Best Gardener I've Known

Ester Shouse

I have to tell you about my life-long gardener friend who just passed on to the great garden in the sky last week. Long-time readers of this blog may remember when I posted about Ester Shouse back in November of 2008, after her house burned. Lots of readers sent gifts to Ester and her family, for which I am eternally grateful.

All that remained of Ester's house in 2008

Ester and her husband, Roy, were neighbors when I was growing up. My parents ran a rural grocery store and the Shouses were customers. More than that, they were friends. I remember when nearly all of their 9 children were born and I went to school with nearly all of them except for the youngest. The 5 boys and I swam and fished together. Roy took me hunting and fishing many times, always treating me like one of his own. They were always like the family I wanted to be a part of.

All that was left of hundreds of jars of canning, 2008.

Ester's was the kind of home where I always knew I was welcome, any time of the day or night. I didn't have brothers or sisters, so being treated like part of the family was a real joy for me. I knew if I stopped by for a visit, even well after dinnertime, there would be something cooking on the stove in the kitchen and someone would likely offer me some. That's how I was first introduced to hot peppers. (I dedicated my new book, Make Your Own Hot Sauce, to Ester, for introducing me to hot peppers all those years ago).

Ester's sons built a new house for Ester in 2009.

One night, when I was in my early 20s, around 9 or 10 p.m., I stopped by the house. One of the boys offered me a bowl of chili and I accepted. Ester didn't know I wasn't used to eating hot foods, but as my face turned bright red, she started laughing. "I should have warned you I always put hot peppers in my chili," she said. But I kept eating and the next time I ate chili at Ester's house, I knew what to expect. Over time I came to love hot food and started growing hot peppers for my own use.

There are several more shelves like these, all filled with 2012 canning.

Ester was remarkable in so many ways. She and her daughter, Ellen, came to visit every summer for the past several years at my home in the Ozarks. We'd sit on the porch and talk gardening and gossip about people we knew. It was there, sitting on my Herb Shop porch that I learned just how much gardening Ester actually did. I'd always known her as an outstanding gardener and had seen her garden many, many times, but over the time of our visits I learned that she planted 500 cabbage plants each spring and nearly all of that went into jars of sauerkraut. She told me how many potatoes she planted (two 100 pound sacks, as I recall). Five hundred onion plants, pounds and pounds of bean and corn seed. And the kids would come home and help her can and freeze what she grew.

One very small section of Ester's summer canning this year.

Ester died this past week, at age 83. She had 3 heart attacks, being taken by ambulance twice, helicopter once, to the hospital in Kansas City from her home in Rockville, MO. She came home a couple of times in the past several weeks to recuperate. Between her second and third heart attack, just 2 weeks ago while she was home "resting," with the help of 2 of her sons, Ester canned 123 quarts of pinto beans!

She was like a second mother to me, someone who always accepted me no matter what crazy thing I did. My own mother died in 1987, and so Ester became ever more important to me. We were friends, but more like family and I am so grateful to have known this amazing woman and courageous gardener.