Maria Wachelhofer is an only child, so when she would go into the fields to tend her family’s potatoes, hay and other crops, she would take her geese, sheep and goat with her. The sheep and the goat would follow behind. If she was riding her bicycle to the fields, she would put the geese into the basket on the front. “I digged the potatoes, do the hay, rake the hay, turn it over,” the soon-to-be 90-year-old woman said. Her accent, the ever-rough cadence and sound of German, is still present and her ability to speak her mother tongue has …

