Suzy Wilks remembers plopping her two oldest sons, J.D. and Ron, on a blanket in the shade of a tree while she went off to plow a field.
“They were always in my sight,” she said.
Uh-huh.
At age 85, Suzy still has field duties. She mows JD’s expansive lawn.
“Just so I can be on a tractor, I’m happy,” she said Monday afternoon.
Suzy is being recognized as Grand Marshal at Saturday’s Farm-City Days parade for her contributions to her family’s dairy farm as well as her 37 years as a 4-H leader.
Suzy, whose father, Don Nichols, was a founder of the Prairie Dell 4-H club, lauds the 4-H organization.
“Back in my day it was mostly farm kids, but every one of us served as an officer at some point. That taught us good organizational skills,” she said. “It was good for us as kids but also as a family.”
Sarilou “Suzy” Wilks grew up on a dairy farm south of Iola. Today, her son, JD, and his wife, Jill, live on the family homestead, while Suzy lives just a stone’s throw away to the north.
JD and Jill participated in Monday’s interview with Suzy, filling in gaps.
Suzy’s memories gravitate to life on the farm. “We had chickens, pigs, cows and horses.”
They grew alfalfa and corn for feed.
“We delivered our milk door-to-door. Daddy always made me deliver to the apartments above the square, so he wouldn’t have to climb the stairs,” she said. She rubs her hands as she remembers the “wash, rinse and sterilize” cycle of cleaning the milk bottles.
Suzy estimated the herd averaged 60-70 cows.
“It was an operational dairy farm for 60-plus years,” JD said, beginning with his great-grandparents Jesse and Verne Nichols who moved to Iola from Oklahoma in 1910. The dairy ceased commercial production in the mid-1970s.
