WRITING HISTORY OF OUR LAND

                                              Published in Intermountain Farm and Ranch on
                                                               Friday, June 24, 2011

This is the time of year for family reunions. We sometimes enjoy these, sometimes not. But they are important. It is a time to reunite, thus the word reunion. Many times family members are only seen once a year – at reunions or maybe at funerals. As we get older these times mean more to us. We start thinking of histories, where we came from and where we are going. What are we leaving our children in terms of their historical background? Do our children know where their grandparents came from, do they know what occupations their aunts and uncles have, do they even know their cousins?  So I would like to address the idea of writing histories.

            Writing history can be fun. The more one researches, the more one learns and the more one wants to learn. The first thing in writing a history is to determine what type of history to write. One area I have found interesting is the history of the land. What makes this type of history so interesting is that as farmers most of us refer to the fields we farm with the name of the original owner. At the ranch we have the “Anderson” place, the “Doman” place, the “Rushton” place, “Cal’s and Eli’s”, etc. With some research, it is often possible to find some descendents of those people. Most are willing to share life histories of their parents and grandparents. When you get that information you have a treasure as the land starts to reveal its secrets to you! These histories will contain information about droughts, price of products grown, illnesses, celebrations, and many other things the people recorded.  Let me quote a couple of things from my book, Dehlin, A Forgotten Community:

Joseph Olsen wrote: “I filed a squatter’s right on land across Willow Creek, what is known as Dehlin or Horse Butte. Later we filed a homestead on 240 akers.”[original spelling]” (Dehlin, p 13)

“The Thomas Joseph Pearce told how, during the years of the depression, the people struggled to make a living. Prices hit rock bottom. The price of wheat was down to twenty cents a bushel. It became difficult to make it on the dry farm. Gradually more and more of the Dehlin dry farmers moved to the valley to try to find employment elsewhere.” (Dehlin, p 109)

            This type of information makes history come alive, helps us understand what our ancestors went through, and why they sometimes lost their land and moved on.

These early homesteaders were not rich. With the use of a metal detector we have found old farm equipment, a bent tea kettle, parts to stoves, a bed frame, a saw, and many nails, bolts, and pieces of harnesses. That in itself is history. 

We have also located the foundations to many of the homes. There are a couple of the old homes still standing, one is about ready to fall down and probably isn’t safe to go into anymore. But they tell a story about the lives lived in them.

The Bureau of Land Management has a website that enables you find the names of homesteaders. You need the legal description of the land you are interested in, or just the name of the person you think homesteaded your land, and this website will do the search for you. The web site is:  http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ . 

This is an exciting website! Not only can you get the information on who homesteaded certain pieces of land, but you can print a copy of the homestead papers.

            A quote I have in my files, but I’m not sure where I got it from, says it all: “family history is not just delving into your past, but it is preserving your future.” What better gift to give our children than a sense of belonging, a sense of importance because of where they came from! And what fun to have the history of the land we farm!

FAMILY TOGETHERNESS

Published in Intermountain Farm and Ranch June 10, 2011

About a year ago, the women’s auxiliary organization in our church challenged all women to have their family sit down together for five meals a week. We received that directive on a Sunday. Well, by noon on Tuesday I had fulfilled that goal for the first week. I wondered if now I could quit cooking for the rest of the week.

This did make me stop and appreciate the advantages of living  on the farm/ranch. Yes there’s a lot of cooking, but the family does sit down together for meals, and not just five meals a week. There are also other advantages of this life.

We lived at the ranch during the summer when the kids were all at home. As soon as school was out in the spring we would move up. We would come down to the valley on weekends and attend church, buy groceries, and then head back up Monday mornings.

Many mornings, after chores were done, I would pack them a lunch and the kids would take off exploring. The old Cutler house was a fun place to go, or up to the foundation of the old school house, maybe to one of the groves of trees near by. They would usually arrive back to the ranch house in time for dinner, our noon meal. They liked to take their bikes and ride over to Hell Creek. Once a summer on a Saturday morning, I would pack a lunch and the older ones would ride their bikes from the ranch to our valley home. This was approximately twenty miles which took them most of the day on a bike.  

Every afternoon about 3 or 4 o’clock, I would get the kids in the car and we would go out to the field to take their dad a treat. Then we would head to Hell Creek where the rest of the afternoon was spent swimming. The water wasn’t deep nor the current swift, but it was water and a chance to play in it. Home again and they would play their games, sometimes Anti-Eye-Over ( or Anti Over), or play on the old equipment. We had an old combine that they especially liked to play “Love Boat” on. There always seemed to be something to do!

We didn’t have a TV as there was no electricity. We did have a battery powered radio which was turned on every morning to get the news, and Boyd listened to ball games in the evening on it.

For quite a few summers we had “Red” the hired man. He was an older man that Dad Schwieder would hire in the early spring to help get the ground ready and he usually stayed through the fall harvest. We only have two bedrooms in the house and “Red” had to sleep in the back bedroom with the kids. He didn’t like that and would get grouchy with the kids if they were too noisy. I don’t think “Red” liked me up there. He wanted to do his own cooking. I never spiced things enough for him. When I would serve a meal he would put so much pepper on his food that you couldn’t tell that he was eating anything but pepper. But he and I tolerated each other as best we could. In fact, we integrated him into our “family” as best we could. I think he was always glad to see us depart for the valley on Saturday afternoons.

The first day of school would see us settled again in our valley home. Now as the kids are grown and some of them have moved away and have their own families, they often talk about the memories they had of those days at the ranch.

Even though the kids have moved away, the cooking is still being done for those family members that help on the farm. And more than five times a week we sit down as a family and eat together.