Buffalo County, Nebraska - Chapter 21, 1916

Wheat And Oats The Question Of Fuel Official List Of Members Of The Colony

The following is an official list of the members of the Soldiers' Free Homestead Colony as adopted at the forty-fourth annual meeting of the Soldiers' Free Homestead Colony Association, April 7, 1915, held at Gibbon:

Honorary Members

Those residing in the county and in the vicinity of Gibbon Switch on the arrival of the colony were, by action of the Soldiers' Free Homestead Colony Association, made honorary members of the association and of the colony.

A Habitation A Place To Live

The homesteads filed upon, the most important matter was a habitation, a place in which to live. The colonists were all practically persons of very limited means, so much so that quite often two families lived in one house, the house located on the line between the claims.

Several had so little means, nothing but their claims, that they worked for others as occasion ofifered. Some lived in dugouts on their claims, others built sod houses, and a quite common frame house was 12x16 feet in size, 8 feet in height, boarded up, one thickness of boards, battened, and with a shingle roof, the furniture consisting of a stove, a bed, and three chairs. So exact were the estimates of material for one of these houses that when completed the pieces of lumber left would not make a wheelbarrow load.

Range Of Prices

Oxen were largely used for teams; they cost less to purchase, required no expense for harness, other than a yoke, and required no grain ration, living and working on grass in the growing season and on hay and forage in winter. The sudden and unusual demand inflated prices, oxen selling for from $150 to $250 per yoke. Cows sold for from $50 to $60. A four weeks old pig (razor back breed) cost $5 and hens 50 cents each. A quite common price paid for breaking prairie was $5 per acre. Potatoes, $1 per bushel. Com meal, $2 per 100 pounds. Pine lumber, from $30 to $40 per 1,000. If one complained that the prices asked seemed too high, the invariable excuse was "excessive transportation rates on the railroad."

First Crops Grown

On and in the vicinity of the Boyd ranch was a hundred or more acres of "old" land - land that had been previously tilled - and some of the colonists rented from five to ten acres of this land, planting to corn and potatoes. The corn yielded about forty bushels per acre and the potatoes about one hundred and fifty bushels. Practically no weeds grew on this land and most of the corn and potatoes there planted were not tilled after planting, the fact being there were no implements to be had for such tilling. On the newly plowed sod no weeds grew except tumble weeds, which were easily destroyed.

Conditions Confronting The Colonists

Possibly some mention of conditions which confronted these colonists may be of historic interest. First, with a very few exceptions, they were persons of limited means. Second, quite one-half of the number were without practical experience in farming, even in the locality from which they came. Third, this was a new country - quite generally believed not adapted to the growing of crops - a virgin soil, destitute of timber for either fuel or building purposes, destitute of coal, or stone, in a state of nature, other than a railroad, and the base for supplies of all kinds nearly two hundred miles distant.

There were no precedents which could be followed or referred to; no old and experienced farmers to whom the "tenderfoots" could go for counsel and advice. From the construction of some kind of a habitation in which to live to the securing of teams and farming utensils for tilling the soil, seed to be planted, everything to the minutest detail had to be purchased, and at what then seemed and which has since proven to be, extravagant prices. These conditions soon exhausted the resources of the homesteader, even though he expended his means with utmost economy. If compelled to run in debt he found later that to pay from $150 to $200 for a yoke of oxen, $50 for a cow, $5 for a four-weeksold pig, $32 for a breaking plow, and like prices for other needed articles, and then to make payment in corn and potatoes at 10 and 15 cents per bushel required not only hard, hard work, but years of privation and economy to get out of debt, which, with exceeding regret, it is to be recorded, many of the poor homesteaders were never able to do.

There were other conditiotis which took years of time and long and bitter experience to realize and understand. One of the most important of these to be understood is the relation of the growing season for many crops as affected by altitude or elevation above sea level.

No member of this colony had ever given a thought to the fact that along a parallel of latitude, increase in elevation meant a shortening of the growing season for many crops, especially the corn crop, on which main dependence was placed in all farming operations.

The corn plant requires and can make good use of a growing season of quite 140 days, which condition prevails in the Mississippi and Missouri valleys to the east and which prevailed in the lower levels from which most of the colonists came, but the greater elevation in Buffalo County was such that the growing season for corn was from thirty to forty days less than the colonists had been accustomed to.

It was the most natural thing in the world for colonists to send to their former home, "back east," for seeds of various kinds to plant, and yet when these seeds were planted in this new country, this virgin soil, the conditions confronting the plants from these seeds, were as new and strange as were the conditions of all kinds confronting the members of the colony. It is true that plants adapt themselves to changes in soil, climate, length of growing season and other surroundings and conditions which affect their growth and full development, but plants require time and opportunity to so adapt themselves the same as do people.

Insect Depredations

Another occasion of failure or at least partial failure of many crops in those early years, was that many kinds of insect life, such as grasshoppers, crickets, etc., feed during the growing season on the leaves and stems of plants, the prairie being alive with such insects at that season. The cultivated plants of the homesteader, such as com, potatoes, vines of all kinds, and of small grain - wheat, oats - are much more tender and succulent as a food than the native plants and grasses of the prairie, and the result was that these insects flocked to the small crops of the homesteader, either completely destroying, or at least weakening them, resulting in a partial if not entire failure to make a crop. It is recalled that when the grasshopper raids came, that small fields of crops were entirely destroyed, while a large field of corn - a half section or a section in a body - was often only injured by them for a comparatively short distance on the outer edges, the center portion of the field being uninjured.

Lack Of Moisture

That this was a land dehcient in moisture for the successful growing of crops was understood by the homesteaders, but how best to take advantage of this lack, how to conserve moisture as now understood, had not, in the minds of any one, even a beginning. Brietiy stated, the conditions as regards moisture were as follows : F'or ages the prairies of Nebraska had been annually burned. As our rainfall comes in sudden showers, the res>ult was that a sudden shower of two or even three inches of rain did not wet the prairie to a depth of more than a few inches, the prairie being burned clean of any dead leaves or grass which might hold the rainfall until it could soak into the earth. Under such conditions the rain ran off the prairie as from the roof of a house, into the sloughs, ravines, rivers and thus out of the country, doing vegetation little or no good. Also the prairie being hard and undisturbed, the moisture which penetrated the soil was soon drawn from the soil by the action of sun and winds. It is believed that in the early settlement of the county, 50 per cent of the rain that fell on the prairies ran directly into the ravines and rivers and out of the county, this being especially true of unbroken prairie, while at the present time probably 90 per cent of our rainfall is absorbed in the soil and retained for growing crops. Also, because of more moisture retained in the soil, the atmosphere is much more humid than in the earlier periods of colony history.

Live Stock Conditions

Another condition, not generally understood, occasioned heavy loss of live stock to many homesteaders. Previous to the coming of the colonists it had been widely advertised that cattle would live and keep in good condition during the entire year, living wholly upon the wild grasses. Doubtless this was practically true with half -wild cattle, used to ranging for a living, and where they could range at will seeking shelter in the brush along the streams in time of storms and extreme cold. There were no more nutritious grasses for live stock anywhere to be found than the native grasses of Nebraska. When the homesteader came there was no longer an unlimited range ; also native or domesticated cattle, accustomed to being fed and cared for, would not range the prairie and rustle for a living in the winter months, and the result was that many an early homesteader, many a colonist, who perchance borrowed the money with which to invest in cattle to roam the prairie, had only the hides when the grass was green in the succeeding spring.

It is recalled that all of a herd of some five hundred head of cattle being wintered on the Platte River south of Gibbon in the winter of 187 1-2, perished, and the same fate met a herd of about one thousand, five hundred being kept the same winter on the South Loup River in the immediate vicinity of the present Village of Ravenna.

In the spring of 1872 a few acres of spring wheat and oats were sown. Harrows were used to cover the grain ; these harrows were home-made, of oak secured at the Loup River; they were Hght, and of Httle real service. The wheat and oats were harvested with grain cradles, threshed with flails, on the ground, and cleaned by throwing the grain against the wind. While the yield was fairly good the crops were badly infected with smut - in fact, in the earlier attempts to grow small grain the crops were at times not worth harv'esting on account of smut.

Machinery for the rapid harvesting of grain had not then come into use, the better kinds not even as yet invented. The first of these machines was a dropper attachment to a mowing machine (the expense of the mower and attachment 3175). \\ ith this machine five men were required to bind and remove the grain as fast as cut. This machine, high geared as a mower, wore out very rapidly. The first Marsh harvester was purchased and operated by William Nutter, using oxen. On this machine the grain was delivered on a platform, on which two men rode and bound the grain. While much more rapid in harvesting, it was very hard work and very wasteful. The first self binders, using wire and costing $315, were not satisfactory to use and the wire, broken in threshing, caused loss of stock where cattle ate of the straw and chafl:'.

To pay the above named prices for harv^esting machinery, newly invented and not in very satisfactory working order, and to make payment in wheat at about fifty cents per bushel and corn at about fifteen cents, was not a rapid way of accumulating wealth or of paying debts.

The Ouestiox Of Fuel

In the early days of the colony the question of fuel was not so pressing as a few years later. In the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad about two thousand, five hundred ties were used to the mile. It appears that of these ties, to each rail was used four of hardwood (oak or black walnut), the others Cottonwood. These cottonwood ties were beginning to be removed before the arrival of the colony and were used for fuel purposes, the only other fuel available being willow brush and dead cottonwood trees on the islands of the Platte.

The Union Pacific Railroad at that date was poorly supplied with rolling stock to use in hauling coal, also the coal mines were undeveloped, and at times in the early winters it was impossible to buy, beg or steal coal from the railroad - the only source of supply - and on one such occasion the railroad authorities advised that organized parties be sent to the Loup River (twenty miles distant) for fuel, stating that any timber found on railroad land could be freely used for such purpose. jMany homesteaders, having ox teams, hauled wood from the Loup River, at times making the trip in the dead of winter.

Some families endeavored to keep warm by burning corn stalks, cut stove lengths. Later years when corn was more plenty, the corn itself was burned for fuel. Some ranged the prairie in search of "buffalo chips," the dried droppings of cattle, and used these "chips"' for fuel. It made an intensely hot fire but was far from clean and pleasant to use. Many families living near the Platte bottoms used the coarse grass for fuel. It is recalled that J. N. Allen invented a machine which twisted the grass into a hard rope, which he cut in lengths and burned, as wood, in a stove. Ira P. Bunker constructed a furnace under his house and invented an arrangement (which he patented) by which, from the outside, he fed hay into the furnace and thus heated his house.

Many famiHes used fuel of the kinds described to keep warm in houses built of only one thickness of boards, not lathed or plastered, and more than one child was born in such a house, in the winter time, when the snow sifted into the house, and over the bed whereon lay the mother and new born infant. In those early years, during the extreme cold of winter, to many colonists the most comfortable place, the occasion most looked forward to, was to attend a grange or church service, at the schoolhouse, there to absorb the heat from a red hot stove, a hot coal fire, and enjoy for a brief hour or more the companionship of friends and neighbors in full sympathy with all the surrounding conditions and circumstances. The great lack of fuel, cheap and abundant, was a most serious handicap in the early settlement of Bufi^alo County, and a cause of much discomfort and suffering during the long months of winter.