedictine belief in simplicity, hospitality, and self sufficiency. The sisters see their abundant raspberry harvest, for example, as proof of God’s love.
(Swetnam) So here are these sisters and they’re just drowning in raspberries, there are still raspberries on the table at Christmas and Easter and feast days and people’s birthdays. You’ll walk in there in the middle of a blizzard in February or January and there will be bowls of these beautiful red raspberries. That’s a lovely deal.
(Rustling of vines) (Sister Katie Cooper) See, all these haven’t even gotten ripe yet. There’s only one here, but look how big that treasure is. Mmm Hmmm.
(Hand) It’s 5:30 in the morning and over the Camas prairie, the eastern horizon is still just a soft, pre-dawn blush. But Sister Katie Cooper is already picking raspberries, dropping her fruit into a small silver bucket.
Sister Katie Cooper picking raspberries at dawn with Sister Wilma Schlangen in the background
(Sister Katie Cooper) And I like to come out early in the morning. It’s quiet and I can just thank God for the day and the beautiful things of nature. I really enjoy it.
(Hand) Sister Katie sweeps her berry-stained hands outward, as if embracing this pastel landscape of prairie, pine trees, and garden.
(Sister Katie Cooper) When we were in the full season, I would get three gallons easily on this row. (Hand) Someone mentioned that at the raspberry festival that they went through 13 five gallon buckets of raspberries. (Sister Katie Cooper) Right, they did, yes. We always try to get twenty. Sister Wilma, who has really been doing this for years and years likes to get 25 gallon buckets.
(Hand) Sister Wilma Schlangen (shlong en), who another sister describes as “the great elder,” is working her own row of raspberries.
(Hand) Good morning (whispering). (Sister Wilma) Oh, Good morning (laughing). You were out here early, huh? . . . Look how many are on . . .
(Hand) Sister Wilma is 91. She arrived at St. Gertrude’s in 1937 and she’s been gardening ever since.
(Sister Wilma Schlangen) . . . Some people get a back ache. You know you just get a backache from stooping. But then Jesus didn’t have it easy either (laughing). So you have to do a little penance here and there (laughing).
Sister Wilma Schlangen, at 91, standing in front of the raspberry patch she tended for decades
(Hand) Sister Wilma has no plans to stop picking raspberries
(Sister Wilma Schlangen) God gives us all those berries. We should pick ‘em.
(Hand) A good deal shorter than her raspberry canes, Sister Wilma dives into a tangled forest of leaves, then reemerges a moment later holding a bright red raspberry—and a beatific smile.
(Sister Wilma Schlangen) I do this in the name of Jesus and every berry I pick you know I’ll offer up as an act of love.
(Hand) Sister Wilma says food and faith have a lot in common. At the Monastery of St. Gertrude, the two are tied together like raspberry canes to a trellis.
(Rustling sounds) (Sister Wilma) Some nice big ones . . .
(Hand) Sister Wilma drops another raspberry into her bucket, then she bows her head, as if in supplication, and plunges, again, into her patch of raspberries.
(Sister Wilma Schlangen) That’s a nice big one (plop). They like to hide.
(Hand) For Edible Idaho and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.
All last summer, Sister Wilma Schlangen picked raspberries. She passed away on February 1st of this year.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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My wife & I drove up to this festival from Boise after reading reviews like this. This is hard to say since it involves a very good organization, but this is the worse festival we’ve ever been to. You can tell it’s probably not going to be good when the only raspberry products available at the festival are imported. I would no recommend going out of your way to go to this festival.