Memories by Aaron Huseby, 1989.
In 1989, Aaron Huseby, started writing his memories of growing up on a farm north of Adams for therapy after a stroke.
For writing therapy I am going to make an attempt at writing a brief history of "Huseby Farms" This is off the top of my head so I won't guarantee the accuracy of dates or technical information. Some things were told me when I was young.
Arne and Synneva Huseby Family
Arne A. Huseby came from Norway and to this area because of a Norwegian settlement here. He met Synneva on the boat on the way. She never did learn any English language so never had any meaningful conversation with her. All I can remember of her is sitting in a rocking chair knitting and sewing. I'm sure she did the housework, too, till her later days. When I delivered milk there as a young boy, she would say in Norwegian "passa passa sincha droppen flasken" or "careful careful mustn't drop the bottle". She was very small of stature - a Hukee. Arne was quite tall and very broad shouldered.
My dad told me the first year Arne lived in a sod house with a dirt floor on the farm Terry Hamilton lives on now. My dad said there was a dirt floor in the house where he was born. He either homesteaded or bought the farm that Ward Bergene lives on now. My dad and he (Arne) must have been in partnership in the farm operation. They had shorthorn cattle which were nearly universal around here at that time.
Being there was no high school in the area at that time, my dad went to the School of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota, comparable to Waseca Ag School now. This was a two year course fitted in between harvest and spring work. He took military training, comparable to ROTC now. I think it was required. When he came home to farm he told Grandpa, we have to get into breeding Holsteins, that's the breed of the future. My dad graduated in 1907, so I imagine that is approximately the time they went to Wisconsin and bought 3 or 4 cows or heifers. I can remember one of them was of an old Holland cow family "Dairylander". Of course they had to be shipped by train. This was the start of Huseby Holsteins.
Then dad got married to a local country school teacher, who had gone to Southern Minnesota Normal College at Austin, comparable to a high school now. She was not near finishing the course when Mr. Bostnum, the superintendent said, "she was good enough to teach now." So she was hired to teach in a school across the road from Peter Anderson Farm, (Nomer Larson now).
Some of her students were older than her. Uncle Doc Huseby was one of her students. She said it was impossible for her to teach him fractions. When my mother helped me with decimals she couldn't figure out how that worked. She said fractions were so much easier.
After Mom and Dad got married my grandpa and grandma and Doc moved to town to the house where Larry Voigt lives now. Doc once told me that my dad kicked them off the farm. Doc wanted to be a stable boy and started at the School of Agriculture and then went to the Northwestern School of Veterinary in Chicago, then to the war as a First Lieutenant in the Horse Cavalry serving in France and Germany. When he came home he went into practice for himself.
My Grandpa Huseby worked for the city when he moved to town, mainly manning the water pump house and tower, nothing was automatic then. He also worked some on the farm.
While my grandpa was still on the farm there was controversy about which church to belong to - Marshall or Little Cedar. My dad said the one in town is going to be the church of the future so we will join there. My grandpa agreed.
On June 15, 1920, my folks moved to the present Huseby Farm, two weeks before I was born. My dad told me the reason he moved was that it would be a big advantage to live close to town and I suppose he wanted to be on his own. Before I leave the subject of Grandpa's farm, I will say that he rented it to a newcomer from Norway, Pete Willenger, whose wife was a Bergene now married to Elmer Shwerin. They were never too successful during what turned out to be hard times ending up in the great depression. Grandpa used to help out, out there, I think he was on shares. He used to take the grandkids out to pick mustard. I remember we got a penny a round. He had a 1928 four door Pontiac sedan and he wasn't the best driver. He went fast and we used to think he sped up around corners. The farm stayed in estate till nearly all the children were gone, then it was sold to Ward. It was vacant for several years and Doc took care of it, rented to Andrew Slindee, then when it was vacant Doc used the house for a "private night club" and the pasture for horses.
The Huseby Farm
The original Huseby Farm in section two Adams Township bordering on the north edge of Adams village. The southwest 40 acres was one parcel bought from Nils Gravdahl, my Grandma Anderson's brother-in-law. There was the present house, north calf barn and the little garage and outhouse that was the buildings. Nils Gravdahl's name is written in the basement floor. I think Tom Koloen built the house and lived in it for awhile. It was built of some used lumber that came from a dismantled photo studio that was somewhere around where Super Valu is now, I think.
The land on this "40" was mostly all woods. The bordering 80 on the north lying east and west was bought from John W. Heimer. I think my grandpa Anderson loaned my dad the money for this. At the time land prices were booming and dad paid over $200 an acre for the two parcels. The north 80 was short because John Heimer kept the woods on the east end for firewood. It was the custom for people in town to own woodland for firewood. That's why the "big woods" as it is called has so many owners of which the Arne Huseby estate is one. This is the woods where Bob Osmundson and Ray Mullenbach live. The Huseby land is between Mullenbach's and Nomer Larson's land. Byron and I have been paying the taxes on it since Dad died, but it would cost more to get a clear title than it's worth. My lawyer said we should put in a driveway and use it once in awhile and we could get some kind of a claim to it in time.
The woodland area that Heimer kept consisted of about 3-1/2 acres on the southeast 40 of the 1/4 section. We also lost a rod on the north because section 2 borders Marshall Township and errors in surveying are corrected there. Bergene and Weness measured down from the north and claimed the 160 rods so our line fence ended up one rod south of the one between Arvid and Weness. This does not show on the plat. Heimer lived on the northwest corner of the 80 where the rock pile is now and the creek cuts across the corner. All I can remember of buildings there is the basement of the house that was our junk hole. The granary on the farm now was moved from this site. There was a small bridge on the highway there that we called the Heimer bridge. I can remember gypsies camping there with their covered wagons every year for a while. They came down to our farm to buy eggs. I suppose the creek was their water supply. They only stayed several days or a week and then go on.
My dad apparently started building the cow barn before he moved. It is 32' x 60' and held 15 cows on the east side. The west side had a 12' x 12' bull pen in the center and two 12' x 12' calf pens to the north and two to the south of the bull pen. I remember Dad was proud of the cow manger. It's still there about 2' in the front and curved to the floor on the cow side. He said he worked till 4 o'clock one morning keeping the cement from flowing down the curve. That style manger wasn't popular for long. The cows booted the hay and other feed, especially baled hay over the front and couldn't reach it again, and it was difficult to clean. The north barn was used for horses (5 or more) and large heifers.
We had a chicken house west of the cow barn. It ran east and west about 16' x 30'. When I was very young this was moved east of the cattle yard, where the pole shed is now. It was converted to a hog house and a lean-to was built on the north and east. This was used for a sheep shed at times.
Sheep Farming
When I was young, we had a sheep flock of from 20 to 30 ewes and a buck. I remember helping when they sheared them. A professional sheep shearer was hired for this. Hand powered shears was all that was used at that time. I'd help catch the sheep and help restrain them which was very easy. They did not fight much once they were on their back. I helped "box" the wool. First we picked as much dirt out of the fleece as we could. Then the fleece, which was for a good part in one piece, was laid out and the small pieces were thrown on it, then folding it up and putting it on large square board fitted with hinges to fold into a box about one cubic foot or a little larger. There was a system of slots in the cube that allowed it to be tied with two or three twines each way, then unfolded to leave a nice bale of wool. I remember storing these in the little garage, till the price was right or Dubinsky could make up a load for his model "T" Ford truck.
Wool was cheap, but the sheep got only poor hay and woods pasture. In the early 1930's we contracted and fed out lambs. We fed from 1 to 3 carloads (300 head per carload) of lambs for five or six years. We would get them in the fall at 50-60 pounds and market at 100 to 120 pounds.
When we first got them we had to carefully adjust them to gleaning the corn fields. Then in the winter they were confined. It took a lot of hay. I got to help fill hay bunks which was a pretty regular job. We had a small wagon with a box on pulled by one horse that we hauled the corn (ground) to the small feed bunks twice a day. I think we barely broke even or lost money on sheep. Either the market wasn't good or one occasion about when they were ready for market three dogs got in with them one night. The next morning we hauled nearly 100 to market. The dogs had killed only a very few but they had chewed up the leg of mutton, which made them nearly worthless. We made quite a scene when we drove them to and from the stockyard at Adams. People lined the street to watch - 300 to 900 head. My dad was secretary of the Adams Shipping Association which closed about this time with the advent of motor trucks. A sick sheep was a dead sheep.
To accommodate this many feeder lambs my dad built a cheap shed about where the machine shed is now. He used all old lumber from Ed Boe's John Deere implement building which he bought and tore down to build the new post office. We also used the lean-to around the granary for lambs. This building we built just for the lambs was torn down when we built the machine shed.
A note on sheep. When a lamb died, Dubinsky was given the pelt, just for skinning it. In appreciation for this, he brought up a large bottle of Jewish wine. My mother accepted this and put it under the sink. When my dad came home, she showed it to him and proceeded to dump it down the drain. She was death on alcohol. My dad had to just watch.
Dairy Farming
When we hauled buttermilk home from town in the wintertime, our driveway which was steeper then, was very often slippery I can remember the horses slipping and falling trying to pull it up the driveway. We would then have to bring the team down to the blacksmith and have them sharp-shod for winter. Sharp shod meant the bottom of the shoes had cleats forged on the bottom much like baseball cleats, only two cleats though. This should have been a necessity for all horses used in the winter, especially to pull loads.
The old creamery was east of where the elevator's two big silos are now. The train track was just south of them. I remember a couple of times a train came when we were filling the buttermilk tank and the horse bolted and ran away for home leaving the buttermilk running on the ground. The creamery used to churn butter and they also made some cultured buttermilk for sale or most often you could just help yourself to a cup. I never cared for it but many thought there wasn't any other drink that good. It was made and stored in a huge crock. They made this as long as they made butter.
Many people hauled their own cream as we did, but there were farmers who hired a cream hauler. My grandpa Huseby hauled for a while, I was told. The cream was picked up once or twice a week, and was very often sour.
Swine Farming
Going back to the swine business. My dad bred and raised purebred Chester White hogs on "Live Oak Dairy Farm", - the woods was mostly all oak. He had calling cards made - "Live Oak Dairy Farm" Purebred Holsteins, Purebred Chester White Hogs and Barred Rock Poultry Breeding Stock. This was when I was very young.
We had an old butter churn buried in the ground that we stored buttermilk for feeding to the hogs. We got a load twice a week of buttermilk from the creamery. This was sold on bids. A load was a tank made out of wooden matched 2' x 12' fitted planks. It was about 3' by 3' and 10 feet long on a high wheeled wagon to get through mud and snow. We had a hand pump on this underground churn and that was often my job to put ground feed in the trough and pump buttermilk into it. Sows were allowed to run in the woods and eat acorns and grass and to farrow by themselves. Very often they would root out a depression in the ground to farrow in. Then it would rain and we lost pigs.
In the forties we just bought feeder pigs and fed out. My dad could buy cheap sick feeder pigs and feed them buttermilk and they would perk right up. But soon they quit making butter at the creamery and we had a yard full of disease, so we quit with hogs. I had a purebred Duroc hog project in FFA for about 3 years before I went to college. I sold some breading stock but it was depression years. We also tried raising some purebred Chester Whites in the forties away from the old hog lot, but never very successful. I recall sleeping on the kitchen floor and going out every couple of hours waiting for one to farrow. When I came out once, she had 9 pigs and went mad and killed every one. When we had the Chester Whites in the forties we had 3 double pen farrowing, portable houses.
Chicken Farming
I got to be thinking of chickens back when I was a small child. My folks, because Mom was always a big part of the chicken business, raised purebred "Barred Plymouth Rocks." They were kind of a dual purpose breed used for both meat and eggs and were much larger than the present day leghorn hi-breds. This was before the time of the 3 or 4 pound broilers we have today. They never butchered a bird till it was mature then. Joe Schneider, Doc's and Hans' brother ran the Royal Puritan Chicken Farm about a mile south of LeRoy. He was nationally known for his outstanding "Plymouth Rocks" and used to judge and show at chicken shows all over the U.S. His breeding farm was on the grounds of the famous Oakdale Park of LeRoy. This is the park that Cy Thompson, an accountant for the Hormel Co. built on about $200,000 of embezzled funds. It had a roller rink, dance floor, swimming pool, picnic area and all that goes with it. They had big celebrations then and it was known far and wide. There were road signs for many miles around, pointing to Oakdale Park. They called the road to LeRoy, the "Oakdale Trail."
Years ago they used to trap-nest to find the best laying hen. The hens were banded with numbers and then a swinging door on the nest would let the hen in but not out so when you picked the egg you checked the hen that laid it. We never did this.
In a breeding flock which we had in the 20's you needed at least one rooster for 20 hens. Sometimes you would get a mad rooster. I remember running from them many times. My mother said when I was small one got me down and beat and clawed me. They would fight between themselves.
Chickens run free much of the time and we would find eggs all over the farmyard. Under the granary was a favorite place and that was a kid's job to get them.
In the early days chicks were raised on the farm. A brooding hen, that is one that is clucky and molting would quit laying, so she was put in a little house, like a doghouse and about 15 or 20 fertilized eggs put into a nest inside. In about 3 weeks the eggs would hatch, then a little yard was made out of 18" high chicken netting in front of the house so the chicks couldn't get out, but the hen could get out to eat and drink. The house door was closed at night to keep rodents out. Some hens were left to roam and raised a brood on their own.
Today maybe kids don't even know what an old chicken house was like. Roosts covered half the floor area and were one to three feet high usually made out of 1-1/2" x 1-1/2 " boards. Chickens spent all the dark time on roosts, ate in the daytime and only laid eggs in the daylight. In the later years of chicken houses, there was a hatching season in the spring and fertile eggs were sold to a professional hatchery. There was such a hatchery in Adams for a few years. It was in the basement of the building where Wayne works now. Years ago many town people had their own chicken houses, eggs for their own use. Boyums had Buff Orpington chickens. Many town people in town had a cow, like Eunice's dad, "Creampot Helene," a little Jersey. In the summer they kept her on a lot on the poor farm, north of Adams. Slindees, Kiefers and a couple others kept several cows and sold milk, competition for us. More on our milk route later. Arne Huseby had a barn that could hold 4 horses and 2 cows. Nils Anderson had a big barn that Reinartz has now.
Note: When you sold hatching eggs, of course, you had to keep the required number of roosters. If the hatchability percentage was down on your eggs, you received less for them or they might not even buy them. The Torgerson "Daylight Store" used to take in eggs for trade. They would give credit vouchers or trade chips for eggs, and would pay a penny or two a dozen over produce market price. They of course had to be candled, that is held up to a hole in a lighted box, to see if they weren't spoiled, either rotten or blood spots. The store would sell some, and the produce picked up the rest.
There were two poultry produces in town, Peterson was in the old hotel and Erie was in a triple stone building, "The Sable Building" where Super-Valu is now. The old hotel was where the theater is now, or was, and the livery stable and gas house was where Osmundson Implement is now.
Eggs we picked on the farm were brought to the produce in early days, later they picked them up. Mom and Ida used to shake the eggs, if the inside moved around they were rotten, of course they were candled at the produce and some were sent back. We ate (after checking them on breaking) those that were questionable.
The later years we bought chicks and raised them in a brooder house, now used for a corn drying house. We always bought leghorns and had a flock of about 200 in the house that was north of the little garage. I remember a small incubator in our basement used for hatching eggs. I never saw it used. It was quite a job. You had to turn the eggs every day and keep the heat and humidity right. Nature is hard to duplicate.
I am guessing, but I imagine with the Barred Rocks, we maybe got 40 to 50 eggs per year and hens were kept till they died or some were used for butchering or they looked old. Today, they expect chickens in cages to lay an egg a day, if they get below 90% of this they are culled. Each year, old hens are sold and after a short sanitation period are replaced with pullets. When we were raising leghorns, after they got old enough to fend for themselves, they were set free to roam the farm and eat cheap. Then in the fall the old hens were sold and several evenings were spent catching pullets out of the trees with a wire with a hook on the end to hook their legs, or caught by hand, and putting them in the chicken house before they started laying or their combs froze.
The leghorn flock was culled periodically. If the comb was dull or shrunken, or they looked thin and un-thrifty or on examination of the vent (the pelvic space) was dry or narrow, less than two fingers wide, you knew they weren't laying. You would put these in a crate and the produce man would come and pick them up. The ones that weren't good enough for "chicken soup" he wrung the neck on and left them. The rest were of little value.
Feed Bags
"From bags to riches. When Irwin Jacobs learned the burlap-bag business from his father, he also learned the business savvy that would bring him to the forefront of the financiers of the 1980." - From a news clipping.
We used to get a lot of feed in burlap bags, wheat bran, linseed meal and other feeds. My mother used to wash up the old ones and bundle them up, one bundle with partly torn ones and one with good ones. I think we got about a nickel a piece for slightly torn ones and a dime for good ones. We then brought them to Schissel's Elevator where a man from Jacobs Company would pick them up. Jacob's used to sew up torn ones and sell them, too.
Horses
The north half of the north barn was for horses. There were two double stalls and a single stall on the east end. The first horses I remember were Fanny and Flora. They were the main team. Lady joined them when a three horse hitch was needed for plowing with the one bottom sulky plow, two row cultivator, eight foot two-section (no wheels) "Kovar" field cultivator or six foot tandem disc, plus any time one pair wouldn't pull something. All three were jet black and a mixture of Percheron and Belgians I think. Then we had Beauty, a dark brown driving horse much lighter built. Beauty was used on the milk wagon for delivering milk. The milk wagon was a high wheeled buggy with 2-3'x 8' by 6' high box on it with a windshield in the front and sliding doors with windows in, on each side. Beauty was trained to know the milk route. You could take a carrier (8 qt. metal carrier with a handle on top) and walk down the street and holler back to her to giddyap and she would go by herself to the next stop. If you were going to leave her for awhile there was a 10 or 11# tether weight (a boughten one, I don't know what they were called) that was hooked to the bridle. (Al has now). This would restrain her while dad went into play cards after the route.
Beauty was teamed with Lady when a second light draft team was needed. Beauty was also the riding horse, never had a saddle. Fanny succumbed to heat one day and died in the harness. I remember they moved the cultivator and other two horses away from her and buried her on the spot. No rendering plants those days. Lady was then teamed with Florie and a new team of blacks was purchased. Topsy and Coalie, from the Paradise farm (name of the people that lived there I guess) where Mrs. Tony P. Mullenbach lives now. This team was somewhat lighter than Lady and Florie, but faster. About this time Dad would use a Fordson tractor that did some of the heavy field work and he soon bought a "GP" John Deere tractor with steel wheels that did most of the heavy work with a little larger machinery. Horses were used for all the lighter work, cultivating, dragging, planting, seeding, hauling manure and all hayrack and sled work. Florie raised a colt (Colonel) before she died. He was teamed with Lady. He went blind from "pinkeye" but was a good horse. I recall Joe Wehner, an airplane pilot barnstorming in our pasture north of the house. Colonel was in the pasture at the time and ran into the new pasture fence and got cut up badly (blind). Joe offered my dad a free ride for using the pasture. Dad declined.
A large crowd came out from town and a lot took rides. Lady was a kid horse and after Beauty was gone (milk was delivered in the old model "T" touring in the summer and Topsy and Coalie in the winter or muddy roads). She became the riding horse for us. She was real wide and our legs stuck straight out. We would have to close the horse barn door or she would get tired of us and go through the door way and brush us off.
Topsy raised a colt named Jerry before she died. Jerry was paired with Colonel for a while, I believe. About this time Uncle Doc started using a car for his calls and we got his driving horse "May." I think she was mostly "Morgan" bred, very fast and very tough. She was much lighter than Coalie but, more than held up her end. She was also quite temperamental. This is the main team I remember because we used them till the tractor planters, mowers, cultivators and combines came along in the early 40's. In the 30's when my dad was postmaster and owned the John Deere implement agency, he traded some machinery for (1) a pair of broncos. I never drove them but the hired men took them threshing. They had to be watched; (2) a pair of mules, we used them a little; (3) a team of nice Greys. None of these were kept very long.
Somewhere on the end we ended up with a balky horse (he had a lot of names) which was the most hopeless situation you can imagine. When he got tired that's where we stopped. My dad got me a pony "Daisy." I guess I was a little too young, the year before I went to school I believe. She used to run in the woods pasture and when I wanted to ride I could never catch her. I never did get to handle her good. Shetlands can be obstinate. I got a 26" bike about the this time, too. I rode Doc's horses quite a bit especially Dot, an Indian pony, white and brown. We kept it at our place a lot and Doc raised several foals out of her. Doc had a McClellan Army saddle that I used most of the time. I had one bad experience with her. We were chasing heifers up to the Snorthum farm, where Earl Weness lived, for summer pasture. We were just walking along when the saddle blanket slipped out and scared her. I had a loose rein and fell off as she bucked. I landed on my knees and one hurt all summer.
During the winter when only one team was needed the others were turned out to roam the cornfields and all. We sometimes didn't see them for weeks. I did some dragging with a team of horses on the two section drag. We never had a cart behind the drag, so we got in a lot of walking there. I also cultivated corn when I was real young, with two horses and a one row cultivator. The cultivator shovels didn't have springs for giving when they hit a rock, but they had wood peg shear pins, homemade out of scraps of good wood, such as broken fork handles. They were shaped to a round form about 5/8" in diameter and 3" long. We always had spares in the tool box for use after hitting a rock.
We were trained to tell when a horse needed a rest especially on a hot day, usually about once a round on 80 rod rows. We had to be sure to rest them with their heads to the wind. Nose flies, a horse bat fly that cycled through the horses stomach and droppings. The horse had fly blankets. The fancy ones were made of leather thongs about the size of shoelaces. There used to be one hanging down at the "Hitching Post." Most farmers used burlap bags sewed together to cover the horse's body ahead of the tail area. The horse's tail was a very good fly chaser, but it would nearly cut your skin when your face got in the way. Nose flies bothered the horse the most. They would bite the tender part of its nose and nostrils. When they got bad a horse would put his nose on the tongue of the wagon or implement and even refuse to move. To remedy this, nose baskets made out of hardware cloth (fine screen) were attached to the bridle and basked the nose. These worked pretty good. I was never a good teamster, I felt too sorry for the horses and didn't push them hard enough and rested them too much to get enough done. On hot days mowing they would get all lathered up from sweat and fighting flies.
It was usually a kid's job to drive the team on a hay wagon and pull behind hay loader. The hay loader picked up the hay and was wheel driven so it picked up the hay and elevated it to the rear of the hay rack. The loader man had to level the hay by fork. If you let the horses go too fast, he couldn't keep up, if too slow he didn't like that either, but if you let the horses stop he would fall down. That was the worst. The driver had steps to stand on the front of the hay rack. This was called "the standard." When the load got full you got covered with hay and chaff, and couldn't hear the loader's instructions. Usually the horses would straddle the windrow but once in a while a kid would let them get off the row, the hay loader would plug on the sides. This meant a bad time for the driver. Kids very often drove the team that pulled the hay via hay rope pulleys and hay carriers up in the barn. The hay rope usually came out of the barn on the opposite end of the load and hay barn door. The team was hooked to the same evener or "whipple tree" that was used to pull the wagon. The rope was devised to the hole that attached the tongue of the wagon. When the man on the wagon hollered to go, you were not supposed to walk behind the evener because if the harness tug broke or evener broke it could fly back and hit you as the hay fell back. At the end of the pull, when the hay was at the right spot, you were ordered to stop, if you could hear. Then you had to lift up the evener with one hand and turn the horses back to the barn for another load. This was quite a trick for a little kid. Sometimes the horses would get tangled in the hay rope or more often step over the harness tug, which didn't please the one that came to help you out.
Harvesting Oats and Grain (small)
Oats has been the predominate small grain crop around here in my time. I guess in the early times it was mostly wheat because they made wheat flour for human use. But oats proved to be a better yielder for animal feed. Although we have grown wheat, rye, barley and triticale, a hybrid of rye and wheat I guess.
My first recollection of oat harvesting, I must have been 3 or 4 years old when one noon my dad put me in my coaster wagon and pulled me out to the field. He then tied the wagon to the rear of the horse-drawn grain binder and went down the field cutting grain and binding bundles. The field was on Ollie Lunde's "40" which is where the town baseball diamond was later, northeast of where Bud Lewison lives now. I imagine he didn't pull me very long before I fell asleep, because I don't recall going home.
By the time I had much to do with harvest a tractor was used to pull the binder. If the grain was quite uniform a kid could sit on the binder and watch to see that everything was running right, and holler at the tractor driver if it wasn't. The binder had a bundle carrier that would hold up to five or six bundles. The binder operator had to trip this so the bundles were in a straight row across the field so the shocker didn't have to walk far to make a shock and so there was a straight row of shocks for the bundle hauler to follow, as the horses went by themselves and the loader just walked beside the wagon pitching on bundles just telling the horses giddyup and whoa. Sometimes the horses would wander and you would have to lead them back on track. One problem with some horses they would get hungry and turn towards the shock and take the head of a bundle or two and shake and bust them to get a bite of grain. The bundle would bust, then you would have to load a loose bundle. To remedy this, nose fly baskets would be put on their nose.
Often the kid couldn't handle the binder because the sickle had to be raised or lowered to get out of the trash or cut low enough to make a decent bundle or there was very often bundle tying problems. Levers were difficult for a kid to operate. Then the kid got to drive the tractor which in our case was a hand clutch John Deere. A rope was run from the binder to the clutch of the tractor and a pull of the rope would disengage the clutch. It seemed kids were hard of hearing, especially with the noise of the machinery. Tractor driving had its problems, too. This was in the days of steel wheels and no power steering, and it was easy to get off the width of cut and leave a strip or cut half a swath that would bring a loud response from the binder operator. Also making corners wasn't easy as tractors with wide fronts didn't like to turn sharp. At least we didn't have to worry about a power take-off shaft breaking from turning too short because the power for the binder came from a large "ball" wheel that would slide if something plugged up. I forgot to say that the bundle carrier was dumped by lifting a foot lever with a foot hood on. A kid didn't have enough strength to do this so a bundle of twine strings were tied to the hood and he could pull up on it to help his foot. Then to get the bundle carrier to carry again you had to stand on the foot lever to push it down. Any error here caused the bundles to be strung out, which drew a dirty look. Normally there was to be six bundles to a shock, so when a field was started you would dump when there got to be three, of course this varied across the field but it was close to the next dump because most binders were only 8 foot. We did end up with a ten footer though. The straightness of the rows cross-ways was the most critical. A shock was normally for good drying made up of six bundles, three sets of two set with heads up to look like a pup tent. After the grain was in the shock for a few days of good weather or weeks of wet weather it got dry enough to thresh.
Kids very often got the job of helping shock. I say helping because young kids usually worked with an adult. The first two bundles were done by the adult because it was a little trick to lean bundles against each other with an air space between the bottoms so they would stand solid. The next two were easier and the last two quite easy. Bundles are slippery and if the shock fell over in the wind or rain they wouldn't dry and had to be reset. Many times after a storm some had to be reset. Often, if you had plenty help available the shockers or shocker would start shocking soon after the binder had made a few rounds. This required more walking, but a grain bundle laying on the ground and in a rain or two, the heads would sprout and spoil the grain and the straw would get mildewy. I recall in the early "thirties" I was pre-teen or early teen, Willie Rauen worked for us. He was always in a hurry and we would run from shock to shock. The idea was to take the last bundle of the day or the field off the bundle carrier, so when the binder was done the shocking was done. This didn't happen too often unless the binder had trouble (which was common) or the grain was light. Thinking of Willie Rauen, reminds me of the time I came over to the old shop after dinner and saw Willie cutting pieces off an old tire casing. They were thinner in those days, and fitting and tacking them to the soles of his worn out shoes. Those were depression days. (I guess they impressed me for life.) Many times when the weather was hot, we would rest in the afternoon and shock after chores.
Harvesting oats was a bigger thing in those days, because there were no soybeans and very little corn. At our farm with comparatively more livestock we needed a lot of oats and straw and hay. Straw would be fed to horses and young stock if the hay was light. My dad rented the Snorthum farm, which is the one Earl Weness used to live on - the 80 - a field you would run into if you didn't turn at the 1-1/2 mile corner. This field, excluding a slough in the middle, seems like it was perennially oats. When they did tractor work up there we used to pull an oil and gas wagon made out of an old buggy chassis up there and leave till we were done. The tractors started on gas but burned tractor fuel or distillate it was called then. I think it was about the same as furnace fuel today. It cost between 6 and 9 cents per gallon. The tank wagon would deliver right to the field to fill it with five gallon gas buckets. That's how they measured the amount (count the buckets).
Thinking about the oil and gas wagon on Snorthum's farm reminded me of another thing. Pete Quale had an old 1927 or 28 car he used to run around in. He was older than us, I think he was gone trucking often. He left the old car at O.B. Lewison's gas station, where Corky's is now. He told Syd he could use it whenever it was standing there - all he had to do was put in gas. It was usually nearly empty. Well, one night a gang of we guys wanted to go to a free show in Elkton, but nobody had money for gas, so I said I knew where I could get some tractor fuel, so off we went to the oil wagon. There was enough gas in the car if we didn't shut it off we could dilute it with distillate and it would keep running. We smoked our way to Elkton to the free show, but when we came to leave it wouldn't start, so we pushed, by hand, down the main street of Elkton till it started with a big cloud of blue smoke, and we attracted quite a bit of attention with distillate stink and the blue smoke, but we made it home. We tried this a couple of other times.
About the Snorthum farm, Ernest Snorthum was an elderly bachelor and lived alone in the old rickety house that Earl Weness remodeled. We kept heifers up on the pasture and in the old barn in the summer. We had to go up and water the heifers daily in the summer. Ernest never had a car and would always walk to town for groceries. He had a sister that lived away someplace and she rented the land to us for years.
Threshing
I imagine I was about seven or eight years old when I first got to be around the threshing crew. My first recollection was when Mike and Henry Christianson (they married sisters) had a steam engine and large threshing machine. Mike lived on the building site across the road from where Billy Lewison lives now. Mike always seemed old and quiet, but his wife Emma was younger and very active and talkative. Henry lived where Dan May lives now and was the father of Margy and Lois Osmundson. He was somewhat younger than Mike, was related but not a brother (?) He used to play the fiddle and Margie the piano at barn dances. They owned the threshing rig together and did custom threshing around the area. We had them for 5 or 6 years. I recall the steam engine rumbling down the road with the separator (another name for thresher) behind it at about 1 mile per hour. It took a couple of hours to set it up. The very long belt had to be lined up perfectly and the engine and rig had to be blocked to keep from moving. The engine and rig were very large - a 36" threshing machine, that meant the throat where you threw the bundle was 36" wide. It may have been 42". Along with the machine a water wagon was needed to haul water for the steam engine. It consisted of a tank that held about 500 gallons, I would guess. The wagon was on high wooden wheels and horse drawn. It seemed as though on a long day the steam engine would use 3 or 4 tanks. They never kept a team of horses on it but used the team from the oat wagons to pull it to a water source, which in our case was the big stock tank by the milk house. If the oat wagon team was busy a bundle team that was waiting pulled the water wagon around. Nobody had water pressure but there was a pump on the tank, by the way the tank was made of wood and enclosed on the top. The pump was mounted on the top and had a handle sticking up that pumped both ways. It was usually a kid's job to be the "water buck." I had my rounds at that. Our water was pumped by windmill and if the wind didn't blow that day we got a chance to pump water from the well to the tank by hand. I got in on that, too. We usually tried to have the stock tank full on threshing day. We usually had two full days of threshing. My playmates from town were often around these days, which was welcome help for me.
The threshing rig had a coal wagon along with it. It seems they had to go to town every 2 or 3 days to get coal. I don't remember where we got the team of horses to do that. The coal was shoveled in the steam engine by hand, and the coal was loaded at the lumberyard coal sheds the same way, sometimes the lumberyard employee would help load, sometimes he was busy then. There were several kinds of coal in small sheds along the track so they could unload the coal cars right into the sheds by hand of course. I got into helping unload train cars when I was a kid, too. A couple of bigger kids would contract to unload a car of coal and they would recruit younger kids. There are two principal types of coal - Anthracite or hard coal found in the Dakotas and Pennsylvania, I think. This is the best coal. It burns slower and with less smoke, but slower to ignite. The other is bituminous coal that is softer, dirtier and emits more black smoke, with less heat in it. It is cheaper. There must have been nearly 20 coal sheds with several grades of coal.
The story was out that when a certain individual was in charge of the lumberyard someone drove on the scale and weighed his empty wagon. He drove off and down to the coal sheds and visited a bit and forgot what shed he was supposed to take from, so he drove back on the scale and went in to find out. When he got in this person had weighed the wagon again and said that will be $14.00.
Another kid job was watching the oat wagons as they filled. The separator augured the oats into a hopper that was set to trip when it got 1/2 bushel in it then it would run into one of two wagons. This is the measure they used to charge for the threshing rig, so much per bushel. There was always one team of horses to haul oats. The kid's job was to level the load and if he was good enough, to haul it to the granary, where a man ran the elevator (gas engine). The spout for grain came out the side of the thresher. Oats and straw were always very dusty and itchy. The straw went straight through the machine and on the end was a large blower with an adjustable long pipe with a flexible hood on the end. Two steering wheels and gears raised and lowered the blower and turned it from side to side and a rope controlled the hood. It was often a kids' job to watch the blowers. A good blower tender made the job of stacking straw a lot easier. Stacking straw was a very hard dirty and important job. A good stack-to shed rain should be kept just a little higher in the center all the time. Straw was very slippery and it was easy for a corner or side to fall off. A stack that hadn't been kept high in the center would take on rain then when you come to get a load of straw.
In the winter there would be frozen spots you had to chip loose with a pick ax. I recall a couple of us working a half a day to get a load of straw for the cows and calves. The stacker would tell the blower tender where to blow the straw and would get quite upset if it wasn't right, especially if it hit him. The stacker usually wore goggles and a red kerchief over his nose and mouth and had an all seat wet shirt and pants. I have been on both jobs several times. You didn't have to stay on the stack all the time, if you were handy you could do a pretty good job with the blower.
We and Bergenes usually had a straw shed for heifers or hogs. This was made by putting posts in the ground and poles across the top and then laying old woven fence wire on the top and sides. Then we would thresh straw over the top, sometimes this would be our whole straw pile. We would fence around the outside of the pile to keep livestock out. The poles and posts lasted several years and you would always leave some straw on top. I think these were healthier than some modern pole sheds.
We were one of the first ones to go to combiner. I remember Virgil Bergene saying they would always thresh because you had to have a straw shed. There was usually straw around the straw stack that had to be cleaned up. Several times we hired a stationary baler to come and bale this. It took a couple or three men to pitch into it. Wood blocks with grooves for wire were inserted when a bale was long enough, then wire ties were run through the slots and ties. These were very heavy bales of straw up to 125 pounds.
There were usually eight bundle wagons hauling bundles. Once in a while they had a couple of extra men to help pitch into the separator. They were called "Spike" pitchers. The bundles were supposed to be pitched in heads first and parallel with the separator. There were some knives that slashed up and down that cut the twines. The bundles were not supposed to be piled on top of each other (single file). When Oscar Bergene ran our threshing rig, if he heard the separator groaning because of tough straw or the pitchers were throwing bundles in too fast, he stood on top of the machine and shook his head. It was said when a bundle pitcher was tired or had a hang-over, he would pitch some in cross ways and fast and that would plug the machine. Then they would get a rest when the machine man unplugged the separator.
In the late 30's (I think), my dad, Oscar Bergene, and Clarence Matteson bought their own machine - a 28" Avery. It was smaller than Christianson's, but required less power. Oscar had a "D" John Deere on steel that handled it nicely. He was the separator operator and Clarence Matteson ran the grain elevator at the granary and bossed the kid grain haulers. We often had only 6 bundle haulers. Two from Husebys, two from Oscar Bergene, one from Clarence Matteson and one from Edwin Bergene, who hired our machine. Sometimes they did custom threshing and other men were hired. The first ones to get loaded in the morning, (the haulers went by pairs) were the first ones to quit at night.
Bernie Neus worked for us and Sally Weness worked for Bergenes. They would always race to see who would be the first ones to the field. I remember Bernie getting up at 4 o'clock to get the chores done so he could beat Sally. There was skill to be learned in loading slippery oat bundles. The "basket," as the sided part of the hay rack was called, was made of spaced board about 3 feet high on the sides and back and the front was high with about a 6 foot high "standard" in the center. This was to climb on top of the load and give some stability to the load so bundle wouldn't fall on the horses if the load slipped. To make a good load after you filled the basket you had to keep it quite level. You had to lay the bundles like sticks around the outside and keep filling the center as you went up. The corners had to be kind of crisscrossed. Some guys, to get a load quicker, didn't fill the center up, and as they would drive home a corner or side would start slipping off, and they would get laughed at. Some loads came in kind of small and they would get razzed. Usually with eight teams and a big machine or six teams and a smaller machine you would get at least a half a load rest waiting for the one ahead to finish unloading.
I mentioned before the outside layer of bundles on a load were laid like sticks. It also helped if you laid another row inside the outside row. You would gradually narrow the load as you went up. A good loader would end up with a straight wide load, up to two feet above a six foot high standard. The top bundles were so high they had to be tossed up, not laid. You needed the skill of a basketball player.
You would drive from one side of the shock row to the other to keep both sides level. A good team that would go straight close to the shocks and would stop and go at command was a great asset, one that didn't, made a lot of extra steps.
Talking about good teams reminds me of a real nice matched team of shiny black or blue roan Percherons Clarence Matteson had. Clarence liked good horses, had the money, but was too loud and excitable to be a good teamster. Anyway, Nordeen Tufte, his brother-in-law and about twenty-five years old or so used to drive his team threshing. When you would drive up to the separator you would have to drive along the long belt drive and pulley on the machine. When you got the wagon in place to unload you were supposed to turn the team away from the machine to keep them away from the belt pulley. Apparently Tufte didn't do this one day at Gundersons, who live on the farm Bernie and Edith bought. The mare standing next to the pulley swung her tail at flies, I suppose, and got it under the belt on the belt pulley. It pulled her tail right off by the roots so to speak. I remember they called Doc and he said there was nothing he could do but take it out of its misery. He later came out and shot her. (Doc was in the mounted artillery as a veterinarian and said he shot to death many horses in World War I action, because it wasn't practical to doctor horses while in action, just replace them).
Needless to say, Tufte got a good bawling out from Matteson. Besides that, he had pay deducted from his labor (wages were about $30.00 a month, and board and room in the summertime then). I think they figured a good horse was worth from a hundred to two hundred dollars then. A good matched team was hard to put together. Everybody turned their team away from the pulley after that.
Threshing crew dinners were a real big deal. In the earlier years, with Christianson's steam engine and big machine, I believe we had a crew of 16 or 18 men besides family. It seems roast beef or chicken were the main dish with big bowls of mashed potatoes and homemade bread. The bundle haulers would start coming in for dinner at about 11:30 AM. The separator would stop at about 12:00. The separator operator would then oil the machine and eat last.
The bundle wagons had a box built onto the back end of the stringers (the two planks that fit on the wagon and held the box up). The "feed box" was about 3-1/2 feet wide and 1-1/2 feet deep. The horses were unbridled and haltered to the back of the rack, and given a pail of oats or a couple of bundles of grain. If it was very hot and the horses were hot you shouldn't water them till after dinner. Dinner hour was a time for joking and talking. I remember one of the Krebsbach kids put a snake in Farmer Matteson's jacket pocket. When he put it on and reached in his pocket for his gloves, he got a hold of the snake. He nearly went crazy. He was deathly afraid of snakes anyway. We had a rat terrier dog named Spot. The men were laying nesting under shade trees in the yard. Spot would bother them a little and they would chase her away. Byron didn't like the way they treated her and said "Oh, she's a nice dog. Look at the kind look on her face," and one of the men said, "Yeah, a "dumb kind."
Thinking about the feed boxes on hay racks reminds me of the experience I had. When I started to school in the first grade, I went for two weeks and when I came home that Friday night they told me I couldn't go to school any more that year. The first grade class was too large and the one the following year was too small. So the younger ones had to wait till next year. Eunice and I came in the cut. Anyway, when I heard I couldn't go to school anymore that year, I started crying. They were filling silo at our place using the hay racks for hauling corn bundles. My dad told me if I wouldn't cry, I could ride in the feed box on the hay rack. That was a treat for any kid and was done quite a bit when you could get permission.
The machine never shut down for lunchtime in the middle of the afternoon. The women would usually bring the lunch to the threshing area. Kids got to help with the lunch. I remember they brought sandwiches and doughnuts in big dishpans, and two very large coffee pots.
Bundle haulers would eat lunch when they were waiting to unload. Threshing crews were noted for their voracious appetites. When they threshed with the big machine, and in the first years of our machine, supper was served, also. If the season was late or to finish a job they sometimes threshed till dark. No daylight savings time then. It made milking and doing chores very late, with kerosene lanterns. Later years the men would rather eat supper at home so they could get chores done earlier.
When a couple of neighbors started combining we kind of laughed at them, because the windrows of grain during a rainy spell nearly went out of sight because of being covered by growing weeds and grass. But low and behold, when it got dry and they combined it, we went to look at the grain in the hopper and it looked real nice and gold. That sold us on combining.
We were one of the first to start combining our oats. We hired Olaf Lewison to combine some of our oats the first year or two. Then we bought our own - an A-6 Case combine with an air-cooled Wisconsin engine on it. We bought it from Ed Millenacker. It was a pull type without any hydraulic controls. The reel and headers were adjusted by levers in reach of the tractor. Our second combine was an International "80" - a pull type, power take-off model. We went to power take-off because with the newer model tractors you had constant power take-off speed. You could clutch and vary the ground speed without changing the P.T.O. speed. The next move was to a self-propelled because of the advent of combining corn. We had a New Holland 3 row and later a 6 row New Holland.
At the end of the threshing, there was always a night for settling up the exchange time. This was usually a big party for the threshing ring. Home brew and plenty of food even barn dancing at some. Our threshing party, after Bergene, Matteson, and Huseby had the machine, wasn't that wild - usually cake and ice cream. Kids came along. Beer was made legal in 1932 and a keg replaced the home brew. Art and Stan Boyum had a beer and card playing joint. During the threshing season, Stan would drive around the country with bottles of beer for the threshers. I can even remember beer distributor trucks stopping on the road and giving bottles of beer to the men. A good way to advertise. Back in the thirties a small glass of beer cost 5 cents and a large glass 10 cents. A 12 ounce bottle 10 cents, a quart 20 cents, and a half gallon bottle (a picnic) cost 35 cents. Some bars had a half gallon goblet. I forgot what they called it. You would pass it around the booth and all drink from it. It was quite common for some to bring in a 1/2 gallon or 1 gallon tin syrup pail to get filled with draft beer. One such character and he really was a character, was an Irishman named Mike "Brute" Scanlon. He used to bring a pail over to Peterson's Produce (the old hotel building) and share it with Hank Peterson. One day he was carrying a ladder on his shoulder and the gallon syrup pail in his hand. Someone asked him where he was going. He replied, "To Iowa picking corn." He asked one farmer what kind of land he had. The farmer replied "gently rolling." "Well" he slurred "roll her in and let me look it over."
The following was written by Eunice Torgerson Huseby, May 1992.
Amanda and Bennie moved to the farm north of Adams in June 1920. Aaron was born June 29, 1920, just a week after they moved to the farm.
On the day Aaron was born, the lots of the farm were sold. They were plotted into lots with a road. Many people were there to buy lots. Some of the people that I knew who bought lots were Nils Anderson, Andrew Torgerson, B. J. Huseby, Dr. Huseby, Helgeson, Erckenbrack, Kiefer, Gerber, and Schaefer.
The Huseby Herd of Registered Holsteins was one of the oldest continuous family owned, bred, and managed herds in the State of Minnesota. There were four generations of Husebys who had the herd, having started by Aaron's grandfather and Dad in 1908, then Aaron and Byron, and last, Brian. DHIA production records have been kept continuously at least since 1921. Artificial breeding has been used for many years. The Huseby herd was shown at county and state fairs for many years.
Aaron's dad started delivering milk to the people of Adams shortly after he moved to the farm north of Adams. The milk house was close to the house with a large water tank on the outside of the milk house for watering the horses and the bull. A smaller tank was on the inside of the milk house. The milk was carried by cans from the barn. It was strained into milk cans and then put in the small tank to cool. Aaron's mother would take a pitcher and fill bottles. The bottles would be put back into the tank until Aaron's dad would deliver the milk. He would take a horse and wagon. He would take a wire milk bottle carrier and go to the homes and leave the milk. Some people would only take a 1/2 pint of milk. The horse would follow him, and he would sometimes go to the tavern to play cards and he would put the horse by the tavern. In later years the milk was delivered by car and pick up. When Aaron was old enough, he would go with his dad and take the milk to the houses.
Aaron and I were married in 1941. We lived in the big house on the farm with his folks.When Byron and Helen were married in 1943, they also lived in the house. Now there were three families and a hired man living in the house. Bennie and Amanda built a house in town and moved to Adams. But we and Byron and Helen lived together about 10 years. Aaron and I had three children - Allen, Shirley, Carol; Byron and Helen had two children - Gloria and Linda. We purchased the farm north of us and Byron and Helen moved there just a little before Marcia was born.
About the time we were married, we had purchased a new system for cooling the milk. The milk would run over water cooler and we had a four bottle fillers - put an empty bottle, pull a handle and it woudl partly fill the bottle. Move on to refill it and then bottle to cap it, then put in a twelve bottle case and put in the large cooler that had been built in the milk house. We separated some of the milk and the cream was sold to the creamery.
Always at Christmas time we would give all our customers a 1/2 pint of cream. We would have caps for those bottles that said "Merry Christmas." The quart bottles would always have cream on the top if they sat for awhile. Many people would pour the cream off to use for their breakfast food and coffee.
Amanda always did the book work for the milk route. A bill was sent each month to the customers. When Bennie and Amanda moved to town, I took over the book work.
We purchased an old milk truck from one of the dairies. We would have young boys deliver the milk before school. Some boys I can remember - Andy Anderson, our son, Allen, David Boyum, Marty King. Byron would then finish the route after doing the milking,
When the law on pasterization was made we couldn't sell raw milk, so we delivered Polly Meadows milk from Rochester. We sold milk and delivered it to Super Valu, Lavonne's Store, and delivered 1/2 pints to the school.
We built a new milk house on the west side of the barn and we installed a milk tank and transfer system in the barn.
When Bennie and Amanda moved to Adams, Helen took care of bottling the milk. I did the cooking and we both took care of the other household chores. Allen was the first baby. He had four parents - Aaron and I, Byron and Helen. He was the only one for 3-1/2 years before he got a little sister. Byron and Helen didn't have a child until two years later. I can't remember just how the four parents took care of the five children, but I think we must have been special parents to have gotten along for so many years living together.
For writing therapy I am going to make an attempt at writing a brief history of "Huseby Farms" This is off the top of my head so I won't guarantee the accuracy of dates or technical information. Some things were told me when I was young.
Arne and Synneva Huseby Family
Arne A. Huseby came from Norway and to this area because of a Norwegian settlement here. He met Synneva on the boat on the way. She never did learn any English language so never had any meaningful conversation with her. All I can remember of her is sitting in a rocking chair knitting and sewing. I'm sure she did the housework, too, till her later days. When I delivered milk there as a young boy, she would say in Norwegian "passa passa sincha droppen flasken" or "careful careful mustn't drop the bottle". She was very small of stature - a Hukee. Arne was quite tall and very broad shouldered.
My dad told me the first year Arne lived in a sod house with a dirt floor on the farm Terry Hamilton lives on now. My dad said there was a dirt floor in the house where he was born. He either homesteaded or bought the farm that Ward Bergene lives on now. My dad and he (Arne) must have been in partnership in the farm operation. They had shorthorn cattle which were nearly universal around here at that time.
Being there was no high school in the area at that time, my dad went to the School of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota, comparable to Waseca Ag School now. This was a two year course fitted in between harvest and spring work. He took military training, comparable to ROTC now. I think it was required. When he came home to farm he told Grandpa, we have to get into breeding Holsteins, that's the breed of the future. My dad graduated in 1907, so I imagine that is approximately the time they went to Wisconsin and bought 3 or 4 cows or heifers. I can remember one of them was of an old Holland cow family "Dairylander". Of course they had to be shipped by train. This was the start of Huseby Holsteins.
Then dad got married to a local country school teacher, who had gone to Southern Minnesota Normal College at Austin, comparable to a high school now. She was not near finishing the course when Mr. Bostnum, the superintendent said, "she was good enough to teach now." So she was hired to teach in a school across the road from Peter Anderson Farm, (Nomer Larson now).
Some of her students were older than her. Uncle Doc Huseby was one of her students. She said it was impossible for her to teach him fractions. When my mother helped me with decimals she couldn't figure out how that worked. She said fractions were so much easier.
After Mom and Dad got married my grandpa and grandma and Doc moved to town to the house where Larry Voigt lives now. Doc once told me that my dad kicked them off the farm. Doc wanted to be a stable boy and started at the School of Agriculture and then went to the Northwestern School of Veterinary in Chicago, then to the war as a First Lieutenant in the Horse Cavalry serving in France and Germany. When he came home he went into practice for himself.
My Grandpa Huseby worked for the city when he moved to town, mainly manning the water pump house and tower, nothing was automatic then. He also worked some on the farm.
While my grandpa was still on the farm there was controversy about which church to belong to - Marshall or Little Cedar. My dad said the one in town is going to be the church of the future so we will join there. My grandpa agreed.
On June 15, 1920, my folks moved to the present Huseby Farm, two weeks before I was born. My dad told me the reason he moved was that it would be a big advantage to live close to town and I suppose he wanted to be on his own. Before I leave the subject of Grandpa's farm, I will say that he rented it to a newcomer from Norway, Pete Willenger, whose wife was a Bergene now married to Elmer Shwerin. They were never too successful during what turned out to be hard times ending up in the great depression. Grandpa used to help out, out there, I think he was on shares. He used to take the grandkids out to pick mustard. I remember we got a penny a round. He had a 1928 four door Pontiac sedan and he wasn't the best driver. He went fast and we used to think he sped up around corners. The farm stayed in estate till nearly all the children were gone, then it was sold to Ward. It was vacant for several years and Doc took care of it, rented to Andrew Slindee, then when it was vacant Doc used the house for a "private night club" and the pasture for horses.
The Huseby Farm
The original Huseby Farm in section two Adams Township bordering on the north edge of Adams village. The southwest 40 acres was one parcel bought from Nils Gravdahl, my Grandma Anderson's brother-in-law. There was the present house, north calf barn and the little garage and outhouse that was the buildings. Nils Gravdahl's name is written in the basement floor. I think Tom Koloen built the house and lived in it for awhile. It was built of some used lumber that came from a dismantled photo studio that was somewhere around where Super Valu is now, I think.
The land on this "40" was mostly all woods. The bordering 80 on the north lying east and west was bought from John W. Heimer. I think my grandpa Anderson loaned my dad the money for this. At the time land prices were booming and dad paid over $200 an acre for the two parcels. The north 80 was short because John Heimer kept the woods on the east end for firewood. It was the custom for people in town to own woodland for firewood. That's why the "big woods" as it is called has so many owners of which the Arne Huseby estate is one. This is the woods where Bob Osmundson and Ray Mullenbach live. The Huseby land is between Mullenbach's and Nomer Larson's land. Byron and I have been paying the taxes on it since Dad died, but it would cost more to get a clear title than it's worth. My lawyer said we should put in a driveway and use it once in awhile and we could get some kind of a claim to it in time.
The woodland area that Heimer kept consisted of about 3-1/2 acres on the southeast 40 of the 1/4 section. We also lost a rod on the north because section 2 borders Marshall Township and errors in surveying are corrected there. Bergene and Weness measured down from the north and claimed the 160 rods so our line fence ended up one rod south of the one between Arvid and Weness. This does not show on the plat. Heimer lived on the northwest corner of the 80 where the rock pile is now and the creek cuts across the corner. All I can remember of buildings there is the basement of the house that was our junk hole. The granary on the farm now was moved from this site. There was a small bridge on the highway there that we called the Heimer bridge. I can remember gypsies camping there with their covered wagons every year for a while. They came down to our farm to buy eggs. I suppose the creek was their water supply. They only stayed several days or a week and then go on.
My dad apparently started building the cow barn before he moved. It is 32' x 60' and held 15 cows on the east side. The west side had a 12' x 12' bull pen in the center and two 12' x 12' calf pens to the north and two to the south of the bull pen. I remember Dad was proud of the cow manger. It's still there about 2' in the front and curved to the floor on the cow side. He said he worked till 4 o'clock one morning keeping the cement from flowing down the curve. That style manger wasn't popular for long. The cows booted the hay and other feed, especially baled hay over the front and couldn't reach it again, and it was difficult to clean. The north barn was used for horses (5 or more) and large heifers.
We had a chicken house west of the cow barn. It ran east and west about 16' x 30'. When I was very young this was moved east of the cattle yard, where the pole shed is now. It was converted to a hog house and a lean-to was built on the north and east. This was used for a sheep shed at times.
Sheep Farming
When I was young, we had a sheep flock of from 20 to 30 ewes and a buck. I remember helping when they sheared them. A professional sheep shearer was hired for this. Hand powered shears was all that was used at that time. I'd help catch the sheep and help restrain them which was very easy. They did not fight much once they were on their back. I helped "box" the wool. First we picked as much dirt out of the fleece as we could. Then the fleece, which was for a good part in one piece, was laid out and the small pieces were thrown on it, then folding it up and putting it on large square board fitted with hinges to fold into a box about one cubic foot or a little larger. There was a system of slots in the cube that allowed it to be tied with two or three twines each way, then unfolded to leave a nice bale of wool. I remember storing these in the little garage, till the price was right or Dubinsky could make up a load for his model "T" Ford truck.
Wool was cheap, but the sheep got only poor hay and woods pasture. In the early 1930's we contracted and fed out lambs. We fed from 1 to 3 carloads (300 head per carload) of lambs for five or six years. We would get them in the fall at 50-60 pounds and market at 100 to 120 pounds.
When we first got them we had to carefully adjust them to gleaning the corn fields. Then in the winter they were confined. It took a lot of hay. I got to help fill hay bunks which was a pretty regular job. We had a small wagon with a box on pulled by one horse that we hauled the corn (ground) to the small feed bunks twice a day. I think we barely broke even or lost money on sheep. Either the market wasn't good or one occasion about when they were ready for market three dogs got in with them one night. The next morning we hauled nearly 100 to market. The dogs had killed only a very few but they had chewed up the leg of mutton, which made them nearly worthless. We made quite a scene when we drove them to and from the stockyard at Adams. People lined the street to watch - 300 to 900 head. My dad was secretary of the Adams Shipping Association which closed about this time with the advent of motor trucks. A sick sheep was a dead sheep.
To accommodate this many feeder lambs my dad built a cheap shed about where the machine shed is now. He used all old lumber from Ed Boe's John Deere implement building which he bought and tore down to build the new post office. We also used the lean-to around the granary for lambs. This building we built just for the lambs was torn down when we built the machine shed.
A note on sheep. When a lamb died, Dubinsky was given the pelt, just for skinning it. In appreciation for this, he brought up a large bottle of Jewish wine. My mother accepted this and put it under the sink. When my dad came home, she showed it to him and proceeded to dump it down the drain. She was death on alcohol. My dad had to just watch.
Dairy Farming
When we hauled buttermilk home from town in the wintertime, our driveway which was steeper then, was very often slippery I can remember the horses slipping and falling trying to pull it up the driveway. We would then have to bring the team down to the blacksmith and have them sharp-shod for winter. Sharp shod meant the bottom of the shoes had cleats forged on the bottom much like baseball cleats, only two cleats though. This should have been a necessity for all horses used in the winter, especially to pull loads.
The old creamery was east of where the elevator's two big silos are now. The train track was just south of them. I remember a couple of times a train came when we were filling the buttermilk tank and the horse bolted and ran away for home leaving the buttermilk running on the ground. The creamery used to churn butter and they also made some cultured buttermilk for sale or most often you could just help yourself to a cup. I never cared for it but many thought there wasn't any other drink that good. It was made and stored in a huge crock. They made this as long as they made butter.
Many people hauled their own cream as we did, but there were farmers who hired a cream hauler. My grandpa Huseby hauled for a while, I was told. The cream was picked up once or twice a week, and was very often sour.
Swine Farming
Going back to the swine business. My dad bred and raised purebred Chester White hogs on "Live Oak Dairy Farm", - the woods was mostly all oak. He had calling cards made - "Live Oak Dairy Farm" Purebred Holsteins, Purebred Chester White Hogs and Barred Rock Poultry Breeding Stock. This was when I was very young.
We had an old butter churn buried in the ground that we stored buttermilk for feeding to the hogs. We got a load twice a week of buttermilk from the creamery. This was sold on bids. A load was a tank made out of wooden matched 2' x 12' fitted planks. It was about 3' by 3' and 10 feet long on a high wheeled wagon to get through mud and snow. We had a hand pump on this underground churn and that was often my job to put ground feed in the trough and pump buttermilk into it. Sows were allowed to run in the woods and eat acorns and grass and to farrow by themselves. Very often they would root out a depression in the ground to farrow in. Then it would rain and we lost pigs.
In the forties we just bought feeder pigs and fed out. My dad could buy cheap sick feeder pigs and feed them buttermilk and they would perk right up. But soon they quit making butter at the creamery and we had a yard full of disease, so we quit with hogs. I had a purebred Duroc hog project in FFA for about 3 years before I went to college. I sold some breading stock but it was depression years. We also tried raising some purebred Chester Whites in the forties away from the old hog lot, but never very successful. I recall sleeping on the kitchen floor and going out every couple of hours waiting for one to farrow. When I came out once, she had 9 pigs and went mad and killed every one. When we had the Chester Whites in the forties we had 3 double pen farrowing, portable houses.
Chicken Farming
I got to be thinking of chickens back when I was a small child. My folks, because Mom was always a big part of the chicken business, raised purebred "Barred Plymouth Rocks." They were kind of a dual purpose breed used for both meat and eggs and were much larger than the present day leghorn hi-breds. This was before the time of the 3 or 4 pound broilers we have today. They never butchered a bird till it was mature then. Joe Schneider, Doc's and Hans' brother ran the Royal Puritan Chicken Farm about a mile south of LeRoy. He was nationally known for his outstanding "Plymouth Rocks" and used to judge and show at chicken shows all over the U.S. His breeding farm was on the grounds of the famous Oakdale Park of LeRoy. This is the park that Cy Thompson, an accountant for the Hormel Co. built on about $200,000 of embezzled funds. It had a roller rink, dance floor, swimming pool, picnic area and all that goes with it. They had big celebrations then and it was known far and wide. There were road signs for many miles around, pointing to Oakdale Park. They called the road to LeRoy, the "Oakdale Trail."
Years ago they used to trap-nest to find the best laying hen. The hens were banded with numbers and then a swinging door on the nest would let the hen in but not out so when you picked the egg you checked the hen that laid it. We never did this.
In a breeding flock which we had in the 20's you needed at least one rooster for 20 hens. Sometimes you would get a mad rooster. I remember running from them many times. My mother said when I was small one got me down and beat and clawed me. They would fight between themselves.
Chickens run free much of the time and we would find eggs all over the farmyard. Under the granary was a favorite place and that was a kid's job to get them.
In the early days chicks were raised on the farm. A brooding hen, that is one that is clucky and molting would quit laying, so she was put in a little house, like a doghouse and about 15 or 20 fertilized eggs put into a nest inside. In about 3 weeks the eggs would hatch, then a little yard was made out of 18" high chicken netting in front of the house so the chicks couldn't get out, but the hen could get out to eat and drink. The house door was closed at night to keep rodents out. Some hens were left to roam and raised a brood on their own.
Today maybe kids don't even know what an old chicken house was like. Roosts covered half the floor area and were one to three feet high usually made out of 1-1/2" x 1-1/2 " boards. Chickens spent all the dark time on roosts, ate in the daytime and only laid eggs in the daylight. In the later years of chicken houses, there was a hatching season in the spring and fertile eggs were sold to a professional hatchery. There was such a hatchery in Adams for a few years. It was in the basement of the building where Wayne works now. Years ago many town people had their own chicken houses, eggs for their own use. Boyums had Buff Orpington chickens. Many town people in town had a cow, like Eunice's dad, "Creampot Helene," a little Jersey. In the summer they kept her on a lot on the poor farm, north of Adams. Slindees, Kiefers and a couple others kept several cows and sold milk, competition for us. More on our milk route later. Arne Huseby had a barn that could hold 4 horses and 2 cows. Nils Anderson had a big barn that Reinartz has now.
Note: When you sold hatching eggs, of course, you had to keep the required number of roosters. If the hatchability percentage was down on your eggs, you received less for them or they might not even buy them. The Torgerson "Daylight Store" used to take in eggs for trade. They would give credit vouchers or trade chips for eggs, and would pay a penny or two a dozen over produce market price. They of course had to be candled, that is held up to a hole in a lighted box, to see if they weren't spoiled, either rotten or blood spots. The store would sell some, and the produce picked up the rest.
There were two poultry produces in town, Peterson was in the old hotel and Erie was in a triple stone building, "The Sable Building" where Super-Valu is now. The old hotel was where the theater is now, or was, and the livery stable and gas house was where Osmundson Implement is now.
Eggs we picked on the farm were brought to the produce in early days, later they picked them up. Mom and Ida used to shake the eggs, if the inside moved around they were rotten, of course they were candled at the produce and some were sent back. We ate (after checking them on breaking) those that were questionable.
The later years we bought chicks and raised them in a brooder house, now used for a corn drying house. We always bought leghorns and had a flock of about 200 in the house that was north of the little garage. I remember a small incubator in our basement used for hatching eggs. I never saw it used. It was quite a job. You had to turn the eggs every day and keep the heat and humidity right. Nature is hard to duplicate.
I am guessing, but I imagine with the Barred Rocks, we maybe got 40 to 50 eggs per year and hens were kept till they died or some were used for butchering or they looked old. Today, they expect chickens in cages to lay an egg a day, if they get below 90% of this they are culled. Each year, old hens are sold and after a short sanitation period are replaced with pullets. When we were raising leghorns, after they got old enough to fend for themselves, they were set free to roam the farm and eat cheap. Then in the fall the old hens were sold and several evenings were spent catching pullets out of the trees with a wire with a hook on the end to hook their legs, or caught by hand, and putting them in the chicken house before they started laying or their combs froze.
The leghorn flock was culled periodically. If the comb was dull or shrunken, or they looked thin and un-thrifty or on examination of the vent (the pelvic space) was dry or narrow, less than two fingers wide, you knew they weren't laying. You would put these in a crate and the produce man would come and pick them up. The ones that weren't good enough for "chicken soup" he wrung the neck on and left them. The rest were of little value.
Feed Bags
"From bags to riches. When Irwin Jacobs learned the burlap-bag business from his father, he also learned the business savvy that would bring him to the forefront of the financiers of the 1980." - From a news clipping.
We used to get a lot of feed in burlap bags, wheat bran, linseed meal and other feeds. My mother used to wash up the old ones and bundle them up, one bundle with partly torn ones and one with good ones. I think we got about a nickel a piece for slightly torn ones and a dime for good ones. We then brought them to Schissel's Elevator where a man from Jacobs Company would pick them up. Jacob's used to sew up torn ones and sell them, too.
Horses
The north half of the north barn was for horses. There were two double stalls and a single stall on the east end. The first horses I remember were Fanny and Flora. They were the main team. Lady joined them when a three horse hitch was needed for plowing with the one bottom sulky plow, two row cultivator, eight foot two-section (no wheels) "Kovar" field cultivator or six foot tandem disc, plus any time one pair wouldn't pull something. All three were jet black and a mixture of Percheron and Belgians I think. Then we had Beauty, a dark brown driving horse much lighter built. Beauty was used on the milk wagon for delivering milk. The milk wagon was a high wheeled buggy with 2-3'x 8' by 6' high box on it with a windshield in the front and sliding doors with windows in, on each side. Beauty was trained to know the milk route. You could take a carrier (8 qt. metal carrier with a handle on top) and walk down the street and holler back to her to giddyap and she would go by herself to the next stop. If you were going to leave her for awhile there was a 10 or 11# tether weight (a boughten one, I don't know what they were called) that was hooked to the bridle. (Al has now). This would restrain her while dad went into play cards after the route.
Beauty was teamed with Lady when a second light draft team was needed. Beauty was also the riding horse, never had a saddle. Fanny succumbed to heat one day and died in the harness. I remember they moved the cultivator and other two horses away from her and buried her on the spot. No rendering plants those days. Lady was then teamed with Florie and a new team of blacks was purchased. Topsy and Coalie, from the Paradise farm (name of the people that lived there I guess) where Mrs. Tony P. Mullenbach lives now. This team was somewhat lighter than Lady and Florie, but faster. About this time Dad would use a Fordson tractor that did some of the heavy field work and he soon bought a "GP" John Deere tractor with steel wheels that did most of the heavy work with a little larger machinery. Horses were used for all the lighter work, cultivating, dragging, planting, seeding, hauling manure and all hayrack and sled work. Florie raised a colt (Colonel) before she died. He was teamed with Lady. He went blind from "pinkeye" but was a good horse. I recall Joe Wehner, an airplane pilot barnstorming in our pasture north of the house. Colonel was in the pasture at the time and ran into the new pasture fence and got cut up badly (blind). Joe offered my dad a free ride for using the pasture. Dad declined.
A large crowd came out from town and a lot took rides. Lady was a kid horse and after Beauty was gone (milk was delivered in the old model "T" touring in the summer and Topsy and Coalie in the winter or muddy roads). She became the riding horse for us. She was real wide and our legs stuck straight out. We would have to close the horse barn door or she would get tired of us and go through the door way and brush us off.
Topsy raised a colt named Jerry before she died. Jerry was paired with Colonel for a while, I believe. About this time Uncle Doc started using a car for his calls and we got his driving horse "May." I think she was mostly "Morgan" bred, very fast and very tough. She was much lighter than Coalie but, more than held up her end. She was also quite temperamental. This is the main team I remember because we used them till the tractor planters, mowers, cultivators and combines came along in the early 40's. In the 30's when my dad was postmaster and owned the John Deere implement agency, he traded some machinery for (1) a pair of broncos. I never drove them but the hired men took them threshing. They had to be watched; (2) a pair of mules, we used them a little; (3) a team of nice Greys. None of these were kept very long.
Somewhere on the end we ended up with a balky horse (he had a lot of names) which was the most hopeless situation you can imagine. When he got tired that's where we stopped. My dad got me a pony "Daisy." I guess I was a little too young, the year before I went to school I believe. She used to run in the woods pasture and when I wanted to ride I could never catch her. I never did get to handle her good. Shetlands can be obstinate. I got a 26" bike about the this time, too. I rode Doc's horses quite a bit especially Dot, an Indian pony, white and brown. We kept it at our place a lot and Doc raised several foals out of her. Doc had a McClellan Army saddle that I used most of the time. I had one bad experience with her. We were chasing heifers up to the Snorthum farm, where Earl Weness lived, for summer pasture. We were just walking along when the saddle blanket slipped out and scared her. I had a loose rein and fell off as she bucked. I landed on my knees and one hurt all summer.
During the winter when only one team was needed the others were turned out to roam the cornfields and all. We sometimes didn't see them for weeks. I did some dragging with a team of horses on the two section drag. We never had a cart behind the drag, so we got in a lot of walking there. I also cultivated corn when I was real young, with two horses and a one row cultivator. The cultivator shovels didn't have springs for giving when they hit a rock, but they had wood peg shear pins, homemade out of scraps of good wood, such as broken fork handles. They were shaped to a round form about 5/8" in diameter and 3" long. We always had spares in the tool box for use after hitting a rock.
We were trained to tell when a horse needed a rest especially on a hot day, usually about once a round on 80 rod rows. We had to be sure to rest them with their heads to the wind. Nose flies, a horse bat fly that cycled through the horses stomach and droppings. The horse had fly blankets. The fancy ones were made of leather thongs about the size of shoelaces. There used to be one hanging down at the "Hitching Post." Most farmers used burlap bags sewed together to cover the horse's body ahead of the tail area. The horse's tail was a very good fly chaser, but it would nearly cut your skin when your face got in the way. Nose flies bothered the horse the most. They would bite the tender part of its nose and nostrils. When they got bad a horse would put his nose on the tongue of the wagon or implement and even refuse to move. To remedy this, nose baskets made out of hardware cloth (fine screen) were attached to the bridle and basked the nose. These worked pretty good. I was never a good teamster, I felt too sorry for the horses and didn't push them hard enough and rested them too much to get enough done. On hot days mowing they would get all lathered up from sweat and fighting flies.
It was usually a kid's job to drive the team on a hay wagon and pull behind hay loader. The hay loader picked up the hay and was wheel driven so it picked up the hay and elevated it to the rear of the hay rack. The loader man had to level the hay by fork. If you let the horses go too fast, he couldn't keep up, if too slow he didn't like that either, but if you let the horses stop he would fall down. That was the worst. The driver had steps to stand on the front of the hay rack. This was called "the standard." When the load got full you got covered with hay and chaff, and couldn't hear the loader's instructions. Usually the horses would straddle the windrow but once in a while a kid would let them get off the row, the hay loader would plug on the sides. This meant a bad time for the driver. Kids very often drove the team that pulled the hay via hay rope pulleys and hay carriers up in the barn. The hay rope usually came out of the barn on the opposite end of the load and hay barn door. The team was hooked to the same evener or "whipple tree" that was used to pull the wagon. The rope was devised to the hole that attached the tongue of the wagon. When the man on the wagon hollered to go, you were not supposed to walk behind the evener because if the harness tug broke or evener broke it could fly back and hit you as the hay fell back. At the end of the pull, when the hay was at the right spot, you were ordered to stop, if you could hear. Then you had to lift up the evener with one hand and turn the horses back to the barn for another load. This was quite a trick for a little kid. Sometimes the horses would get tangled in the hay rope or more often step over the harness tug, which didn't please the one that came to help you out.
Harvesting Oats and Grain (small)
Oats has been the predominate small grain crop around here in my time. I guess in the early times it was mostly wheat because they made wheat flour for human use. But oats proved to be a better yielder for animal feed. Although we have grown wheat, rye, barley and triticale, a hybrid of rye and wheat I guess.
My first recollection of oat harvesting, I must have been 3 or 4 years old when one noon my dad put me in my coaster wagon and pulled me out to the field. He then tied the wagon to the rear of the horse-drawn grain binder and went down the field cutting grain and binding bundles. The field was on Ollie Lunde's "40" which is where the town baseball diamond was later, northeast of where Bud Lewison lives now. I imagine he didn't pull me very long before I fell asleep, because I don't recall going home.
By the time I had much to do with harvest a tractor was used to pull the binder. If the grain was quite uniform a kid could sit on the binder and watch to see that everything was running right, and holler at the tractor driver if it wasn't. The binder had a bundle carrier that would hold up to five or six bundles. The binder operator had to trip this so the bundles were in a straight row across the field so the shocker didn't have to walk far to make a shock and so there was a straight row of shocks for the bundle hauler to follow, as the horses went by themselves and the loader just walked beside the wagon pitching on bundles just telling the horses giddyup and whoa. Sometimes the horses would wander and you would have to lead them back on track. One problem with some horses they would get hungry and turn towards the shock and take the head of a bundle or two and shake and bust them to get a bite of grain. The bundle would bust, then you would have to load a loose bundle. To remedy this, nose fly baskets would be put on their nose.
Often the kid couldn't handle the binder because the sickle had to be raised or lowered to get out of the trash or cut low enough to make a decent bundle or there was very often bundle tying problems. Levers were difficult for a kid to operate. Then the kid got to drive the tractor which in our case was a hand clutch John Deere. A rope was run from the binder to the clutch of the tractor and a pull of the rope would disengage the clutch. It seemed kids were hard of hearing, especially with the noise of the machinery. Tractor driving had its problems, too. This was in the days of steel wheels and no power steering, and it was easy to get off the width of cut and leave a strip or cut half a swath that would bring a loud response from the binder operator. Also making corners wasn't easy as tractors with wide fronts didn't like to turn sharp. At least we didn't have to worry about a power take-off shaft breaking from turning too short because the power for the binder came from a large "ball" wheel that would slide if something plugged up. I forgot to say that the bundle carrier was dumped by lifting a foot lever with a foot hood on. A kid didn't have enough strength to do this so a bundle of twine strings were tied to the hood and he could pull up on it to help his foot. Then to get the bundle carrier to carry again you had to stand on the foot lever to push it down. Any error here caused the bundles to be strung out, which drew a dirty look. Normally there was to be six bundles to a shock, so when a field was started you would dump when there got to be three, of course this varied across the field but it was close to the next dump because most binders were only 8 foot. We did end up with a ten footer though. The straightness of the rows cross-ways was the most critical. A shock was normally for good drying made up of six bundles, three sets of two set with heads up to look like a pup tent. After the grain was in the shock for a few days of good weather or weeks of wet weather it got dry enough to thresh.
Kids very often got the job of helping shock. I say helping because young kids usually worked with an adult. The first two bundles were done by the adult because it was a little trick to lean bundles against each other with an air space between the bottoms so they would stand solid. The next two were easier and the last two quite easy. Bundles are slippery and if the shock fell over in the wind or rain they wouldn't dry and had to be reset. Many times after a storm some had to be reset. Often, if you had plenty help available the shockers or shocker would start shocking soon after the binder had made a few rounds. This required more walking, but a grain bundle laying on the ground and in a rain or two, the heads would sprout and spoil the grain and the straw would get mildewy. I recall in the early "thirties" I was pre-teen or early teen, Willie Rauen worked for us. He was always in a hurry and we would run from shock to shock. The idea was to take the last bundle of the day or the field off the bundle carrier, so when the binder was done the shocking was done. This didn't happen too often unless the binder had trouble (which was common) or the grain was light. Thinking of Willie Rauen, reminds me of the time I came over to the old shop after dinner and saw Willie cutting pieces off an old tire casing. They were thinner in those days, and fitting and tacking them to the soles of his worn out shoes. Those were depression days. (I guess they impressed me for life.) Many times when the weather was hot, we would rest in the afternoon and shock after chores.
Harvesting oats was a bigger thing in those days, because there were no soybeans and very little corn. At our farm with comparatively more livestock we needed a lot of oats and straw and hay. Straw would be fed to horses and young stock if the hay was light. My dad rented the Snorthum farm, which is the one Earl Weness used to live on - the 80 - a field you would run into if you didn't turn at the 1-1/2 mile corner. This field, excluding a slough in the middle, seems like it was perennially oats. When they did tractor work up there we used to pull an oil and gas wagon made out of an old buggy chassis up there and leave till we were done. The tractors started on gas but burned tractor fuel or distillate it was called then. I think it was about the same as furnace fuel today. It cost between 6 and 9 cents per gallon. The tank wagon would deliver right to the field to fill it with five gallon gas buckets. That's how they measured the amount (count the buckets).
Thinking about the oil and gas wagon on Snorthum's farm reminded me of another thing. Pete Quale had an old 1927 or 28 car he used to run around in. He was older than us, I think he was gone trucking often. He left the old car at O.B. Lewison's gas station, where Corky's is now. He told Syd he could use it whenever it was standing there - all he had to do was put in gas. It was usually nearly empty. Well, one night a gang of we guys wanted to go to a free show in Elkton, but nobody had money for gas, so I said I knew where I could get some tractor fuel, so off we went to the oil wagon. There was enough gas in the car if we didn't shut it off we could dilute it with distillate and it would keep running. We smoked our way to Elkton to the free show, but when we came to leave it wouldn't start, so we pushed, by hand, down the main street of Elkton till it started with a big cloud of blue smoke, and we attracted quite a bit of attention with distillate stink and the blue smoke, but we made it home. We tried this a couple of other times.
About the Snorthum farm, Ernest Snorthum was an elderly bachelor and lived alone in the old rickety house that Earl Weness remodeled. We kept heifers up on the pasture and in the old barn in the summer. We had to go up and water the heifers daily in the summer. Ernest never had a car and would always walk to town for groceries. He had a sister that lived away someplace and she rented the land to us for years.
Threshing
I imagine I was about seven or eight years old when I first got to be around the threshing crew. My first recollection was when Mike and Henry Christianson (they married sisters) had a steam engine and large threshing machine. Mike lived on the building site across the road from where Billy Lewison lives now. Mike always seemed old and quiet, but his wife Emma was younger and very active and talkative. Henry lived where Dan May lives now and was the father of Margy and Lois Osmundson. He was somewhat younger than Mike, was related but not a brother (?) He used to play the fiddle and Margie the piano at barn dances. They owned the threshing rig together and did custom threshing around the area. We had them for 5 or 6 years. I recall the steam engine rumbling down the road with the separator (another name for thresher) behind it at about 1 mile per hour. It took a couple of hours to set it up. The very long belt had to be lined up perfectly and the engine and rig had to be blocked to keep from moving. The engine and rig were very large - a 36" threshing machine, that meant the throat where you threw the bundle was 36" wide. It may have been 42". Along with the machine a water wagon was needed to haul water for the steam engine. It consisted of a tank that held about 500 gallons, I would guess. The wagon was on high wooden wheels and horse drawn. It seemed as though on a long day the steam engine would use 3 or 4 tanks. They never kept a team of horses on it but used the team from the oat wagons to pull it to a water source, which in our case was the big stock tank by the milk house. If the oat wagon team was busy a bundle team that was waiting pulled the water wagon around. Nobody had water pressure but there was a pump on the tank, by the way the tank was made of wood and enclosed on the top. The pump was mounted on the top and had a handle sticking up that pumped both ways. It was usually a kid's job to be the "water buck." I had my rounds at that. Our water was pumped by windmill and if the wind didn't blow that day we got a chance to pump water from the well to the tank by hand. I got in on that, too. We usually tried to have the stock tank full on threshing day. We usually had two full days of threshing. My playmates from town were often around these days, which was welcome help for me.
The threshing rig had a coal wagon along with it. It seems they had to go to town every 2 or 3 days to get coal. I don't remember where we got the team of horses to do that. The coal was shoveled in the steam engine by hand, and the coal was loaded at the lumberyard coal sheds the same way, sometimes the lumberyard employee would help load, sometimes he was busy then. There were several kinds of coal in small sheds along the track so they could unload the coal cars right into the sheds by hand of course. I got into helping unload train cars when I was a kid, too. A couple of bigger kids would contract to unload a car of coal and they would recruit younger kids. There are two principal types of coal - Anthracite or hard coal found in the Dakotas and Pennsylvania, I think. This is the best coal. It burns slower and with less smoke, but slower to ignite. The other is bituminous coal that is softer, dirtier and emits more black smoke, with less heat in it. It is cheaper. There must have been nearly 20 coal sheds with several grades of coal.
The story was out that when a certain individual was in charge of the lumberyard someone drove on the scale and weighed his empty wagon. He drove off and down to the coal sheds and visited a bit and forgot what shed he was supposed to take from, so he drove back on the scale and went in to find out. When he got in this person had weighed the wagon again and said that will be $14.00.
Another kid job was watching the oat wagons as they filled. The separator augured the oats into a hopper that was set to trip when it got 1/2 bushel in it then it would run into one of two wagons. This is the measure they used to charge for the threshing rig, so much per bushel. There was always one team of horses to haul oats. The kid's job was to level the load and if he was good enough, to haul it to the granary, where a man ran the elevator (gas engine). The spout for grain came out the side of the thresher. Oats and straw were always very dusty and itchy. The straw went straight through the machine and on the end was a large blower with an adjustable long pipe with a flexible hood on the end. Two steering wheels and gears raised and lowered the blower and turned it from side to side and a rope controlled the hood. It was often a kids' job to watch the blowers. A good blower tender made the job of stacking straw a lot easier. Stacking straw was a very hard dirty and important job. A good stack-to shed rain should be kept just a little higher in the center all the time. Straw was very slippery and it was easy for a corner or side to fall off. A stack that hadn't been kept high in the center would take on rain then when you come to get a load of straw.
In the winter there would be frozen spots you had to chip loose with a pick ax. I recall a couple of us working a half a day to get a load of straw for the cows and calves. The stacker would tell the blower tender where to blow the straw and would get quite upset if it wasn't right, especially if it hit him. The stacker usually wore goggles and a red kerchief over his nose and mouth and had an all seat wet shirt and pants. I have been on both jobs several times. You didn't have to stay on the stack all the time, if you were handy you could do a pretty good job with the blower.
We and Bergenes usually had a straw shed for heifers or hogs. This was made by putting posts in the ground and poles across the top and then laying old woven fence wire on the top and sides. Then we would thresh straw over the top, sometimes this would be our whole straw pile. We would fence around the outside of the pile to keep livestock out. The poles and posts lasted several years and you would always leave some straw on top. I think these were healthier than some modern pole sheds.
We were one of the first ones to go to combiner. I remember Virgil Bergene saying they would always thresh because you had to have a straw shed. There was usually straw around the straw stack that had to be cleaned up. Several times we hired a stationary baler to come and bale this. It took a couple or three men to pitch into it. Wood blocks with grooves for wire were inserted when a bale was long enough, then wire ties were run through the slots and ties. These were very heavy bales of straw up to 125 pounds.
There were usually eight bundle wagons hauling bundles. Once in a while they had a couple of extra men to help pitch into the separator. They were called "Spike" pitchers. The bundles were supposed to be pitched in heads first and parallel with the separator. There were some knives that slashed up and down that cut the twines. The bundles were not supposed to be piled on top of each other (single file). When Oscar Bergene ran our threshing rig, if he heard the separator groaning because of tough straw or the pitchers were throwing bundles in too fast, he stood on top of the machine and shook his head. It was said when a bundle pitcher was tired or had a hang-over, he would pitch some in cross ways and fast and that would plug the machine. Then they would get a rest when the machine man unplugged the separator.
In the late 30's (I think), my dad, Oscar Bergene, and Clarence Matteson bought their own machine - a 28" Avery. It was smaller than Christianson's, but required less power. Oscar had a "D" John Deere on steel that handled it nicely. He was the separator operator and Clarence Matteson ran the grain elevator at the granary and bossed the kid grain haulers. We often had only 6 bundle haulers. Two from Husebys, two from Oscar Bergene, one from Clarence Matteson and one from Edwin Bergene, who hired our machine. Sometimes they did custom threshing and other men were hired. The first ones to get loaded in the morning, (the haulers went by pairs) were the first ones to quit at night.
Bernie Neus worked for us and Sally Weness worked for Bergenes. They would always race to see who would be the first ones to the field. I remember Bernie getting up at 4 o'clock to get the chores done so he could beat Sally. There was skill to be learned in loading slippery oat bundles. The "basket," as the sided part of the hay rack was called, was made of spaced board about 3 feet high on the sides and back and the front was high with about a 6 foot high "standard" in the center. This was to climb on top of the load and give some stability to the load so bundle wouldn't fall on the horses if the load slipped. To make a good load after you filled the basket you had to keep it quite level. You had to lay the bundles like sticks around the outside and keep filling the center as you went up. The corners had to be kind of crisscrossed. Some guys, to get a load quicker, didn't fill the center up, and as they would drive home a corner or side would start slipping off, and they would get laughed at. Some loads came in kind of small and they would get razzed. Usually with eight teams and a big machine or six teams and a smaller machine you would get at least a half a load rest waiting for the one ahead to finish unloading.
I mentioned before the outside layer of bundles on a load were laid like sticks. It also helped if you laid another row inside the outside row. You would gradually narrow the load as you went up. A good loader would end up with a straight wide load, up to two feet above a six foot high standard. The top bundles were so high they had to be tossed up, not laid. You needed the skill of a basketball player.
You would drive from one side of the shock row to the other to keep both sides level. A good team that would go straight close to the shocks and would stop and go at command was a great asset, one that didn't, made a lot of extra steps.
Talking about good teams reminds me of a real nice matched team of shiny black or blue roan Percherons Clarence Matteson had. Clarence liked good horses, had the money, but was too loud and excitable to be a good teamster. Anyway, Nordeen Tufte, his brother-in-law and about twenty-five years old or so used to drive his team threshing. When you would drive up to the separator you would have to drive along the long belt drive and pulley on the machine. When you got the wagon in place to unload you were supposed to turn the team away from the machine to keep them away from the belt pulley. Apparently Tufte didn't do this one day at Gundersons, who live on the farm Bernie and Edith bought. The mare standing next to the pulley swung her tail at flies, I suppose, and got it under the belt on the belt pulley. It pulled her tail right off by the roots so to speak. I remember they called Doc and he said there was nothing he could do but take it out of its misery. He later came out and shot her. (Doc was in the mounted artillery as a veterinarian and said he shot to death many horses in World War I action, because it wasn't practical to doctor horses while in action, just replace them).
Needless to say, Tufte got a good bawling out from Matteson. Besides that, he had pay deducted from his labor (wages were about $30.00 a month, and board and room in the summertime then). I think they figured a good horse was worth from a hundred to two hundred dollars then. A good matched team was hard to put together. Everybody turned their team away from the pulley after that.
Threshing crew dinners were a real big deal. In the earlier years, with Christianson's steam engine and big machine, I believe we had a crew of 16 or 18 men besides family. It seems roast beef or chicken were the main dish with big bowls of mashed potatoes and homemade bread. The bundle haulers would start coming in for dinner at about 11:30 AM. The separator would stop at about 12:00. The separator operator would then oil the machine and eat last.
The bundle wagons had a box built onto the back end of the stringers (the two planks that fit on the wagon and held the box up). The "feed box" was about 3-1/2 feet wide and 1-1/2 feet deep. The horses were unbridled and haltered to the back of the rack, and given a pail of oats or a couple of bundles of grain. If it was very hot and the horses were hot you shouldn't water them till after dinner. Dinner hour was a time for joking and talking. I remember one of the Krebsbach kids put a snake in Farmer Matteson's jacket pocket. When he put it on and reached in his pocket for his gloves, he got a hold of the snake. He nearly went crazy. He was deathly afraid of snakes anyway. We had a rat terrier dog named Spot. The men were laying nesting under shade trees in the yard. Spot would bother them a little and they would chase her away. Byron didn't like the way they treated her and said "Oh, she's a nice dog. Look at the kind look on her face," and one of the men said, "Yeah, a "dumb kind."
Thinking about the feed boxes on hay racks reminds me of the experience I had. When I started to school in the first grade, I went for two weeks and when I came home that Friday night they told me I couldn't go to school any more that year. The first grade class was too large and the one the following year was too small. So the younger ones had to wait till next year. Eunice and I came in the cut. Anyway, when I heard I couldn't go to school anymore that year, I started crying. They were filling silo at our place using the hay racks for hauling corn bundles. My dad told me if I wouldn't cry, I could ride in the feed box on the hay rack. That was a treat for any kid and was done quite a bit when you could get permission.
The machine never shut down for lunchtime in the middle of the afternoon. The women would usually bring the lunch to the threshing area. Kids got to help with the lunch. I remember they brought sandwiches and doughnuts in big dishpans, and two very large coffee pots.
Bundle haulers would eat lunch when they were waiting to unload. Threshing crews were noted for their voracious appetites. When they threshed with the big machine, and in the first years of our machine, supper was served, also. If the season was late or to finish a job they sometimes threshed till dark. No daylight savings time then. It made milking and doing chores very late, with kerosene lanterns. Later years the men would rather eat supper at home so they could get chores done earlier.
When a couple of neighbors started combining we kind of laughed at them, because the windrows of grain during a rainy spell nearly went out of sight because of being covered by growing weeds and grass. But low and behold, when it got dry and they combined it, we went to look at the grain in the hopper and it looked real nice and gold. That sold us on combining.
We were one of the first to start combining our oats. We hired Olaf Lewison to combine some of our oats the first year or two. Then we bought our own - an A-6 Case combine with an air-cooled Wisconsin engine on it. We bought it from Ed Millenacker. It was a pull type without any hydraulic controls. The reel and headers were adjusted by levers in reach of the tractor. Our second combine was an International "80" - a pull type, power take-off model. We went to power take-off because with the newer model tractors you had constant power take-off speed. You could clutch and vary the ground speed without changing the P.T.O. speed. The next move was to a self-propelled because of the advent of combining corn. We had a New Holland 3 row and later a 6 row New Holland.
At the end of the threshing, there was always a night for settling up the exchange time. This was usually a big party for the threshing ring. Home brew and plenty of food even barn dancing at some. Our threshing party, after Bergene, Matteson, and Huseby had the machine, wasn't that wild - usually cake and ice cream. Kids came along. Beer was made legal in 1932 and a keg replaced the home brew. Art and Stan Boyum had a beer and card playing joint. During the threshing season, Stan would drive around the country with bottles of beer for the threshers. I can even remember beer distributor trucks stopping on the road and giving bottles of beer to the men. A good way to advertise. Back in the thirties a small glass of beer cost 5 cents and a large glass 10 cents. A 12 ounce bottle 10 cents, a quart 20 cents, and a half gallon bottle (a picnic) cost 35 cents. Some bars had a half gallon goblet. I forgot what they called it. You would pass it around the booth and all drink from it. It was quite common for some to bring in a 1/2 gallon or 1 gallon tin syrup pail to get filled with draft beer. One such character and he really was a character, was an Irishman named Mike "Brute" Scanlon. He used to bring a pail over to Peterson's Produce (the old hotel building) and share it with Hank Peterson. One day he was carrying a ladder on his shoulder and the gallon syrup pail in his hand. Someone asked him where he was going. He replied, "To Iowa picking corn." He asked one farmer what kind of land he had. The farmer replied "gently rolling." "Well" he slurred "roll her in and let me look it over."
The following was written by Eunice Torgerson Huseby, May 1992.
Amanda and Bennie moved to the farm north of Adams in June 1920. Aaron was born June 29, 1920, just a week after they moved to the farm.
On the day Aaron was born, the lots of the farm were sold. They were plotted into lots with a road. Many people were there to buy lots. Some of the people that I knew who bought lots were Nils Anderson, Andrew Torgerson, B. J. Huseby, Dr. Huseby, Helgeson, Erckenbrack, Kiefer, Gerber, and Schaefer.
The Huseby Herd of Registered Holsteins was one of the oldest continuous family owned, bred, and managed herds in the State of Minnesota. There were four generations of Husebys who had the herd, having started by Aaron's grandfather and Dad in 1908, then Aaron and Byron, and last, Brian. DHIA production records have been kept continuously at least since 1921. Artificial breeding has been used for many years. The Huseby herd was shown at county and state fairs for many years.
Aaron's dad started delivering milk to the people of Adams shortly after he moved to the farm north of Adams. The milk house was close to the house with a large water tank on the outside of the milk house for watering the horses and the bull. A smaller tank was on the inside of the milk house. The milk was carried by cans from the barn. It was strained into milk cans and then put in the small tank to cool. Aaron's mother would take a pitcher and fill bottles. The bottles would be put back into the tank until Aaron's dad would deliver the milk. He would take a horse and wagon. He would take a wire milk bottle carrier and go to the homes and leave the milk. Some people would only take a 1/2 pint of milk. The horse would follow him, and he would sometimes go to the tavern to play cards and he would put the horse by the tavern. In later years the milk was delivered by car and pick up. When Aaron was old enough, he would go with his dad and take the milk to the houses.
Aaron and I were married in 1941. We lived in the big house on the farm with his folks.When Byron and Helen were married in 1943, they also lived in the house. Now there were three families and a hired man living in the house. Bennie and Amanda built a house in town and moved to Adams. But we and Byron and Helen lived together about 10 years. Aaron and I had three children - Allen, Shirley, Carol; Byron and Helen had two children - Gloria and Linda. We purchased the farm north of us and Byron and Helen moved there just a little before Marcia was born.
About the time we were married, we had purchased a new system for cooling the milk. The milk would run over water cooler and we had a four bottle fillers - put an empty bottle, pull a handle and it woudl partly fill the bottle. Move on to refill it and then bottle to cap it, then put in a twelve bottle case and put in the large cooler that had been built in the milk house. We separated some of the milk and the cream was sold to the creamery.
Always at Christmas time we would give all our customers a 1/2 pint of cream. We would have caps for those bottles that said "Merry Christmas." The quart bottles would always have cream on the top if they sat for awhile. Many people would pour the cream off to use for their breakfast food and coffee.
Amanda always did the book work for the milk route. A bill was sent each month to the customers. When Bennie and Amanda moved to town, I took over the book work.
We purchased an old milk truck from one of the dairies. We would have young boys deliver the milk before school. Some boys I can remember - Andy Anderson, our son, Allen, David Boyum, Marty King. Byron would then finish the route after doing the milking,
When the law on pasterization was made we couldn't sell raw milk, so we delivered Polly Meadows milk from Rochester. We sold milk and delivered it to Super Valu, Lavonne's Store, and delivered 1/2 pints to the school.
We built a new milk house on the west side of the barn and we installed a milk tank and transfer system in the barn.
When Bennie and Amanda moved to Adams, Helen took care of bottling the milk. I did the cooking and we both took care of the other household chores. Allen was the first baby. He had four parents - Aaron and I, Byron and Helen. He was the only one for 3-1/2 years before he got a little sister. Byron and Helen didn't have a child until two years later. I can't remember just how the four parents took care of the five children, but I think we must have been special parents to have gotten along for so many years living together.