Life on Big Tancook Island

by Sheila Rodenhiser, as told to Philip Moscovitch

Sheila Rodenhiser is just back from the mainland, where she’s delivered some homemade sauerkraut to her faithful customers. Sheila has lived her whole life on Big Tancook Island—a 50-minute ferry ride from Chester, Nova Scotia—and is one of the last sauerkraut-makers in a place known historically for its schooners, cabbages, and kraut. The island’s fields were once filled with cabbages and cabbage houses—specialized low-to-the-ground barns for over-wintering the vegetables. Today, they are all gone. Sheila’s father made sauerkraut, and eventually she learned the art herself. Sheila lives in the house she and her late husband Gerald built, surrounded by the Elvis Presley memorabilia and photos she’s been collecting for years. (She liked Michael Jackson too, but says nobody else did as much for music as Elvis.)

Although Tancook Island is small—only about three square miles—Sheila says she’s never been tempted to live anywhere else. And don’t try to email her. She doesn’t have a computer or cell phone: “I’d be pushing the wrong buttons all the time.”

 My mother had seven children, but three passed away when they were little tiny babies. Back then there weren’t that many doctors around. Sometimes babies were only born a couple of days before they passed away.      

I was born on the part of the island called Southeast Cove. We really didn’t know the people from Backalong [on the other side of the island]. Isn’t that weird? The island’s not that big. I never knew none of those people until I went to school there in Grade 7. We had one teacher for Primary to Grade 6. Usually 30 to 35 kids. You could go up to Grade 11 on the island. For Grade 12 you had to go to the mainland, but I didn’t do that. I went only to Grade 10.

I never thought about moving away. You had to have a lot of education or a good friend to help you get a job on the mainland back in those days. Some people went through to Grade 12 and then went to Halifax to get work. You didn’t have to go to university or any of that kind of stuff. You could get a good government job and stay with it until you retired. Different people from the island here went to the mainland to work.

Courtesy of Sheila Rodenhiser

When I was growing up, we planted gardens with cabbage and summer savoury, and by times we planted vegetables and sold them up to a man in Chester, who used to take them to Halifax to sell or peddle. My father, back before I remember, used to take cabbage and kraut to Halifax in one of the boats from here. I heard Dad talk about that years and years ago. I don’t know if people met him on the wharf or if he would go house to house with it.

Not everybody farmed, but a lot of them did. And everybody fished. They used to come home with dory-loads of herring and mackerel to dress and salt and store, and then you’d leave them be for such a length of time and then pack them into wooden barrels. We’d get the barrels from Lunenburg, where they were made.

And you had to make your own hay, because we had a lot of cattle in those days. We never bought very much meat. My uncles and my father kept a lot of sheep too and would kill some of those in the summertime and take them into Chester to sell in a grocery store.

There were a lot of cabbage fields here back years ago. Everybody planted cabbage, everybody made sauerkraut. There were one or two people that used to get orders from the mainland and take the kraut on board the ferry, or on to a boat, and go from house to house or wharf to wharf. If they knew you were coming, a lot of people would be waiting for you to buy it.

My father and his two brothers made kraut together. I didn’t help much at that time. There was enough of them and they wouldn’t let you near it because you’d get your fingers cut off. But we had so many cabbages back in them days, you could make sauerkraut all winter. Our basements used to be full of cabbage, and then you’d have a big cabbage house which would be full too, and sometimes we’d put it in the barn.

We didn’t have no TV back in them days. You used to go to a place called Gurney’s and pay 10 cents to get in to watch TV. I would go and so did Gerald. And then later, his mother wasn’t altogether right well from working all the time, so she had asked me to come over and do some cleaning on the weekends. So I used to do that. And I guess that’s how Gerald and I got together one way or another.

We built this house before we got married. That would have been 56 years ago. I mixed up the cement myself. We used to do it in a big trough, then pour it into the frames we built for the foundation—I must have really liked to work in them days. When we got married, we moved into the house the same night. It wasn’t finished. We had three rooms done and the rest as we needed them and had money to do it. We didn’t hire carpenters or anything because everyone knew how to do it themselves. Gerald’s father and all them were carpenters. All the boys. They built their own boats. Gerald and his father and his brothers built quite a few.

When I was young, for shopping we used to go as far as Chester. You’d go to the Five to a Dollar store and find whatever you wanted, and there were a couple of clothing stores right there too. And when I was really little this man used to come, and we called him Jimmy the Peddler. He had this great big pack on his back and he would go from house to house and open it up. Everybody was so happy to see him. He had all kinds of beautiful clothing in all kinds of sizes. I don’t remember how often he came. But it was really exciting when he did. It was just like Christmas.

Way back, years ago, my grandmother, Jessie Cross, and another lady from Backalong both died the same night. I guess there was some sickness or something. And after that Willis Crooks—I guess he had an arrangement with the government, I don’t know too much about it—he took people to the mainland for doctors and funerals and whatever. (Willis Crooks operated the first ferry from 1935-1939 and it could carry 25 people.) They started the ferry with smaller boats and then each one got a little bit bigger over the years.

The thing that has changed the most in my lifetime is the island itself. Every time we get a really bad storm, the ocean is very angry at us. It just pounds the cliff to pieces. The beaches get all washed out. The launches where people used to haul up their boats—we hardly have any of them anymore.

Now there is a lot of people starting to move back to the island. Not just the people that came from here, but other people that we never ever heard about. People are coming here for the kids to go to school. Last year the school had four kids, but this year it has six.

I only started making kraut myself in the 1980s. Percy Langille’s wife Evelyn showed a couple of us what to do and how much salt to put in and all that kind of stuff. I’ve made it ever since. My son and I do it together. I buy these big bags of salt, 50 lbs maybe. Cabbage, salt and water. That’s all we use.  I don’t measure nothing. When I started out I did about 7,000 pounds. Last year I only did 2,000 and the year before I did none because I had my foot broke. It takes us two days to cut in 2,000 pounds.

First you put a layer, just a tiny little bit, a sprinkle, of salt in the bottom of the barrel, then cabbage on top, then more salt and push it down. I just use my hands and push. Then I start another layer and add more salt. When we get it full I pour a bucket of water on top. Just plain water.

The water will froth up the next day after you got it cut in. And then, three or four days later you’ll see it bubbling and bubbling and it comes right up, sometimes down over the floor, because the barrel was too full to start with. And then all of a sudden one day you go by and it’s gone down. And that’s just about when it’s done and ready to pack up. I’d say about two weeks. We buy 10, 20 and 30 lb pails and put the kraut in that.

I’ve had regular customers ever since I started, only people are dying off on me. They’re getting older. And you see, I’m not doing near as much because the young people don’t eat sauerkraut like they used to back in my days.

I don’t plan on retiring from my sauerkraut. There are still a lot of older people who like it the old way that we make it. So I’m not going to give it up. I’ll be the last one making sauerkraut here on the island. 

Intro credit: Hillary Dionne