1955

In 1954 I saw my Aunt Sarah for only the second time in my life, as she had moved away from her native state before I was born.

In the few days visit with her, this is how she told me the story of her life - fifty years on a North Dakota farm.

"My husband, George, was a blacksmith in Hartford, Wisconsin, when we were first married. One day he came home to tell me that someone had been in his shop who had land to sell in North Dakota. He had bought several sections, and wanted to sell some of it. Several of the men standing around had been interested. We talked about it for ourselves.

We decided that George and your father - who wasn't married then - should go to Thompson to see the land. It was good black dirt. When they came back, we made the deal. We traded the blacksmith shop for the farm, but we didn't have the money to move. Your father helped us get a loan of two hundred dollars to move our furniture and our family. Harold was seven years old then, and Archie a few years younger.

The first year we were here, we weren't able to farm the land because we had no machinery or money for seed. We rented out the land, and George set up a blacksmith shop for the neighbors. The teacher asked me to "board" her, but I wasn't sure I would have enough food to take care of her. I took her in anyway. I gave the mailman his noon meal, and he fed and watered his horse here all those years until they started to carry the mail by car.

By the second year we were able to put in a crop of our own. George was never very well, even as a child, and much of the work of the farm fell on me.

I would get up at four-thirty every morning to feed the chickens and feed and water the cows. Then I came in to get the boys up, make breakfast. In the spring I would work in the fields until seven-thirty at night, then come in to make supper. Harold, small as he was, in those days, would meet me, and put the horses away for me.

The horses were no good at all. I couldn't plow a straight row with the poor horses. One of them was blind, but he was always in a hurry. The other one was an old mare, and was very slow. George had four horses at first, but later we had twelve. Now Archie has two tractors, but we still have two horses.

We hired help only in the harvest time. One time Harold and I went to Grand Forks to hire a man to shock grain. We found one who asked if he'd have to shock alone. I said I would help if enough grain had been cut. But there wasn't enough to keep both of us busy, so I went to the house. Later in the day, when I took out the men's lunches, the hired man was sleeping behind a shock of grain. I told Pa to pay him off and send him on his way. I shocked all the grain that year myself. Another year I pitched all the grain myself.

At first we grew only small grains - wheat, flax, oats, and barley. We were the first farmers around here to grow corn. It did so well that everybody grows corn now. Potatoes are a big crop in the Red River Valley, but we grew them only a few years.

There have been many changes since we first came here in March of 1904. Now we have a telephone and electricity, but they are still talking about paving the road out from Thompson. That will come, too."

So ended her story. I don't know if she ever saw the paved road although she lived some years after my visit. In spite of the very hard life, she lived to be 91 years. But I do know that the road was paved by 1971 when my husband and I stopped briefly to visit my cousin, Archie, who still lived on the farm his mother and father had bought in 1904.