It's about agriculture

This is a view from the air of Rexburg facing east from the 1960's.  To get to my family farm your would follow the main highway through town and then head north until you reached Moody Road.  North of Moody Road was the beginning of our land and if you traveled right or east onto Moody Road you passed a potato pit and then there would be a gray shingled house on the left with a big red barn and other out buildings.  That was home.  The area was very dependent on agriculture and the small towns were surrounded by farm fields.  All of the buildings in this photo are familiar to me and I have been inside many of them.

While the farm was halfway between Rexburg and Sugar City, our allegiance lay with Sugar City.  That is where we went to church and school.  That was where my great aunts and uncles lived.  My father had taken over the family farm from his father, George.  It was originally part of a larger farm first created by my grandmother's, Georgianna, grandfather.  It had been divided amongst his children and my grandparents had purchased it from my great grandmother, Winnifred.  When we moved to Arizona for my father's health, my parents sold it to someone who was not family.  When the Teton Dam broke in 1976, the farm building were destroyed and it now looks nothing like I remember it.

My father loved that land.  He loved his Jersey herd of milk cows who came to the milking barn when he called them by name.  This was the life he wanted.  I will forever be grateful for the experiences of my young life on the farm.  It included room to roam, baby calves and chicks, a lamb, a horse, and occasional pigs.  There was a barn to explore, a trash fire to poke around in, a big tree to climb, and a canal to swim in and ice skate on.  A large kitchen garden provided fresh peas to eat and tall corn to hide in.  There was a beautiful sky full of stars at night and northern lights in the winter.  It was also a place where everyone helped out.

I included this picture of the Madison County Courthouse with the tractors in front because they remind me of my father's tractors.  He had two, a red Case and a green John Deere.  He also owned a hay truck.  That was the first vehicle I drove.  He would place me behind the wheel to steer, put it in slow gear, and jump off.  It was my job to steer it down the hay field while he and helpers threw the hay bales up on the bed.  At the end of the field he would jump back in the cab and turn the truck around for the next pass.  I could not reach the peddles.

Gene Stratton-Porter and old fashioned farming

Some months ago I came across these paperbacks published by Indiana University Press at the BYU Bookstore. They had reprinted Freckles, A Girl of the Limberlost, The Harvester, The Keeper of the Bees, and Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter.

I ended up buying the three titles pictured, but the first to catch my eye was The Keeper of the Bees. This is a picture of a book that is a part of my favorite memories of book reading during my childhood. I first came across it while staying with my grandmother. She had moved to a new home in Idaho Falls and during the summers I was often invited to stay with her for a week at a time. She took daily naps and grandpa worked at the furniture store full time, so the afternoons would get very long.

There was a bookshelf of books in a closet by the front door and it saved me from boredom. That is where I first found The Keeper of the Bees. You can see by the signature that it was purchased before my grandmother married, so it was already over 30 years old when I first found it.

I loved the book so much and never forgot it. Move forward about 40 years, long after this copy of the book had become my own, and I read A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter which I love almost as much as The Keeper of the Bees. I go looking for The Keeper of the Bees and realize both books were written by the same author.

Gene Stratton-Porter not only gave me characters that I enjoyed, she also made the natural world come alive. I just reread Laddie. The farm life it described made me homesick for my childhood on the farm.

I recently read The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. It is the true tale of a couple who find a farm and decide to farm the old fashioned way, not just organically but also using horses instead of tractors. It made me think of Laddie, the story (closely based on the childhood of Gene Stratton-Porter) of a family farm in Indiana after the Civil War. Both books describe a life of hard physical labor, but satisfying hard physical labor. There is something truly special about working the soil.

Idaho, Days 7 & 8, Ashton and the Ranch

Tuesday morning, sister Lynette and I left for our own side trip to Idaho. We stopped at West Jordan, Salt Lake Valley, to pick up Lynette's friend from college days, Annette, as well. She grew up in Rexburg and wanted to visit with family and interview our Uncle Keith who had served with her father when there was a LTM at Ricks College. She is writing a history of those days. She is also a quilter, so our ride north became a "quilt shop hop" as she shared some of her favorites with us. And yes, I purchased a bit of fabric at each stop!

Our first adventure Wednesday morning was a trip to Ashton, place of my birth, and the ranch. As you can see by all the new silos, Ashton is still the railroad hub of southeast Idaho. There were very green wheat fields as far as the eye could see interspersed with potato fields.

Our first stop was the Frostop. I took this picture for Logan of his mother in front of one of his favorite places.

I also took a picture of the mural in the bathroom. Believe it or not, Lynette didn't even notice it when it was her turn! There were lots of tourists stopping for refreshment on their way to Yellowstone Park.

Soon we were headed east to "the Ranch" located about 15 miles east of Ashton near Drummond. Although it has been sold, it still feels like our "homeplace." My grandparents Andrew Percy and Rhoda Nyborg began farming this land in the 1920's and my Uncle Keith continued to work the land when his father passed away in 1959. He finally sold it just a few years ago. This is a picture of Keith and Raija's home from down the hill. Unfortunately, the new owner has not maintained it in the same manner as did Keith and Raija.

Conant Creek was a rushing torrent. Idaho also had a very wet winter. There would have been no wading by the little ones if we were reuniting in the creek bottom this year. See the little island in the upper part of the picture. That was the site of many a bonfire and fireworks display at our family reunions.

And here is the creek from the opposite side of the bridge facing west.

The sauna, a location for many "bathing" memories. Uncle Keith told us at Annette's interview, that the missionaries at the LTM used to try to break the record of the most runs from the sauna to the swimming hole on a visit. One fool did it 17 times.

The birch trees on the south side of the creek and east of the road were lovely as always.

Of course the gates were up, so we could only get this close to the old outbuildings. The grassy patch to the right in the picture is where my grandparents home once stood.

Looking southwest towards Keith and Raija's house.

The cattle pens are still there and I understand that Keith and Gerald still manage to find some fence to mend in the spring.

I'm now looking south to the creek bed from the hill where my mother was born.

Her parents home at that time stood near this old barn. It seemed appropriate that we were here the day before her birthday.

It's also nice to have the barn as a marker for her birth location.

It's also a bit of a landmark as it stands on quite a hill which is not readily shown in these picture.

We next traveled on north and west to the old Squirrel Dance Hall where my grandparents danced as they courted. They had met in Idaho the summer Rhoda came from Orderville, Utah to cook for her brothers.

As you can see, it was established in 1916, so they danced in a brand new building. They met before Andrew Percy served in France during WWI. Upon his mending from a bullet wound and return home, he decided to take the train to southern Utah to see what his chances were with Rhoda Ann. I guess they were pretty good because they were married in Kanab a short time later on January 7, 1920 and she returned to the ranch with him. Their first baby was a stillborn, then Elden was born, and then my mother in 1924, followed by Lowell. These first three children all served during WWII. They went on to have five more children, Keith, Gerald, Elna, Milton, and Nola.

My uncles arranged for us to meet in this building at our family reunion in 1993.

Here is our family group that year. We had lunch inside, Gerald's slide show of the family in the 50's and 60's, and a talent show. Fun times! Notice the Tetons in the distance.


My pictures make the land seem flat, but it is anything but flat. It is a series of beautiful rolling hills, thus just the view of roof tops in the distance.

This is the old general store, now a private home, located across the street from the dance hall.

We came upon these red poppies as we drove back to the bridge at Fall River.

Everything was so pretty and green.

We saw so many wildflowers, including daisies at the ranch, of course. But not red poppies. It made me wonder who might have once lived here who loved red poppies.

It felt good to be home!

Iowans and Idahoans have a lot in common

I just finished a book which could have been written by my Aunt Elna, and maybe she could still write the Idaho version. The book is about living on an Iowa farm during the 1930's and the Great Depression. Surprisingly, there were several parts of the book that reminded me of my childhood on an Idaho farm during the 1950's. But most of all, I felt like I was sitting on a picnic table bench near Conant Creek listening to my aunts and uncles talk about their childhood. I picked on Aunt Elna because she has the best way of telling a story and doesn't leave out any details. This book will tell you how to kill and cook a chicken, best use and care for an outhouse, care for the livestock and chickens, and prepare food from the garden, all of which I experienced personally before being whisked away to Arizona at age 12. This may not sound all that interesting, but the author is a retired college professor of English and she knows how to put together a tale and does not leave out any of the details. If you want to know more check HERE.