Farming
Edna Fern wrote that her mother was a practical woman and that providing the necessities of life for her family was a challenge she met well. “Mother wore her husband’s overalls to do outside chores: working in her garden, feeding the pigs and chickens and gathering the eggs. Mother was very fond of her chickens; the first time I ever saw her cry after our Papa’s death was when the coyotes got into the chicken coop and killed some hens. Lela remembered that they had a dog they called Old Thunder who was put down after he ate one of her mother’s chickens.
As the boys got older, Lyman and Bob helped their dad Percy with the fieldwork and cleaned the barn. They learned early how to hitch a horse to a wagon and to use reins to instruct the horse which direction to take and whether to trot slowly or quicken the pace on an open straight.
When Lyman was only ten, he was driving a wagon across the creek when the horses jerked their heads and he landed down on the wooden tongue and eveners (devices that kept the horses separate and let them pull evenly). Luckily, his dad was nearby driving another wagon and he was able to get him up to La Fleche where the nearest doctor, Dr. Belcourt, could set his broken leg. Lyman had a few weeks reprieve from cleaning the barn and chicken coop, hauling manure to the garden, and picking stones—he probably wasn’t too upset about that.
Picking stones was backbreaking work that had to be done so that a field could be ploughed and made ready for seeding. The family worked together to pick up loose rocks or dig beneath a large rock that was half buried to get it up out of the ground; then it would be pried up with a crowbar and then rolled over to the stone boat. A stone boat is built of two-foot by four-foot boards with a rim around the edges, strong enough to drag a pile of rocks over the ground. Percy’s horses would haul the stone boat around a field, leaving it in one place for several days while rocks were piled on it. When full, it was hauled to a corner of the field or to the creek to build up a crossing for wagons so their wheels wouldn’t get stuck in the mud.
As the boys got older, Lyman and Bob helped their dad Percy with the fieldwork and cleaned the barn. They learned early how to hitch a horse to a wagon and to use reins to instruct the horse which direction to take and whether to trot slowly or quicken the pace on an open straight.
When Lyman was only ten, he was driving a wagon across the creek when the horses jerked their heads and he landed down on the wooden tongue and eveners (devices that kept the horses separate and let them pull evenly). Luckily, his dad was nearby driving another wagon and he was able to get him up to La Fleche where the nearest doctor, Dr. Belcourt, could set his broken leg. Lyman had a few weeks reprieve from cleaning the barn and chicken coop, hauling manure to the garden, and picking stones—he probably wasn’t too upset about that.
Picking stones was backbreaking work that had to be done so that a field could be ploughed and made ready for seeding. The family worked together to pick up loose rocks or dig beneath a large rock that was half buried to get it up out of the ground; then it would be pried up with a crowbar and then rolled over to the stone boat. A stone boat is built of two-foot by four-foot boards with a rim around the edges, strong enough to drag a pile of rocks over the ground. Percy’s horses would haul the stone boat around a field, leaving it in one place for several days while rocks were piled on it. When full, it was hauled to a corner of the field or to the creek to build up a crossing for wagons so their wheels wouldn’t get stuck in the mud.
Cat hitching a ride on a stone boat.
A typical tepee ring on the prairies.
Sometimes tepee rings were found in the middle of a field—signs left behind of times when these southern Saskatchewan lands were inhabited by the Assiniboine and Cree, and for a time, as many as 5,000 Sioux (Lakota). The latter followed their medicine man Sitting Bull north from South Dakota after defeating General Custer at the battle at Little Big Horn in 1876. These rings of stone had held down the bottom edges of the buffalo-hide tepees that had been the homes of the indigenous inhabitants of these lands that were now becoming farmlands.
It must have been an especially exciting day when one of the boys found an arrowhead to take home in his pocket. Lyman recalled that years later, when he was working as one of the first soil conservationists on the continent, he was surveying the territorial boundaries of the Yakima reservation in central Washington state for the U.S. Indian services. Riding horseback so that he could move around the land with ease, he happened upon the original surveyor’s stake and this discovery resulted in an expanded boundary for the Yakima people. Looking for arrowheads as a young boy must have sharpened his ability to see artifacts on dry grasslands.
It must have been an especially exciting day when one of the boys found an arrowhead to take home in his pocket. Lyman recalled that years later, when he was working as one of the first soil conservationists on the continent, he was surveying the territorial boundaries of the Yakima reservation in central Washington state for the U.S. Indian services. Riding horseback so that he could move around the land with ease, he happened upon the original surveyor’s stake and this discovery resulted in an expanded boundary for the Yakima people. Looking for arrowheads as a young boy must have sharpened his ability to see artifacts on dry grasslands.
Percy was in charge of the outdoor work, mostly done by the boys, including fieldwork and milking. He was the manager and the mentor, but everyone helped: even as a young girl, Lela “scraped a hog” after the other kids had grown up and left home. Once the meat was cut up, she went around to the neighbors with her dad to sell or trade it. She and her parents couldn’t eat a whole hog before it would spoil.
When Percy and the boys cleaned the barn, they used pitchforks to scoop the manure into a wagon to be hauled to the garden plot and fields; this readily available fertilizer, along with the fresh spring water that irrigated the garden, made a healthy crop of vegetables that sustained the family from year to year.
Despite his limp, the result of his hip being dislocated as a young man, Percy was always a hard worker at whatever needed doing at the time, and he was an exceptional gardener. Lela remembered that his produce went to the market in the nearest elevator town, Fir Mountain, and was eagerly bought at 25 cents a bunch, or traded for machine parts. He used the income for farm necessities ordered from catalogues or purchased at stores. Percy maintained excellent gardens right up into his eighties. When he visited Edna Fern and her husband Ernest Anderson in Jamaica, he made vegetables grow where their hired gardener couldn’t.
When Percy and the boys cleaned the barn, they used pitchforks to scoop the manure into a wagon to be hauled to the garden plot and fields; this readily available fertilizer, along with the fresh spring water that irrigated the garden, made a healthy crop of vegetables that sustained the family from year to year.
Despite his limp, the result of his hip being dislocated as a young man, Percy was always a hard worker at whatever needed doing at the time, and he was an exceptional gardener. Lela remembered that his produce went to the market in the nearest elevator town, Fir Mountain, and was eagerly bought at 25 cents a bunch, or traded for machine parts. He used the income for farm necessities ordered from catalogues or purchased at stores. Percy maintained excellent gardens right up into his eighties. When he visited Edna Fern and her husband Ernest Anderson in Jamaica, he made vegetables grow where their hired gardener couldn’t.
