End of an Era

 

Sometime in the late 1860s, Kentuckian James T. Moore spent a brief time in Kansas as a helper to a buffalo hunter. He was impressed with the potential of Kansas for cattle grazing and went home to tell his wife, Chalista, that the grass stood as high as the stirrups on a horse.

Even after returning home, he couldn't forget that undeveloped frontier. In 1876, the family came to Kansas in a covered wagon drawn by oxen. They arrived in December 1876 in Sodtown, later known as Stafford. A hotel proprietor mentioned to J.T. that he might do well to homestead in Pratt County.

(This was my childhood home for the first 6 years of my life.)

A man whose business it was to locate claims helped J.T. and his family. The son, J.J. who was 9 at the time, later described the trip:

He told us of a place that we could homestead down in Pratt County where Kelly the buffalo hunter had put down a well. We started with an ox team to a wagon and the driver carried a compass as he drove. On the hind wheel of the wagon was tied a rag, and a man sitting in the back counted the revolutions of the wheel. So we came out 23 miles, so far south and so far west. We hit the place all right and found the government corners. We went to Larned and put in the (homestead) papers.

James T. Moore was my paternal great-great grandfather. (Though Sodtown (Stafford) isn't where the family settled, isn't it a coincidence that their first stop was in the area that has been my home for the past 41+ years?)

Last fall, I sat alone in a pickup cab at our Rattlesnake Creek pasture. Randy and three other guys were off on 4-wheelers, using those modern machines to move cattle toward my bait-hay-laden pickup. It was our annual fall round-up of cows and calves that had spent the summer grazing at what we call The Big Pasture.

The modern-day wranglers were pushing cattle toward a destination, much like the long-ago cattle drives ... but with Kawasaki horse power - not the four-legged version.

I knew it was likely the final time I would be involved gathering cattle off a pasture that's been in Randy's family since 1900 - 121 years at that time, and 122 now. A blue fall sky stretched endlessly from horizon to horizon, and prairie grasses rustled in a gentle breeze. That sky has towered over five generations of Kansans in both Randy's and my family's. 

All our forefathers saw the potential in the wide open prairies of Central Kansas.  And we are thankful.

It's hard to know what to write when you come to the end of a road, or, in our case, when you come to the end of a field. I think about our ancestors who settled this land. When they arrived from points east, it was a vast sea of prairie grasses. There may have been trees along creeks, but the tree-lined boulevards of their eastern towns and cities were left miles behind. 

They arrived with a wagon full of their earthly possessions, often strategically placed between the many children who also filled the wagon. Think about today's moving companies, driving semi-trailers of a family's belongings across the miles. Not so for these early arrivals to Kansas who packed everything on the rickety wheels of a wooden wagon.

They were the ones who planted the cottonwood trees and other trees we enjoy today to fulfill their Timber Claims to make this new land their home. 

My maternal great grandfather probably would shake his head to learn we present-day farmers have abandoned traditional horse power for 4-wheelers. Charley Neelly came to Kansas in 1898 from Hoberg, Mo., and went to work for a farmer who lived about five miles north of Naron in Pratt County. In 1900, Charley married Ethel Denton. They had 10 children - six boys and four girls. Shelby Merle Neelly (my Mom's Dad/my Grandpa) was their second child. 

Charley had a fondness for horses and made money by trading them. He also liked good driving horses and owned 11 race horses during his lifetime. During the 1910s and 1920s, Charley and the children farmed six or seven quarters of cropland. In 1919, they had more than 500 acres of corn. Shelby, his older brother Archie, and two hired hands shucked corn all winter. Corn at that time was worth 25 cents per bushel.

My brother continues to farm both the Moore and Neelly farm ground in Pratt County.

But our farm sale and retirement ended Randy's immediate family's involvement in active farming. We will still be involved in agriculture as land owners, and we have no plans to sell farm or pasture ground at this time.

That pasture where I was sitting last fall has been in Randy's family since 1900 and is owned today by Randy and his cousin, Don. The ground was purchased for $4 an acre by a great-great-uncle, August Brinkman. Originally in a tract of 1,040 acres, today 560 acres of it remain in the Fritzemeier family. 

 

From a Fritzemeier cattle working session - undated photo. 

L to R: Clarence Fritzemeier (Randy's Grandpa) Milton Giedinghagen, Ben Fritzemeyer, Melvin Fritzemeier (my father-in-law) & Harve Fritzemeier. Yes there are two different spellings on Fritzemeier - it's not a typo!

Was it an easy decision? It was not. But it was the right decision for us. Farming is for young bodies. Neither of us has those. It was increasingly difficult to find farm help . I've told Randy repeatedly that I'm amazed at what he was still able to accomplish. 

As you might remember, our neighbor, Mark, took some drone photos during our final harvest. (HERE is the link to my blog post about that.)

We asked if he had time to take some drone shots before the farm sale, and he graciously agreed. 

As I've said before, I find the drone images particularly powerful in some way. I take thousands of photos a year. But there's something about that bird's eye view of a scene that makes it feel bigger. And it makes it more real. 

 

I'll be honest. Mark sent the photos the morning before the sale. I decided not to look at them then, though Randy did. I was already a little emotional, and I thought it was ill-advised to add any fuel to all those already swirling feelings.

But, as I've written this series of blog posts on legacy and retirement, I've been thankful for this birds' eye overview of a way of life. 

 

Next time on the blog: The Farm Sale

To come: Retirement festivities

***

Want to read more about our family's history and see more historic photos?  I've written about it in the past. Here are the links:

Moore Family Century Farm - Click HERE

Neelly Family Century Farm - Click HERE

Fritzemeier Century Farm - Click HERE and HERE (and a whole lot more blog posts since 2010)

If I Had a Hammer ... or a Shovel

 

There's some heft to an old scoop shovel Randy uncovered as he was going through sheds before the farm sale.

Today's scoop shovels are much lighter. Even though the design hasn't changed much since the first human decided to hammer a piece of metal into a big "spoon," today's scoop shovels are usually made of composite metal. It certainly doesn't alleviate the elbow grease that the tool still requires. But, the new iterations are still a little easier to repeatedly scoop and lift.

So the old, heavy scoop shovel doesn't have a lot of value in 2022. However, there's a lot of sentimental value scratched in the rough-hewn wooden handle. The initials "SF" were etched into the wooden handle by Randy's great-grandfather, Simon Fritzemeier.

I enhanced the photo with HDR to try and reveal the initials, but the mark is pretty faded. Though Randy vaguely remembered the shovel being marked in some way, it still took him awhile to find it on the splintery old wood.

Instead of adding the scoop to the trailer of miscellaneous "treasures" for the farm sale, it came home with Randy.

Randy doesn't remember his great-grandparents well. Simon's big white mustache was his most memorable characteristic. These photos were taken in 1956, when Randy was just a baby.

But, Simon didn't always have a mustache. In looking through the family photo books that Randy's mom, Marie, compiled, it shows a clean-shaven Simon with his bride, Augusta, on their wedding day. (That photo is undated, too.)

There were a couple more snapshots in Marie's notebook. Randy remembers visiting them at their house in town, since they lived only a few houses down from his grandparents, Clarence and Ava Fritzemeier.

The materials used to make the shovel aren't the only things with "heft." The memories left behind in five generations of farming on the Kansas plains are pretty weighty, too. We've been privileged to be part of that.

End of an Era: The Farm Sale

 

The link to Car Auction's website and close-up photos of the items for sale can be found by clicking HERE. 

Once Randy retires for good, I think he could have a job driving sale bills all over this part of Kansas. He spent a lot of time tacking sale bills for our August 13 farm auction to bulletin boards and windows in seed stores, co-ops, parts stores, restaurants and anywhere else he could think of.

Even after he got the initial sale bills up and displayed, he's watched the local bulletin boards, putting more in their place if someone took a sale bill off the board for a closer look. 

He's also spent a lot of time organizing equipment and getting it arranged for our sale. The auction will begin at 10 AM, Saturday, August 13, at his folks' place.

 It still seems a bit surreal.  

There's certainly a wide array of selections for any farm shoppers ...

... from an old horse-drawn corn sled he found in the shelterbelt ... 

 ... to our combine. (While it's certainly not the height of modern equipment, it's at least in this century.)

His most recent project was getting the varied and sundry paraphernalia that gets collected in farm outbuildings. There's quite an assortment of "stuff" on two trailers.

I must admit that one of those trailer items tugged at my heart strings.

I've written more than once about this old Tupperware bucket. It was part of our "inheritance" from his parents' house. We used it during calving season to sterilize the pulling chains. Sometimes, it held a mix of colostrum to feed to a baby who was struggling. So it was part of the equipment we used to welcome new babies to The County Line. I do miss having the babies in the corral just a few hundred yards from the house. But we found that Tye & Todd have liberal visitation policies with our mamas and babies, so it's all right. It's just an adjustment.

However, the dingy old Tupperware is more than the sum of its parts. It's kind of a passing-of-the-torch symbol - a hold-it-in-your-hands representation of Randy's and my places in the fifth-generation of our respective farm families. It used to be housed at Melvin & Marie's back entrance during calving season. Then, it "lived" on our back porch during calving season and in our basement during the rest of the year.

Melvin and a bull in an undated photo

I wish I had a photo of Melvin and Randy using the bucket together. I know it happened, but I wasn't recording every moment in blogland back then. For seven years of our marriage, I was driving back and forth to Hutchinson as a reporter and editor at The Hutchinson News.

So seeing that bucket made it all seem pretty real - kind of silly, I suppose, but you never know what is going to affect you.

I'm not the only one waxing nostalgic. As kids, Randy and Lyle would climb on the old corn sled that was in the farmstead trees and would move the levers, playing "farmer." He found old toys that he and Lyle used, but they were too rusty and worn out to bring any money, so he disposed of them. 

Getting the fencing materials organized made him reminisce about the "miles and miles and miles" of electric fence he built through the years - and then had to roll back up. (I helped some with that process, too.) He says he's not sorry to see the hand-held post hole diggers go or an old T-post driver that he almost lost his thumb using. (Fence building has often found us being nostalgic. Click HERE for another blog post about that.)

The old 8N Ford tractor was a workhorse in fence building, too. Five generations have sat on that old seat. We'll likely take a few more photos on that relic on sale day before we watch it leave the farmstead.

April 2012 - Baby Kinley, Jill & Randy

There's one relic that got transferred from the tool shed at his folks' house to our house. An old scoop shovel that belonged to his great-grandfather, Simon Fritzemeier. Randy says it's twice as heavy as the scoop shovels used today, but there's still some family history there that he wasn't willing to let go of. (More on that next time.)

This process has been a mix of emotions. But, Randy feels at peace about the decision and the timing, so how can I feel differently?

He's already planning a trip to several national parks this fall. He's only gotten to use his lifetime pass to National Parks once before now. I have a feeling it's going to get a workout in the coming years.

A Banner Day

Today is a banner day. My parents - Bob & Janis Moore - celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary. (This collage is from one of the books my mom put together for the grandkids). 

2021 Photo by Kent Moore

They were just 17 and 19 when they were married. And even though that seems young by today's standards, it seems to have worked out pretty well for them and their descendants - four children, seven grandchildren and 10 great-grands. 

A couple of those great-grands also are having a banner day today.

It's Kinley's and Brooke's first day of the new school year. Kinley is a 4th grader, and Brooke is in 1st grade. I was anxiously awaiting the first day of school photos.

At this point in her life, Brooke wants to be a kindergarten teacher. (I wonder if that will change to first grade teacher after this year?)

Kinley's career choice of "veterinarian" has remained constant for several years. (I think that it was "dolphin trainer" one year, but that's still animal related.)

For old times' sake, I foraged in my childhood scrapbook to see what I looked like when I was the girls' age. (Thanks to my mom for her organizational efforts! I wish I'd inherited that quality.)

Jeff Berry, Kim Moore, Carol Beberstine, Lorraine Frisbie, Eugene Stotts

 

For me, first grade was the first stop in my academic life. Byers didn't have kindergarten.  I had a whopping five people in my class - counting me!

At Byers, two grade levels were combined, so both the 1st and 2nd grade had Mrs. Bond as their teacher. 

Front row: Curtis Matulka, Eugene Stotts, Ronnie Young, Mike Kelly, Kim Moore, Carol Beberstine, Jeff Berry. Back row: Monte Pritchett, Kevin Warren, Mrs. Bond, Danna Stinemetze, Lorraine Frisbie, Bob Parker.

 My fourth grade year was the final one at Byers. In fifth grade, Byers consolidated with other small Pratt County schools to form Skyline. I don't remember exactly what I wanted to be at those milestones in my life. I remember "composer" was one of the things I dreamed of becoming. (I was not granted that God-given ability, though I certainly appreciate musical composition.) But I also thought of being a writer. So I guess maybe I had an inkling of what I might become.

 The shot of the girls boarding the bus this morning also brought back a little nostalgia. I rode the school bus the 3 1/2 miles to Byers. My kids had a longer trip for their dozen miles or so to school. I didn't find any photos of my "antique" bus.

Even though my efforts in scrapbooking did not compare to my mom's, I did find a few photos of Jill at similar ages to her girls.

Jill was 8 1/2 and Brent was 6 in this first-day-of-school photo.

Here was their school bus photo that year.

Jill would have been 6 - just like Brooke - in these photos. Brooke wanted her hair crimped for her first day of school. And I noticed that Jill had her hair crimped for her first day of school, too.

You can see the bus lights coming in the dark!

What goes around comes around, I guess!

Happy anniversary and happy first day of school to some special people!