Farming and Ranching on the Prairies -- with Giveaway -- by Donna Schlachter

                                                   Hand tools typical to farming and ranching, 1850s

Farming and ranching in the United States has a long and colorful history, beginning with the earliest settlers and reaching its heyday during the Westward Migration of the 1840s through 1880s.

The first settlers tended to claim a parcel of land near a water source such as a river or spring. Then they plowed up the grassy sod and constructed one-room homes called soddies, leaving a hole in the roof for smoke to escape, a door for entrance, and, if they were particularly resourceful, a window. This cleared land then served as the basis for their crops, primarily food for themselves and their stock. Often, the same oxen or horses that hauled their wagon were used to pull the plows, and crops were harvested by hand using tools such as scythes, threshers, and rakes. A family’s livelihood or lack thereof often dictated by the crop yield, the weather at harvest time, and their ability to store the harvest successfully to last through the harsh winter until spring.

Several important milestones occurred which made the farmers’ and ranchers’ lives a little easier and offered greater crop yields, including the invention of farm machinery, fencing materials, and fertilizers.

As far back as 1819, Jethro Wood patented the first iron plow with interchangeable parts for types of soil and plantings. Now the farmer could use the same plow to prepare a field for corn or potatoes, for example. Then, in 1837, John Deere manufactured plows with steel shares that were more durable and kept their edge longer than the iron version.

1840's grain reaper

 

 

                                                                        1840's plow

 

 

In 1831, Cyrus McCormick invented a grain reaper, pulled by a horse. Now a farmer could harvest more acres in a shorter period of time, increasing his food supply and his cash crop sales. His unique design guided the stalks to the blade, cut and then shoved the stalks onto the ground in the wake of the reaper, making cradles and scythes obsolete. In 1854, McCormick introduced the self-rake reaper. This new design gathered the cut grain into neat piles which workers then tied into sheaves before sending to the thresher. Each self-rake reaper equaled the labor of four or five men, which was particularly valuable during the Civil War when so many men left home to enlist. In 1837, the Pitts Brothers patented a practical threshing machine. However, it wasn’t until 1926 that a successful light gasoline tractor was developed.

While we may consider hybridization of corn and other crops a recent advance, in 1816 John Lorain began discussing the benefits of cross-breeding corn to obtain higher yields; in 1866 Gregor Mendel published his experiments in plant hybridization; in 1872 Luther Burbank produced a “Burbank potato”, the first in a long line of new and improved varieties; in 1905 George Harrison Shull began experiments with cross-breeding varieties of corn, perfecting his method by 1909. Donald Jones developed a system in 1917 to grow modern hybrid seed; and in 1926 Henry Wallace used advertising and promotion to popularize his hybrid seed corn.

However, with increased yields and these new varieties, farmers realized they needed to assist the soil with additives and fertilizers. 1850 saw the manufacture of the first mixed fertilizer called Manufactured Guano. In 1908, Haber and Bosch developed the process to make ammonia, leading to increased food production sufficient to feed a billion people a year. In 1914 Edwin Broun Fred supplied cultures of nitrogen-fixing bacteria to growers of legumes. 1921 saw the use of a World War 1 airplane to spread lead arsenate dust in a grove in Ohio; and in 1939 Paul Muller discovered the insecticidal properties of DDT, which was later banned as being harmful to wildlife that ate the poisoned insects.

Barbed-wire samples
 

With farms and ranches increasing in acreage to produce more yield, the need for effective and efficient fencing arose. In 1874 the Glidden barbed-wire patent was granted to contain and protect cattle. The idea of fencing thousands of acres was revolutionary, and given the harsh weather on much of the plains, as well as limited trees for posts, barbed-wire was the perfect solution. On his farm in Illinois, Joseph Glidden first perfected his design in 1816, while a local lumber dealer, Jacob Haish, developed the “s” barb that came a close second for a short time.

Soon the cattlemen’s fervor to protect the best grazing and water sources created friction, forcing small farms and ranches into cutting the wire to regain access to land for their stock. Because of a history of open range ranching, where branded cattle wandered at will and were gathered up in the spring, the switch to fenced ranching resulted in violence and crime for many years. Barbed-wire, often nicknamed “devil’s rope”, now boasts more than two thousand types, and is still used today.

With overproduction and over-grazing, combined with drought and blizzards, the Great Plains faced serious problems in 1886 and 1887. As plow agriculture extended into the semi-arid plains, erosion swept away the topsoil. Just as in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, yields dropped, forcing farmers and ranchers to use increasingly invasive methods such as over fertilizing, plowing more land and increasing herd sizes, and more mechanization.

As you can see, much of the scientific and mechanical progress made over the past 150 years or so was due to the requirements of farmers and rancher and the demand for more food for a growing population. While the number of farms and ranches in the United States has decreased in the past 50 years or so, the size of the holdings and amount of food produced has increased to meet the demand. A typical family-owned farm currently produces enough food to feed more than 100 people. As we enjoy the Thanksgiving season, let’s remember to be thankful to our farmers and ranchers who keep us well-fed.

Leave a comment about your favorite Thanksgiving dish, and I’ll draw randomly for an ebook copy of A Pink Lady Thanksgiving.

About A Pink Lady Thanksgiving: Kate and Tom McBride, along with their newborn, John Thomas, settle into life in Oregon City, Oregon in November 1879. And while Kate enjoys being a wife, mother, and homemaker, she still remembers her fanciful dreams of last year: become a detective to solve mysteries. Her first case is to find the missing fiancée of a local banker. Tom, however, isn’t sure this is a good idea, particularly not when somebody throws a fiery bomb through the window of their home, burning it to the ground. They learn that their pasts may not be as far behind them as they’d hoped, but when their son is kidnaped, they just join forces to reveal who is trying to stop them—from finding the missing woman, and from starting their new life together.

Resources: 

https://www.facebook.com/Hale-County-Farm-and-Ranch-Museum-244000705709555/
https://www.aghalloffame.com/

       

     About Donna:

Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick. As a hybrid author, she writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, devotional books, and books on the writing craft. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, Sisters In Crime, Pikes Peak Writers, and Christian Authors Network; facilitates a critique group; and teaches writing classes online and in person. Donna also ghostwrites, edits, and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, and travels extensively for both. Donna is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.

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Christmas on the Plains and Molasses Candy

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Here in Nebraska, we nearly had a white Thanksgiving. The  snow melted before "Turkey-day," but winter storms never fail to set me to thinking about what winter was like for pioneer settlers. And they always make me thankful I live in a day of central heating where all it takes to keep warm is a setting on a thermostat. 

In December of 1866, troops sent to aid the survivors of the Fetterman Massacre "waded or dug their way through snows, knee deep, and often waist deep, while the mercury ranged from 25 to 40 degrees below zero." They arrived at

their destination with frostbitten hands and feet. In January, when some of the women were transported to safety, the mercury on their only thermometer froze in the bulb, so they no longer knew how cold it was. They "sliced" frozen bread with a hatchet. 

Residents of sod houses often mentioned how much warmer the three-foot-thick sod walls kept their homes. In fact, some lamented the loss of that insulation when they moved into their first farmhouse with only boards, plaster, and lathe to hold in the warmth from the wood stove in the kitchen. 

In 1913, when Bert Snyder went for more coal during a blizzard, "his eyes were frozen shut before he'd gone half a dozen steps, and the snow was so fine and thick that he could barely breathe." After the storm when Bert saddled his horse to see about the cattle on his ranch, the drifts were so high and frozen so solid that he rode right over the tops of fences.

What was Christmas like for those pioneers? Jessie Short Segard, author of From Dugout to Mansion wrote this about Christmas, 1886: "...some Christmases we had nothing at all. One Christmas Mother had made sorghum taffy and made some into rings and other things of the taffy. That was the extent of our gifts that year. Here's a recipe I found for molasses candy. Let me know if you try it! 

MOLASSES CANDY

from Nebraska Pioneer Cookbook 

compiled by Kay Graber

Two cups of molasses, one cup of sugar, tablespoonful of vinegar, small lump of butter. Boil rapidly until it drops brittle into cold water, pour into buttered tins, and when cold pull till it is white.

Jessie's memoir continues, "Another Christmas Aunt Sally had received a barrel of apples from Iowa and brought one apiece for us. What a treat that was, a whole apple for each of us."

When Jessie's family moved from Kansas to the village of Brainard, Nebraska, her father had an idea for decorating a Christmas tree. "Before Christmas that year Father told us children to save all the tissue paper we could find in the street. Everybody was a litterbug then and it was easy to find white, yellow, red and blue tissue where stores tossed their rubbish. Father got a branch limb of a tree. We covered it with strips of those papers and he nailed it to the wall and that was our first and only Christmas tree we ever had. We thought it was very beautiful.

Christmas morning we found on that tree overshoes for Father, I don't remember what for Mother, a wool cap for us two girls, and I forget what for the boys except that we all got a little pocket mirror and a sack of hard candy. The aid society had given us those things and Father had not let us children know about it. Oh! You see, it takes very little to make a real poor family happy."

At Christmas in 1884, Jessie was fourteen and a half. "I wanted so much to buy a Christmas gift for mother but only had one nickel. The only thing I could think of to get her was a spool of sewing thread but to her it was a good useful gift."

What about you? Do you have memories of "lean" Christmases? Do you have a favorite gift that was inexpensive and yet cherished because of the sacrifice made to acquire and give it? 

May God grant us all an attitude of thankfulness for the abundance He supplies. Merry Christmas!

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My heroine in Mended Hearts, a novella included in the collection at left, has gone through a rough year. She's felt shunned and abandoned, but as Christmas looms, she hopes a change is on the horizon. 

Learn more here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D8HR2V8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://www.christianbook.com/christmas-stitches-historical-collection-through-holidays/judith-miller/9781683227151/pd/227153?event=ESRCG

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-stitches-judith-mccoy-miller/1129252608?ean=9781683227151#/

To win a free copy of Christmas Stitches, 1) share the link to this blog post with a friend and then  2) e-mail stephanie@stephaniewhitson.com with topic line SHARED and your shipping address in the body of the e-mail. I'll select and notify the winner on December 15. Merry Christmas!

The Great American Desert - Move Along Folks...

by Pam Hillman

I’ve always found it interesting that so many of the early pioneers completely passed up The Great Plains in favor of California and Oregon. From my modern day viewpoint, I just never could understand why.

But Eureka, I have found the answer!

I discovered that the early expeditions of Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and Stephen Long followed the rivers—the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Canadian—mapping out trails across the plains to Oregon, California, and Santa Fe, areas that had been settled by seagoing vessels. However, on their track westward, these explorers documented the vegetation, animal life, and information about the Indians living in the American heartland.

The Great Plains includes parts of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas, as well as parts of Canada. For the sake of today’s post, the bulk of the pioneers travelled the Oregon Trail, so might have passed through what we know as Nebraska, possibly Kansas, SE Colorado, Wyoming. Those areas are desirable places to live now, so what kept the pioneers from settling on the plains from the very beginning? Why the mad rush to Oregon or California while bypassing the plains?

Because they didn’t think of the area as The Plains. They’d been conditioned to view the area as (cue the ominous music) THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT!!!

In his expedition of 1819-1820, Major Stephen H. Long prepared a map where he broadly designated The Great Plains as the Great American Desert, and that’s where the problem started—well, maybe not literally with Major Long, but the moniker stuck. And from that point forward, numerous maps drawn up between the 1820-1850s describe the area as a desert and completely uninhabitable.

Colonel Richard Irving Dodge says in his book, The Hunting Grounds of the Great West, “When I was a schoolboy my map of the United States showed between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains a long and broad white blotch, upon with was printed in small capitals “THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT – UNEXPLORED.”

Zebulon Pike went so far as to say, “These vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa.”

Greeley stated that timber could not be grown because (he believed) the wind blew so hard. He also felt the “desert” was steadily enlarging its borders.

Is it any wonder the American public saw the plains as a vast, dry, horrible, terrible no good place to put down roots and invest their futures?

From one map to another and over a period of 30 to 40 years, the seeds were firmly planted in people’s minds that the area was a vast wasteland, and not good for much other than a road to the fertile lands of Oregon or California. It would take years to erase that image. In the early years, pioneers marched westward nearly 2000 miles with blinders on, ignoring the beauty, the rich black dirt, and the opportunity to homestead the very land they trampled in their haste to get to the “promised land” on the distant shore.

Again, from our enlightened state in 2015, it’s hard for us to imagine why they’d do this, but keep in mind that these travellers had their sights on the well watered, wooded, rolling hills that were similar in terrain and natural resources to the land they were familiar with back East. I suppose if you think about it, it makes sense.

The very fact that the pioneers were wary of The Plains is the reason the Oregon Trail even exists. If the region had been heavily forested and crisscrossed with streams and rivers and populated with all manner of animals and vegetation ripe for the picking, the pioneers would have slowly continued their migration westward instead of making the huge jump over The Plains from the East to the West.

As more pioneers spilled westward, more of them realized the vast opportunities they were leaving untouched. In the 1850s, a concentrated effort was made by the US government and enlightened visionaries to turn the image of the Great American Desert around, and The Great Plains and The Homestead Acts was born. Settlers poured into the region and a whole new era began.

Just think what would have happened if Major Long had wrote on his map THE GREAT AMERICAN PLAINS.

Pam Hillman was born and raised on a dairy farm in Mississippi and spent her teenage years perched on the seat of a tractor raking hay. In those days, her daddy couldn’t afford two cab tractors with air conditioning and a radio, so Pam drove the Allis Chalmers 110. Even when her daddy asked her if she wanted to bale hay, she told him she didn’t mind raking. Raking hay doesn’t take much thought so Pam spent her time working on her tan and making up stories in her head. www.pamhillman.com

The Homestead Brides Collection * The Oregon Trail Romance Collection

Both Available NOW and Shipping from Amazon! :)

The Timber Culture Act of 1873

By Carla Olson Gade, Author of "Proving Up", The Homestead Brides Collection.

Sod house on a timber claim

Timber Culture Act, March 3, 1873

"An act to encourage growth of timber on the western prairie."

The Homestead Act of 1862 brought many pioneers to the American Great Plains with the promise of land ownership for those who had the grit and fortitude to build a life on unclaimed land. To claim 160 acres of free land an individual had to file an entry and improve the land  by farming over a five year period. They had to live on the property as well. So when folks found the vast prairies absent of trees they had a problem. There was no lumber for building homes. What little tree growth was found by the rivers was soon exhausted. With their ingenuity the settlers built homes out of sod from the ground, stacking them like large bricks. But there was still no wood for fuel, fences, furniture and other necessities.

In 1873 Congress decided that the plains needed to be transformed by planting as many trees as possible. This would be a challenge because of the arid weather, but naturalists at the time believed that trees could transform the climate, bring moisture to the dry land. Trees planted in rows would provide a windbreak or shelterbelt that would reduce the force of the wind, direct the movement of snow, and provide much needed shade. It also provided shelter from the elements and a natural fence for the livestock.

To encourage this growth of trees, Congress passed The Timber Culture Act. The author of the act was Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock of Nebraska and resulted in the planting of millions of trees. A homesteader could add another 160 acres of land to the original 160 acres from their homestead claim in exchange for planting one quarter (40 acres) of the property with trees. Once they proved that they had a successful crop of trees the government would provide them with title to the land. Eventually the government eased up on their requirements because it was so difficult to grow a successful crop of trees due to prairie fires, grasshopper plagues, and drought so only 10 acres was required to be planted with 2,700 trees cultivated on each acre, 675 of each thriving. The offer of trees for land continued until 1891 when it was repealed due abuses of the plan.


You can learn more about The Timber Culture Act through the experiences of my characters in my novella, "Proving Up", in The Homestead Brides Collection.

 

SPECIAL GIVEAWAY:  Today I'm giving away a copy of The Homestead Brides Collection autographed by all nine authors who contributed to the book! To enter, please leave a comment. Have you ever heard of The Timber Culture Act or do you have any ancestors who were homesteaders?

Available Here

The Homestead Brides Collection (Barbour, February 2015)

Through nine historical romance adventures, readers will journey along with individuals who are ready to stake a claim and plant their dreams on a piece of the great American plains. While fighting land disputes, helping neighbors, and tackling the challenges of nature the homesteaders are placed in the path of other dreamers with whom romance sparks. And God has His hand in orchestrating each unique meeting.

Proving Up novella by Carla Olson Gade

Elsa Lindquist applies her scientific theories to growing trees on the Nebraska plains, intruding on a handsome homesteader’s hard work and experience. Will their dreams come to ruin, or will love prove their success?

New Englander Carla Olson Gade writes from her home amidst the rustic landscapes of Maine. With seven books in print, she enjoys bringing her tales to life with historically authentic settings and characters. An avid reader, amateur genealogist, photographer, and house plan hobbyist, Carla's great love (next to her family) is historical research. Though you might find her tromping around an abandoned homestead, an old fort, or interviewing a docent at an historical museum, it's easier to connect with her on her blog, Adventures of the Heart.