Though Jen Zollner lives in the city (Medicine Hat), she’s never far from her farming and amateur rodeo roots. She and her calf/team roping husband raised cattle, wheat and three daughters on their Saskatchewan farm/ranch (near the Alberta border NE of Medicine Hat). As a retired elementary school teacher, her passion is continually finding creative ways to remind folks about times past and the lives of our ancestors.
Her latest endeavour has been the founding of the Medicine Hat Cowboy Poetry Foundation. She is instrumental in organizing an annual event, an opportunity for cowboys and cowgirls to share their poetry and authentic western music. A website needs articles and vidoes of interest, so MHCP has seniors (and others) telling about their lives and their experiences through their bios, memoirs and poems and/or songs, almost all interviewed and the writing done by Jen. These MHCP projects are also in book format: “Stories From Seniors”, “Country Stories” and “Paws and Poems”; as well she is the editor of “The Yesteryears of I-Alice”. They’ve now embarked on a project about rodeo, its past and Women in Rodeo.
Presently Jen likes reading about local history to find interesting stories to write a poem or song about. She loves playing piano but it’s guitar, harmonica and ukelele to accompany at cowboy poetry gatherings where she welcomes the opportunity to share the poems and songs she’s written. “Suds in the Bucket” is the name of her band that entertains at senior homes. She has been secretary for Westminster United Church for some years now. To celebrate significant milestones, she makes patchwork memory blankets, some squares being western wisdom stitched on aida cloth. Of late she’s been designing aprons with her two granddaughters using shirts their grandpa wore when he was with us. It’s hard to believe her grandson too is in his 20’s. It doesn’t seem very long ago since she traded her teaching career for a granny nanny position!
