A NEW CENTURY

Farming at the turn of the century and the farming of today was quite different. Today modern technology and mechanized farming have replaced the back breaking labor of our great grandfathers day. Larger machinery does in a day the work that would have taken an army of farmers a week at the turn of the century. 

Very little had changed from the time the first settlers had arrived in 1850, and 1900. The railroad had come and provided a means to get farm commodities to market, but the production of those commodities was much the same as it had been for the proceeding fifty years. 

Fields had to be plowed with horses, and planted in the same way. 

One of Steamboat Rock’s most productive long time citizens was born 1909. He being Harold H. Luiken. 

Harold wrote his life story in a book, “My threescore and ten……plus”. In his book, Harold describes growing up on a farm in the early years of the new century. This being the time when the transition from horse power to machine power was taking place. His words describe the backbreaking work that was associated with farming back then. 

“Before the farm tractor came into being, a farm operation of 220 to 250 acres was considered a sizable arrangement. We usually raised about 100 to 125 head of hogs, milked anywhere from 12 to 20 cows and had a flock of some 150 chickens. These are the very first years I recall. All of this was just prior to World War One, 1913 through 1917.” 

“Now you may wonder why we celebrated when we finished corn picking. Back then you didn’t sit in an air conditioned cab with a tape deck playing polka music with a self-propelled pickersheller. Oh, No! You hitched a team of horses to a triple box wagon with a set of bang boards on one side and you proceeded to pick the corn one ear at a time and toss it against the bang board from whence it dropped down into the wagon. Now just try to imagine a triple wagon box … let’s see, some of you probably have never seen a triple wagon box. OK … a wagon in the first place is a four wheel outfit with heavy wooden spokes and heavy wooden hubs lined with steel where they fit to the axle. The triple bit comes from the three sections of box on this wagon carriage. The bottom box about 14 inches deep, the center section was about 12 inches deep and the top section about 10 inches deep, a total of 36 inches. Now with this box being some eight feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep, you have some idea of the job at hand if you were to fill it by picking one ear at a time and tossing them against the bang board. There is no way I can describe the misery of getting out of bed at four-thirty in the morning and going out to the cow pasture hunting the milk cows while Wendell went to the horse pasture hunting the horses … it’s pitch dark at 5:00 in the morning in November. Not only is it dark, it’s sometimes pretty cool also. You have ten or fifteen cows to milk, six horses to harness, some hogs to feed, the milk has to be separated and the calves fed. Then you go to that pancake breakfast. Now, it’s still not daylight and you head for the old corn field and you can barely see the rows. It’s a frosty morning and the white frost is all over every ear of corn you touch. You’ve got a pair of cotton flannel mittens on and before long this frost is melting and getting your hand bathed in ice water. By now the sun is coming up but your hands are so numb and cold you are almost certain they will drop off within the next half hour. Now, if this all sounds like fun, let me tell you that it kept going like this for some six weeks at our house. Again, those formative years … you bet! Now about the gettogether to celebrate the finish of the corn picking season. Depending on whose house we were at, either my mother or Aunt Kate had to have about three or four gallons of hot chocolate made and piping hot in a huge kettle. These were always after supper affairs and there were various kinds of cakes and cookies to go with the hot chocolate. We played cards, checkers, dominos, etc. until everybody had eaten and drank to the limit of their capacity. If I were to drink that much hot chocolate in one evening now, I would have a headache for 30 days.” 

“Almost immediately after the corn was picked we got to the job of butchering. Father always butchered one hog and one beef every fall, or perhaps I should say winter. Again this timing was important because we had no refrigeration in those days. Some folks had ice boxes but at our house the only cooling device I recall was a water tank about three feet in diameter and three feet high that sat on top of the stock watering tank and all the water pumped for livestock watering went into and out of this cooling tank. You could keep cream, butter, fresh meat in this tank for several days. All items were put in tall pails and immersed into the cold water. The butchering project called for a lot of meat cutting and rendering of lard. Both pork and beef was canned in glass jars after hours of cooking on the old kitchen stove. Sausages and hamburgers were fried and then placed in large crocks of pure lard. This lard was well salted and the patties of meat were completely buried under the lard and the crock was placed in the cellar on the cool dirt floor. All winter long we dug sausage and hamburger out of the lard in this crock. No T-bones, no rib-eyes, no sirloins … all this went into the fruit jars of canned meat. The only steak I recall ever having on the farm was what we call round steak today, the rich red tough stuff that mother pounded on both sides and fried in a cast iron skillet with butter, salt & pepper. This was always called beef steak and it was delicious. Mother always made steak gravy to go with a bowl full of mashed potatoes. I doubt that there is a lady living today who could put a platter of beef steak like that on the table. The real truth is, I never knew there was another kind of steak until I came to town at the age of twenty.” 

“Yet another project connected with the gathering and storing of the winter’s food supply was potato digging. Father always had a darndest patch of potatoes, several rows, some 40 rods long at the edge of one of the fields of corn. This program took place right after threshing and before corn picking. Father was a great hand for having all the machinery needed to handle any job on the farm. Not the least of these was a potato digger. It was pulled by a good team of horses and had a single pointed blade that was some 15 inches wide at the top side. This blade was triangle shaped and the dirt and potatoes flowed straight up toward the top and on over in a rearward direction. Next came a set of steel grates about 20 inches wide which was constantly bumping in and up & down shaking fashion, this was accomplished by a four pronged sprocket and was called a kicker sprocket. This shook the dirt off the potatoes and left them pretty well exposed on top of the ground. Sad to say, there was no such machine as a potato-picker-upper. Father could plow the whole patch in an hour or two but the picking up project went on for a big day if you got started early in the morning. The idea of the big patch of course was to provide a bit of cash on hand. We always had a bottom wagon box load to sell to any store in town that needed potatoes. You picked any row of your choice, took a 10 or 12 quart milk pail and stooped and picked up until the bucket was full. The team and wagon were right along side the patch and you dumped that pail full in the wagon and right back to the stoop and pick up process. Yes, sir, come night it was a bit of a job to stand up straight again. Some more of those formative years. This project usually took place in late August or early September and it might be pretty hot. After a day of stooping and sweating and stomping through the loose dirt you were badly in need of a bath. Now us boys usually took the model T Ford and drove to the swimming hole in Beaver Creek. During the hottest weather this could be an almost nightly affair … during the winter a bath was quite another thing. As I recall we postponed a bath until Saturday night. We had a portable rubber tub that folded together for storage but was some five feet long by 30 inches wide that set on the floor by the kitchen stove. It took about all the water out of the kitchen stove reservoir as well as some kettles full heated on the stove to give everyone a bath. When you finished, you didn’t just pull the stopper … in fact, it had no stopper … you picked it up and hauled it out of the back door and dumped it and hollered NEXT!” 

“Since we had just finished with the bath for everyone, perhaps this is the time to explore the other amenities associated with the modern day bath. Out on the farm back in the teens there was no lavatory or closet or towel cabinet or hot and cold running water. The relief station in those days was most commonly called the back house, the reason being that it was usually located out back of the house in as inconspicuous a place as possible. This too was for a very real reason..these things could get pretty smelly during the hot weather. In conversation when company was at hand, you referred to this little shack as a privy or outhouse (it sounded a little nicer than “back house”). I don’t think the word toilet had come into being at this early date. These back houses as a rule were three-hole affairs. What’s a hole, you ask? Oh yes, well, the bench in which the holes were cut was some 18 inches in width and four feet from end to end. In this wood bench were cut three rather egg shaped holes. One small, one medium and one large. The large one always gave me shivers … if I had ever inadvertently jumped onto that one, I would have gone right on through and into the pit below! Not only had the word toilet not come into common use, neither had toilet paper. In every backhouse in those days you would find either a Sears & Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalog laying on the bench. During the peach season, we might bring home a box of peaches from the store for mother to can. These peaches in those days came wrapped in a very light soft tissue material and these were a real treat in the old back house as long as they lasted. The colored pages where they were showing the beautiful merchandise in color were an abomination, especially in the winter time when they were so cold and slick. 

Unlike nowadays when you find a portable toilet in every field and on every construction sight and heaven only knows, out on the farm it was just the one old threeholer and nuthun’ else. Of course, Mother Nature was no different then than she is today … she might call at any time in any place. Now around the farm yard it was no problem, there was the barn, hog house, cattle shed, etc. You could always find refuge somewhere and a nice hand full of clean corn cobs would replace the Sears catalog in great shape. If you were caught out in the fields, which was a common occurrence, this at times could pose quite a problem, depending on how many directions of exposure. While picking corn it was not problem, the stalks were tall enough to afford good cover and a hand full of corn husks replaced the Sears catalog. Shocking oats and making hay was a bit more bothersome. Oat shocks, hay racks or hay loaders all were used for cover and there were usually some burdock leaves or rag weeds in the area. Oh, yes, kids, I could go into much greater detail here but to save you any further embarrassment I will close on this subject. Your old Granddad has had some pretty ugly experiences responding to the call of Mother Nature in some inhospitable locations.” 

“While we are still in the area of personal hygiene and cleanliness, etc., we may as well get to the story of making laundry soap out on the farm. This came at the same time as the butchering took place. The lard was rendered from the hog in a huge iron kettle about 24 inches across the top and it was no less than 18 inches deep. This was filled with hot lard and lye was added along with a few other ingredients to enhance the smell of the stuff, the Lewis Lye was the principal cleansing agent. When this mixture had boiled the required length of time, it was poured into a deep flat pan to allow for soap bars to be cut in sizes of 4″ X 6″ X 4″. About a half bar of this stuff would take about any kind of dirt out of overalls and shirts. They were hung on the clothes line to dry, purified by the sun. Another byproduct of the lard rendering operation was what we called crackling. These were tiny bits of meat that got left on the fat slabs to be rendered. These crackling were delicious on pancakes. Even better than bacon or sausage, even though the meat was the same, they were so very crisp. Since when has anyone eaten pancakes with crackling, or cracklings. The German word for them was gravels. Makes my mouth water to recall how delicious they were on mothers pancakes.” 

“Still another project that took place each fall and was a fun thing, making apple cider. Dan and Uncle E.B. Johnston bought an apple crusher and press for this operation. It was quite a substantially built rig framed between four corner pillars of four by four lumber and standing some four feet high. It had a large heavy flywheel with crank to operate the two big rollers that crushed the apples prior to pressing. The press cage was made of slated wood about 15 inches in diameter and probably 20 inches high. You placed the crushed apples in this cage and at the far end of the machine was the press wheel and press plate. You wound the big press wheel with the threaded press rod down onto the press plate. This wheel was perhaps also 20 inches in diameter to provide the power to really squeeze all the juice out of the cage full of crushed apples. A full days run with this rig would produce all the cider and apple juice any two families could possibly want. Now and then a jug or two would ferment to the point that it became rather potent. I recall shocking corn fodder one fall and having given this a try. There was something about that stuff that made those big corn fodder shocks seem considerably lighter. These were prohibition days and not even beer could be legally purchased. Nearbeer was the best available. Of course, there were always some methods of enriching the near-beer. My very first experience with an alcoholic beverage was with home brew. Father usually made a batch of home brew every spring and this was kept cool in the water cooler on top of the stock water tank which I described earlier. This stuff was a malt mixture quite similar to beer and depending on the amount of yeast and various other ingredients, it could get to be a pretty lively refreshment. This was usually consumed during hot weather while making hay, shocking oats and during the threshing season. Father kept this under pretty close watch. A cold bottle of home brew when you came in from the field at noon and again in the evening before you started the chores … this was the pattern of fathers booze drinking. He put the stuff in the cooler and Wendell and I supposed he kept fair track of what was in the cooler at all times so we refrained from sneaking in any extra bottles of the home brew.” 

“Since this is the time in my life when I really became involved with all of the various work connected with the farm operation, perhaps we should take you through a full calendar year out on the farm, beginning with January, which usually was the coldest month as I recall. Let’s see, by now I believe father had purchased a corn shelter that was powered by the Waterloo Boy tractor. Not only did we do all of our corn shelling with this rig, but also a lot of custom shelling all around the neighborhood. This began right after corn picking and lasted all through the winter. Of course, we also did some shelling in the fall shortly before corn picking. It’s the winter shelling I recall most vividly. The big Waterloo Boy tractor was a steel wheel job with steel spade lugs and traveling over rough frozen mud roads was really a rough ride. Good gravel roads back in the early 1920’s were not too numerous.” 

“Father was a great hand to always buy the biggest and best machinery and the corn shelter was no exception. It was a Marsalles brand with a capacity of some 500 bushels per hour. This rig had a drag feed of some thirty feet and kept four men pretty busy shoveling the ear corn out of the crib into this drag feed as it was called. Depending on how far from the nearest elevator we were shelling, we would have all the way from eight to a dozen teams and wagons hauling the shelled corn to market. Cobs were always used for fuel in the country kitchen stoves. The cob pile was put into a cob shed and if there were more than the farmer needed, the folks in town usually paid a few dollars per triple wagon box load delivered to their cob shed in town. Wendell and I hauled many, many loads of cobs to Steamboat Rock from our farm.” 

“It was a few years later at a corn shelling job at the Leslie Bear farm northwest of Steamboat Rock that I was nearly killed in a freak accident. It was a very cold winter morning and we had by now acquired a model D John Deere tractor. Antifreeze was not commonly used in farm tractors at that time. The radiators were drained at night and refilled in the morning. I had driven the tractor head on up to the round wooden stave type water tank to fill the radiator. This tractor had a hand lever clutch which I had disengaged but I did not take it out of gear. The tractor was set at a slow idle in order to keep the engine warm and avoid having the radiator freeze. I had a big tall water pail and was pouring water into the radiator when very suddenly the tractor began moving forward and trapped me against the water tank. This, of course, shoved me backwards into the water tank and the tractor kept right on coming, crushing the staves inward toward me and by now I’m sitting on the bottom of the tank in ice water up to my neck and my legsgoing under the tractor. Luckily, this tank had a heavy four by four wood bar across the top center of the tank to which was fashioned a cover that could be placed over the tank at night to keep the water from freezing quite so heavily. When the front wheels hit this big four by four it killed the engine. This left me with my back against the four by four and the tractor front axle across my chest. It took quite some time for the men to get me extricated and my legs were so badly bruised from having been pushed against the staves of this tank that I could not walk. I was covered with ice water and it was below zero weather. Father loaded me into the Model T Ford and took me home where a close examination revealed that no bones were broken and so I just crawled in bed to recover with a pair of badly bruised legs. This was indeed a very close brush with death. What caused the tractor to move forward with the clutch released was the fact that one of the disks in the multiple disk clutch had crystallized in the bitter cold weather and broke in two pieces and the overlapping of this disk served to provide clutch power enough to drive the tractor. More formative years … I never left a tractor in gear again if I were going to leave the driver’s seat.” 

“Of course, we were not shelling corn every day in January or any other winter month for that matter. It was a month that afforded quite a lot of spare time for rabbit hunting. It was during the winter months that all the rabbits were brought in and hung up in the wood shed -gs mentioned before. It was also the month that you suffered a lot with cold hands while doing chores. We always were milking anywhere from a dozen to twenty cows and this called for a lot of hay handling and manure pitching. Hay had to be thrown into the chutes at either end of the barn from the hay mow above. Then it had to be hauled by fork all along a feed trough the full length of the barn. The manure gutter was of course just as long and every morning this had to be cleaned and tossed by fork out of a series of windows along the back side of the cow barn. Outside of picking frosty corn, I can recall no job when my hands got any colder than while working with a pitch fork in below zero weather.” 

“Going to the country elevator at Hughes Crossing after a load of coal during a cold windy winter day could also be a pretty miserable job. Also, us boys would most often get the job of unloading a carload of coal into the bins at the Hughes Crossing complex. Dad would take sister Ruth to school and we would ride as far as Hughes where we were let off to begin unloading a fifty ton car of coal. When father came after Ruth in the evening we were expected to have the load all shoveled into the bin.” 

“We were paid five dollars each for this days work and I do mean days work. Scoop shovel handles were just as cold as the pitch fork handles and you had to really keep moving to keep warm. It seems to me that these were also formative years.” 

“Another operation that always took place after corn picking was corn shredding. Father and Uncle E.B. Johnston owned a corn shredder between them. This was similar to the present day ensilage cutters except that back then we cut the corn with a corn binder in the fall before corn picking. The corn was shocked into huge round shocks and after corn picking the shredding operation took place. We had a large open pen in the cattle yard that was fenced on all sides with heavy planks into which the shredded fodder was blown. This provided feed for cattle all winter long. The corn shredder was a dangerous machine for the man who was feeding the bundles into the machine. They passed between two large rollers which moved at considerable speed. These two big rollers carried the stalks into the shredder knives. Now and then you would hear of some man getting caught in these rollers and, of course, the result was always a lost arm and, at times, a lost life. Our only casualty with the corn shredder was when Uncle Ernest’s hired man, Frank Dedrick, lost four fingers in a big heavy cog gear that powered these rollers. He was turning down a hard oiler cup when the spare thumb on a double thumb mitten flipped into this cog gear and pulled his hand into the gears. I was standing right beside Frank when this happened. It all took place in a flash of time. He pulled the mitten off of his hand and the four fingers stayed in the mitten … I can still see those four bloody stubs that he held up in front of me to show what had happened. It hurt not one bit at that time, however, he did a lot of suffering in the days and nights that followed. Pain killers were not so prominent or readily used in those days. Father was very strict with us boys about having a loose thumb on the double thumb mittens and he insisted that we turned them in to avoid any such accident. We had corn shredders, corn shelters, buzz saws, threshing machines, etc., but neither father, Wendell or I ever became injured by any of these. My scrape with the water tank was my only injury of any consequence. When I think back on some of the mean bulls we had and even one mean boar, and then the kicking cows and now and then a kick from a horse … how did we live through it all without injury? Somewhere along the line I will cover the mean bull in some detail. We had a fool proof method of handling those fellers believe me. It was a little cruel but it really did the job.” 

“By the time I came out of school father had gotten rid of the wood sawing rig. Cutting timber and putting up a winter supply of wood was beginning to fade into history. We always heated the parlor with a hard coal stove and we used cobs and coal in the kitchen range. In those days you heated about two rooms and the rest of the house was closed off.” 

“Bedrooms were always ice cold night and day. Us boys always undressed behind the hard coal stove and then made a bee line for the upstairs. As I recall we had about three heavy cotton quilts on the bed and had a good flannel blanket instead of sheets, of course. After about ten minutes with our heads under the covers, it became quite comfortable. In the morning there was a good accumulation of frost on the quilts where we had breathed. When you piled out of bed, you wasted no time getting down to the old hard coal stove. A cup of hot black tea was always ready. This was an old German custom, a cup of hot black tea the first thing in the morning, before you got your shoes on.” 

“In the winter time the farm chores were a lot of work. You had the battle of keeping the water tank from freezing over. This called for a good tank heater which in our case was coal fired but had to be rekindled every morning. Then there was the hog waterer in the hog house which was kept from freezing by a kerosene lamp under the big 50 gallon tank. The chicken waterers were also kept from freezing with a kerosene lamp. You hauled water to the hog waterer every day, also to the chicken waterers. The horses and cattle drank from the big stock watering tank. The cow barn and horse barn had to be cleaned every morning. There was feed to grind for the milk cows and this was a twice a week project. Eggs had to be gathered twice a day in real cold weather. On stormy blizzard type days you brought the cows back to the barn after about an hours outing, just long enough to get a drink of water, then in the early evening you let them out again to have a drink. Every morning and every evening every cow and every horse had to be individually fed. About an hour after the grain feeding you had to fill all the mangers with hay. Then, of course there was the daily chore of cleaning the manure out of the horse barn and cow barn. Here was some more of that pitch fork work and freezing hands.” 

“Another wintertime operation was getting the seed oats and seed corn ready for spring planting. We had a large fanning mill as it was called for the preparation of the seed oats. This had a big hopper box on top and a set of three screens below through which the oats were sifted to remove any foreign matter such as rose seed pods and sticks and leaves, etc. The top screen took out all the larger items while the second screen held the best large kernels of oats and the final small screen let the small unwanted siftings through. There was a big blower that also kept a stiff wind going through the whole machine to blow out chaff and other light materials not wanted in the seed. This took several days of continual cranking on the big fanning mill.” 

“Then there was the seed corn. This first called for shelling the ears which had been selected for seed all during the corn picking season. One ear at a time they were run through a hand cranked corn shelter and then back to the big fanning mill where again you had the various screens to sift out any unwanted foreign material as well as separating the tiny kernels from the large seed kernels . Again, this was a several days’ operation and a lot of hand cranking on the shelter and fanning mill.” 

“By early spring and just before field work was to begin, the old brood sows began having their little pigs. This called for having at least a dozen pens ready in the hog house, clean the pens thoroughly and sanitize with creoline, bring in fresh straw for bedding and be sure there was a water pan for each pen, etc. Occasionally an old sow would have difficulty delivering her litter. I recall several times as a boy that I was selected to grease my hand and arm with lard and insert my hand and arm into the vaginal tract of the sow to find the little pig that refused to be born, you usually felt their toes and grabbed them by the feet … more formative years. Young boys with small hands and arms always were assigned to this operation. Assisting with the delivery of pigs, calves and colts was a common experience for boys growing up on the farm in those days. We had little to do with the birds and bees, but we most certainly went through a learning program what with the mating seasons of the ducks, geese and turkeys as well as the activities of boars and bulls. After a few years of observation you had the whole business of reproduction pretty well figured out.” 

“Another early spring activity was the setting of hens for the new chicken crop. This required a whole battery of nests and the selection of special large eggs at the rate of about a dozen per hen. These setting hens were called cluck hens and were they grouchy old girls! Along about early March they would be getting in the notion of setting on the nest and if you reached in to pick up the eggs you could get pecked pretty solidly. Mother always raised about one hundred little chickens and this called for around a dozen setting hens nests. When the eggs first hatched, we often brought the little chicks in the house the first day. Then the old hen would be placed in a small pen in the chicken house where she would be fed and watered and chopped straw would be placed in the pen for warmth while the chicks kept huddled under the old hen. Later in the spring when the weather warmed some and the chicks were somewhat larger, they were placed in a fenced pen outside and chicken coops for each hen and brood would be provided. Oddly enough each old hen took care of her own brood and retired at night in one of the coops. I vividly recall that on occasions, a big bull snake would invade this chicken yard in the hope of having a small chick for dinner. The old hens would really squawk and raise a ruckus and chase the snake. The little chicks would run for the coops and hide. I can still see mother dashing for the chicken yard with a spade in hand. She could dispatch a big bull snake in mighty short order … just one chop with the spade and his head was severed!” 

“We also had ducks, geese and turkeys but it seems to me that these were more for the pleasure of having them around than anything else. They were left to shift for themselves in the spring and they nested any place they saw fit. This system seemed to work quite well because in due time there were some small broods of ducks, geese and turkeys. We always had a big African gander and about three old brood geese. This gander would chase everybody in sight during the spring mating season. Us boys would have a great time with this old boy! He would come running up behind you to grab you in the back of the leg and if your timing was just right you could grab him by the neck and hold him for a while. When you let him go he would strut away yelling and hissing. Come fall all the young geese, ducks and turkeys were sold and only the brood stock was kept for the next season.” 

“With the spring field work nearly at hand father would take some plow lathes to the blacksmith shop for sharpening. We would get the disk out of the shed and get it sharpened and the end gate seeder for seeding oats would be gotten checked and mounted on a double box wagon. Oats seeding was the first crop of the spring planting. First the ground was thoroughly disked and then the oats were seeded. Following this came the harrowing, a big 20 foot four section drag with a four horse hitch. In those days you walked behind this big harrow and I always seemed to have this job. At age 13 or 14 or 15 I felt that I could out-walk any four horses on earth. During spring field work father always got of bed at 4:30 a.m. and us boys were called at about 4:45 a.m. This early rising called for getting to bed at 8:00 p.m. in the evening. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. is no problem if you retire at 8:00 p.m.” 

“Following the oats seeding there usually was a little time before corn planting to get at the job of manure hauling. This was an all summer long project whenever it was too rainy to do other field work, you hauled manure. With all the livestock and the big herd of milk cows, we had lots of the stinky stuff to haul. Three big piles adjacent to the cow barn, another back of the horse barn and yet another near the hog house. This was all pitched into a manure spreader which had a three horse hitch and was hauled to the fields for spreading.” 

“Knee high rubber boots were the required footwear for this job. During the spring wet weather it got pretty soggy and you were wading in the stuff half way to the top of the boots. Commercial fertilizers were unheard of back then. The farmer with the most livestock and manure usually had the better crops in the fall.” 

“Corn planting came next and all the corn was planted with a team of horses and a two row planter. All planting was done with the check type planter and the checking was actuated by a string of planter wire stretched across the field. This wire had knobs every 36 inches to trip the planter and drop the kernels. At each end you moved the stake holding the wire to provide the proper spacing between rows. Ten acres a day was a good days planting. Again the harrowing or dragging operation came next and again the twenty foot harrow and four horses and yours truly came into play.” 

“If all went well with the corn planting, we got back to the manure hauling before the first crop of alfalfa was ready for cutting. We spread the manure on the field where the oats was just coming up. During the whole summer and fall we would haul hundreds of loads of this stuff.” 

“Making hay was one of the more strenuous jobs on the farm. First came the mowing job with a team of horses and a six foot sickle mower, then the raking of the hay to get it into windrows for loading and finally the loading and hauling to the barn. Bucking a hay loader was a mans job to be sure. This machine picked up the hay with a series of rakes and loading devices dumping it into the rear end of the big hay rack. One man handled all the hay as it came into the rear of the rack and another man usually stood in the front half of the rack and loaded the front end. When the load was fully loaded you proceeded to the barn where the hay was pulled up by a big hay fork into the haymow. This was done by means of a big two tine hay fork which was connected to a series of pulleys and ropes which lifted the loaded fork to the hay track at the peak of the barn and then into the mow. The whole power train of ropes and pulleys was powered by a team of horses at the other end of the barn. The two tine fork had holding tines arranged so that they were extended into the hay in the manner that held the big fork full of hay for lifting into the mow. The man on the rack had a trip rope that was attached to the big fork and when it reached its destination along the track going into the mow, he could trip the fork and the hay fell into the mow. Father usually did all the distributing of the hay in the mow because this to be sure was not a boys job. The mow being some 50 to 60 feet long called for a lot of hauling from center of mow where the hay dropped and to get an even distribution all across this vast 100 to 120 foot wide haymow.” 

“By the time the first cutting of hay had been finished the corn was about ready for first cultivation. Wendell and I each had a single row machine which was pulled by a team of horses, father had a two row rig with a four horse hitch. Cultivating corn was not strenuous but it was terribly boring. You sat on an iron seat with the corn row running between your feet and after a few hours of this you usually had some difficulty staying awake. There were no herbicides in those days so the corn was usually cultivated at least three times. Morning glories and cockleburs were the meanest weeds to get rid of, in fact, we often walked the corn field with a hoe in hand to clean up the morning glories and we pulled the cocklebur weeds.” 

“After corn cultivating came the oats harvest. This was handled by cutting and binding with an eight foot binder that cut the oats as well as bundled it for shocking and drying. Father ran the binder and us boys did the shocking. Oats were put into shocks consisting of some eight bundles plus one bundle on top of the shock and called the cap. Shocks were placed in neat rows so that a team of horses would walk along this row at threshing time when all of the shocks were loaded on racks and brought to the barnyard for threshing. Shocking oats always came in July, the hottest month of the year. It was at this job that I suffered a heat stroke at about age 17.” 

“This was during early July and it had been raining for several days and the ground was well saturated. It was a quiet sunny forenoon and the temperature was approaching 90 degrees and humidity was very high. I just simply ran out of oxygen along about I 1:00 a.m. and blacked out. To this day I cannot be out in the bright sun if the temperature is in the nineties. Something about a heat stroke that ruins your internal thermostat and your cooling system just does not work efficiently.” 

“After the oats harvest you have another period of corn cultivation, this is either the second or third time for cultivating the corn. If the corn is in good shape you might take another hitch at manure hauling … never a dull moment on the farm in those days. If the corn cultivating was taken care of and the manure hauling was in control, then you took to mowing weeds along the road bordering the farm. Every farmer was expected to keep weeds mowed on both sides of the road where your farm bordered the road. Some of this mowing was done with a team of horses and the hay mowing machine. Where the mower could not handle the job, it was done with a hand scythe which was a long 24 to 30 inch blade fashioned on a handle with two hand grips and swung in a semicircle to mow the weeds. A days run in the hot July weather with a hand scythe was a real days work to be sure.” 

“Along about the first week of August the threshing season began. In the early days this was accomplished with a big steam engine and a 36 inch separator. The separator is what the threshing machine was called. The steam engine was operated by an engineer and the threshing machine had its own man as well. My first recollection of threshing was with this kind of rig. Wm. Steinfeldt was the steam engine man and Herman Gast was the separator man. Wendell and I were small boys at that time and this big old steam engine looked like some monster out of fairy land. It was a slow moving behemoth that was hissing and puffing and when Sir William pulled the whistle you nearly dropped to the ground in fear. To service this monster required a load of coal for fuel and someone running a water wagon to keep the boiler filled at all times for producing the steam. With this big rig, there were usually as many as a dozen men with bundle racks hauling the shocks of oats in from the fields, two or three men with wagons hauling the thrashed oats to the oats bin, one man at the oats bin, called the spike scooper, who helped the hauler unload every load that came to the bin. Yet another one man job was stacking the straw which was a byproduct of the threshing operation. A full day in the straw stack in mid-July was a He-Mans days work to be sure.” 

“In those early days both dinner and supper was served to all the men involved. This called for a monumental job of meal preparation and mother usually had at least two of the neighbor ladies helping. I recall that there was a bench set up under a big cottonwood tree with several pails of water and a couple of wash basins and bars of soap to provide for all the men to wash up a bit before going in to eat. Working at the job of threshing in 90 degree weather produced a lot of sweat and soaked clothing was common. The smell of sweat punctuated the air in the dining room, air conditioning was unheard of in those days. Stinky, sweaty clothes were something you learned to live with all summer long. The economy was such that no one could afford enough clothes to provide a clean change of clothes on a daily basis so you simply hung the sweaty duds on the line to dry overnight and climbed back into them the next morning. There were no bathrooms or shower stalls in those days so everyone went around smelling a little bad. At least everybody smelled the same and you just got used to it. Us boys usually took a trip to Beaver Creek for a swim every night and this did help some.” 

“We had as many as 12 to 15 farms in the threshing ring and the job took three weeks to a month to finish depending on the weather. When the threshing job was completed, you got back to the final period of manure hauling. Then of course came the job of fall plowing and again it was done with horses and a two-bottom plow. All the oats ground was plowed in the fall and this was a long slow process with horses.” 

“By late October we were back to the corn field cutting corn and putting it in shocks for shredding later in the season. A corn binder cutting just one row at a time was used for this job. It was somewhat similar to the oats binder in that it tied the stalks into bundles and these bundles were put into big round shocks of corn fodder. They were left in the field to cure and dry until after corn picking at which time the corn shredding operation took place.” 

“If all went well with the fall plowing and corn cutting and manure hauling, etc., Father would hitch a team to a wagon with a bottom box only, the bottom box being some eight foot long, forty inches wide and 18 inches deep. Mother would fix a lunch for noon and all of us headed for the timber for a full day of gathering nuts, walnuts, butternuts and hickory nuts. We usually got home just in time to get started with the chores, and the load of nuts waited until the next day. The next morning we began the job of hauling these nuts into the attic, the third story floor in the big house at the Jones farm. They were spread on the wooden floor in separate piles of all varieties. During the winter on bad stormy days it was great fun to spend some time in the attic cracking nuts.” 

“Corn picking was the final crop harvesting for the season and one that I detested. Having covered this operation in an earlier part of this book I will not go into any detail except to repeat that it was a most miserable job and lasted for weeks and weeks. We wore cotton flannel mittens and you had a hook fastened to your hand with a leather harness arrangement that gave you a tool to yank the husks loose from the ear of corn. Hundreds upon hundreds of bushels of corn had to be picked ONE EAR AT A TIME! Talk about formative years!! Because of the frost and wet hands you would have chapped hands like you can’t believe. I recall Father melting a stick of tallow over a kerosene lamp and rubbing this into the cracks of his hands, and, of course, we all had our turn at this. This, too, was a pretty painful exercise but it did take the hurt out of the big cracks in your fingers. If they were bad enough we would put on a pair of new cotton flannel mittens when we went to bed. Oh yes, to be sure, these were formative years. By corn picking time the old hard coal stove had been set up on the parlor and what a comfort that was on a cold night. Us boys always undressed behind this hard coal stove and then made a run for the unheated upstairs bedroom. This was also described in an earlier account of life on the farm.” 

“When the corn picking was completed we had only the shredding of corn to take care of and I’m sure this was also described at an earlier time. This then has pretty well covered the entire year and all the various operations on the farm. Life on the farm in my earliest days was much more physically strenuous than it is today. In fact it improved some during my later years at home. In about 1921 Dad bought his first tractor, a Waterloo Boy it was called. This was a two-cylinder engine job that was pretty awkward as compared with present day tractors. At the front was a 20 gallon fuel tank mounted on steel standards, right behind this came the radiator and then the transmission case and finally the differential. The steering wheel had a spin pin to assist in spinning the wheel which was required because of the many revolutions required to make a full turn. I was only 12 years old at the time and being a boy of small stature, I had to stand on the platform to see the front wheels. I loved to drive this big clumsy thing and would stand up all day long disking and plowing. This was the beginning of my hearing loss. The exhaust came out right under this platform and the muffler such as it was did little to muffle the bark of this engine. I recall getting off the tractor at noon or evenings and not being able to hear a thing. My ears would ring clear into the night after I went to bed.”