The Sider family hailed from Germany and settled in Stevensville, Canada four generations ago. Following Mennonite tradition, after the seventh grade, the men worked the fields and the women worked as housemaids or homemakers. In 1944, my grandmother hired Emma Sider as a housekeeper.
When my mother married and had her first child, Emma moved in with my parents in Buffalo, New York. She remained with our family for close to forty years — sharing her grace, her faith, her harmonica playing, her love of flowers, and her extraordinary cooking. I will always consider her another mother.
Emma and four of her siblings lived together in the farmhouse on Sider Road. Much of my childhood was spent at the 250-acre homestead we simply called The Farm. Countless weekends, summers, and holidays roaming tall grass, wheat fields, and animal stalls.
I learned to milk cows, tend to chickens, ducks, and pigs, drive a tractor, shoot a gun, bail hay, pickle, plant — and in the plainest terms — dress a chicken. The five-bedroom, two-story house was heated by a single wood stove. In the deep of winter, hand-sewn family quilts provided all the warmth one needed.
The farmhouse still stands.
Although I'm not Mennonite, The Farm gave me something most business schools don't: a lived understanding of what it means to work with intention, make decisions from values rather than fear, and show up fully — for your family, your community, and the work in front of you.
I honor that blueprint to this day. And with that passion and commitment, Sider Road was launched.
