Pioneer Farms: A Century of Change by Lani Elizabeth Ann Hanson

pioneer farms A C E N TU RY OF C HA NG E

EXCERP TS FR OM TH E P I O NE E R FARMS OR A L H I S TORY P R O J E CT

pioneer farms

ÂŠ Becky Boesen, Deepak Keshwani, Mary Kay Quinlan, Petra Wahlqvist Cover photo courtesy of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources Book design by Lani Hanson

pioneer farms A C E N TU RY OF C HA NG E

EXCERPTS FROM THE P I ON E E R FA RMS ORAL HISTORY P R OJE C T

Sponsored by the Rural Futures Institute at the University of Nebraska and the Lied Center for Performing Arts

about the project It all started with a note a little girl sent to singer/songwriter Susan Werner, who was engaging rural Nebraska communities with performances and songwriting workshops as part of Arts Across Nebraska, a program of the Lied Center for Performing Arts, in the spring of 2011. “Thank you for coming to this waste of cornfields,” the note said. Werner was flabbergasted. “It struck me—it took the wind out of me really, that this little girl felt that way about where she was growing up,” Werner recalled. “I had to find a way to say, ‘Kid, you are overlooking something.” The resulting song, “Something to be Said,” became the heart of Werner’s album “Hayseed” on which she pays tribute to American agriculture and her own farm roots. The album was commissioned by the Lied Center for Performing Arts and the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a remarkable partnership that united art and agriculture. The two share something simple: Both arts and agriculture are inherently process based and essential to the quality of life in Nebraska. From that seed, an idea began to grow. What if this collaboration could develop into an extended opportunity for UNL students? Just as seeds grow with water and sunshine, the idea grew with conversation and collaboration and resulted in The Nebraska Hayseed Project. The two-year, creative, trans-disciplinary, civic engagement and community research project brought together the Lied Center’s community outreach program, the oral history expertise of a UNL journalism professor, the curricular and co-curricular programs of the UNL College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and UNL students from various disciplines. The anchor of The Nebraska Hayseed Project, funded with a grant from the

Rural Futures Institute at the University of Nebraska, was a 2015 statewide tour of Werner’s “Hayseed” album to rural communities, which served as the inspiration for an accompanying student-driven oral history project with artistic and community engagement components. During the 2015 and 2016 Spring semesters, UNL professors Mary Kay Quinlan and Deepak Keshwani co-taught a class built around oral history collection. During year one, Susan Werner’s “Hayseed” album was the artistic work incorporated into the class, and her song “Something to be Said” also became the focus of two extended residencies, titled “The Something to be Said Project,” led by Becky Boesen and Petra Wahlqvist, in the communities of Scottsbluff and Ord. Students K-12 explored the idea of sense of place and how they felt about their own community in theatrical workshops, which culminated in performances created by the students for their peers. For the second year of the project, CATHERLAND, a new musical written by Nebraskan playwright Becky Boesen and composer David von Kampen, was incorporated into the class curriculum and was presented in Lincoln, Ord, and Beatrice, as part of the Lied Center’s Arts Across Nebraska program. Set in Red Cloud, CATHERLAND is an examination of sense of place, possession, and how the past and present continue to intersect in Greater Nebraska. Students in the UNL class were invited to the first read through of the script with actors, and saw a production of CATHERLAND at the end of their semester. Connections were made regarding the process-based similarities of theatre and agriculture. As part of the UNL class, students developed an understanding of the theory of oral history research and learned how to conduct oral history interviews. They developed an appreciation for the unique histories of the targeted rural communities through interaction with local farmers and ranchers and learned about milestones in the evolution of agriculture on the Great Plains. Students initiated contact with century farmers, whose farms have been in the same families for 100 years or more, and interviewed them using the skills gained in their class. The project captured the voices and stories of more than a dozen interviewees, many of which are featured in this publication. The oral history collection will be archived at the Nebraska State Historical Society.

about the interviews Students in two special topics classes in Spring 2015 and Spring 2016 conducted the interviews for the Pioneer Farms Oral History Project. The 2015 interviewees were: • Marvin Classen, who was born in 1939, farms in rural Platte County, Nebraska, near the town of Humphrey. He and his wife, Norma Jane, were interviewed there by Rachel Noe and Madeline Christensen. • Loyal and Carole Doeschot live in Hickman, Nebraska. Loyal, who was born in 1936, is a farmer, and Carole, born in 1940, is a housewife and quilter. Bryce Doeschot, their grandson, was the interviewer. • Bob Graff, his wife, Margaret, and their son Tim are all from Beatrice, Nebraska. Bob was born in 1927, and Tim, who now handles most of the farm operations, was born in 1959. They were interviewed in Beatrice by Rachel Rosinski and Bryce Doeschot. • Tom Hansen of North Platte, Nebraska, was born in 1946 and was the fourth generation to run the family’s North Platte ranch. He also served as a Nebraska state senator. Hansen was interviewed in North Platte by Kelli Green. • Howard Nelson, born in 1930 in rural Bertrand, Nebraska, is a retired crop and livestock farmer. Tanner Nelson, his grandson, and Kelli Green interviewed him at the Nelson Farms outside Bertrand. • Charles (Chuck) Zangger, born in 1947, has been breeding hybrid popcorn varieties since the early 1980s at Zangger Farms near North Loup, Nebraska. Madeline Christensen and Rachel Noe interviewed him there.

The 2016 interviewees were: • Edward Kester, born in 1938, and Marilyn Kester, born in 1939, are a retired farm couple from Cambridge, Nebraska. They were interviewed there by Kelsey Connelly. • Don and Delila Reynoldson, now live in Lincoln, Nebraska, but the couple originally was from Crawford, Nebraska. Don, who was born in 1928, is a retired farmer and rancher, and Delila, born in 1930, is a retired schoolteacher. They were interviewed in Lincoln by Scott Jenkins. • Linda Schaben of Holbrook, Nebraska, is a retired farm bookkeeper and was a bus driver for Holbrook-Arapahoe schools. Schaben, born in 1947, was interviewed in Arapahoe, Nebraska, by her daughter, Deborah Schaben. • Phyllis Tooker, born in 1931 in David City, Nebraska, was a home economics teacher for 31 years and worked with her late husband, Norm, on their farm. She was interviewed in Ralston, Nebraska, by her grandson, Garrett Tooker.

A NOTE ABOUT ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS A verbatim transcript of an oral history interview looks different than polished written text. It reflects the way people speak, not the way people write. So readers of an oral history interview will encounter incomplete sentences, run-on sentences, false starts, repetitions, and sometimes, grammar and punctuation that would make an English teacher cringe. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how most people talk. The interview excerpts included here have been minimally edited for clarity, and where words, phrases, or sentences have been omitted, that is indicated by ellipses.

Jacob Hablitzelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s homestead, Frontier County, Nebraska. Image courtesy of Linda Schaben

THE EARLY DAYS

Farming is one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest occupations. For well over 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, people have cultivated plants for food and fiber. Early farmers gradually improved their crops, too, saving seeds from plants that produced the best and planting them the next year to grow even better crops. In some regions around the globe, early farmers also developed sophisticated systems of irrigation to supply water to their fields. By the time the forebears of the farm families interviewed for the Pioneer Farms Oral History Project established their farms, American Indian tribes, particularly in the eastern and central parts of the Great Plains, long had been accustomed to planting maize and squash on the rolling hills and rich table lands now called Nebraska. Most of these century farm families traced their farmsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; origins to the land ownership opportunities created in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which promised settlers 160 acres of land if they lived on it and made it a farm. The first homestead claims were filed after midnight on Jan. 1, 1863, with Daniel Freeman of Beatrice, Nebraska, credited as among the first to lay claim to a tract of land.

THE EARLY DAYS | CHAPTER ONE

“You asked what year was the farm homesteaded. Well, in this case, there are two homesteads. In each case it was my great-grandmother that came out and homesteaded. The one was homesteaded in 1879 by my greatgrandmother, which we called the Anna Nelson homestead. She came out with four children from Illinois. She had been widowed in Illinois because her husband had been killed with lightning. So grandma, great-grandma Anna Nelson, she left Illinois and came out and homesteaded, which is rural Bertrand….She had four children, as I mentioned. The oldest one was…my grandpa. His name was John Holland Nelson.”

Howard Nelson “[Grandfather Jacob Hablitzel] came over to the United States through Ellis Island…He had step-brothers and step-sisters….And he came from Switzerland, so he worked his way into the United States. He worked in Ohio and then in Nebraska….And so in the late 1880s, they were giving away a section of land in Nebraska, 160 acres, and my grandfather decided he would come to Frontier County and take out a land homestead…. “He was kind of a rebellious character. And he sent for his step-sister— no relation….He sent for her and married her and they had, I think they had 14 children. I think there were four or five that died in 1918 of the flu that was prominent in the area. The graves are in Stowe Cemetery. That is where my grandparents are buried in Frontier County, Stowe Cemetery…. “The neighborhood was in an uproar when Anna, his wife, had her first baby. And he talked about all his relations as being brothers and sisters. And they said that she was his sister, DON REYNOLDSON and that was not good in their eyes. And since I have looked through the records, and my other relation, Erna, my aunt, looked through the records, and she [Anna] was no relation. She was the daughter of his step-mother; there was no relation there. But the neighborhood got together and they were going to tar and feather ‘em. And so he got into his wagon with his little family and left the homestead and moved to Oregon and worked in the forest there. “And when one of the neighbors said, ‘OK, you can come back now, everybody’s settled down,’ and so he came back. And when he did, he

“[Nebraska] was the promised land, so to speak.”

CHAPTER ONE | THE EARLY DAYS

brought a whole bunch of Ponderosa pine trees with him. And he planted those in a square around where his sod house was…. “He produced a seed corn—well I’m sure he got it from the Indians. It was multicolored. He produced that and then he put in a huge grape orchard, grape vines and fruit trees, and he had vegetables, he had—you name it—he had it. Well, all that is gone except for the pine trees. They’re still up there on the farm....And they are beautiful yet. They haven’t died, it’s been probably a hundred thirty, forty years since he planted them.”

Linda Schaben “The Silver Creek land belonged to my husband’s family. When we were first married in ’54, …when we were out there visiting, my fatherin-law took us out into the pasture and he said, ‘If you look over there, you can see where the Oregon Trail, Oxbow part of the Oregon Trail, was.’ That we still had the indentations in the pasture. That pasture has never been plowed. It’s the original pasture. And we no longer can see those indentations here 50-some, 60-some years later, but at that time we could still see them. And my husband always wanted to farm. And after he retired from Extension…he actually did farm….By that time we inherited that land…. “My husband’s grandparents came out there and bought some land…. We always heard the family say that they bought it from the railroad, and the railroad was given land to sell so they could afford to build the railroads across the state. And maybe across the country, for all I know. And so they bought these lands until they had this home place. And to me, the thing that was interesting, too, was that his grandparents went to the river, Platte River, and dug up cottonwood trees to plant to make a grove west of the house because you didn’t have a nursery to go buy trees from. You had to find them….It’s only about a mile, but to think that you have to go dig up your tree out of a river, and some of these trees are still there that they planted. Not in very good shape, but they’re there (laughs).”

Phyllis Tooker “My great-grandfather Hans Hansen came to America in 1864, and the story is we’re not sure exactly why. But there was some mandatory draft in Denmark, and…the Danish museum says that a lot of those people came over to avoid the draft and to look for a better life. But he was 16 years old when he came over on a boat, came over by himself, and I’m sure there were other Danes, but he was the only Hansen that came from that THE EARLY DAYS | CHAPTER ONE

family….They spent a year in, we’re not even sure exactly. It was either Michigan or Wisconsin. And then he came down to Howard County in Nebraska, lived a year there, heard about the railroad….He found a job opportunity with Union Pacific when they were putting in their main lines. So he moved to North Platte in 1866 and started working on the railroad. And later he started Hans or Hansen Ranch, which turned into the Hansen Ranch anyway, in 1878…. “They sold wheat, and they sold barley…and I think the cattle probably came in about the same time, but they only had like a section of ground at the very, very most and maybe less than that. So, but it was their land… “My great-grandfather died pretty early….He married another Dane named Anna, and they had one son, Henry….And then between her and my grandfather [Henry]…they ran the ranch for quite a while, expanded it….And my grandfather took over when he was fairly young,…and then he died in 1957. My father was already in charge of the ranch by then. His name’s Wes, and he was very active in the ranch, and expanded some back in the ‘80s, and he passed away in 2002, and then I was manager prior to that. And then now my son, Eric, is the day-to-day operator, and he’s got three kids,…the sixth generation on the ranch.”

Tom Hansen “My mother was 5 years old when she came to the United States from the Ukraine. I can hear her tell the story yet. It took her two weeks to come across on the boat. They landed at Ellis Island, but on the way over there, they hit a storm that came up there. Panic aboard the ship, and some goofball opened the porthole there, and water started coming into the ship. I don’t know how much of this she can remember or having been told the story. I don’t know which it is. Anyway, as I understand it, when they got to Ellis Island, they went by train from there to North Dakota where they had some relation….My grandfather had been in the Russian Army and got out. Then right as the Bolshevik regime took over there, and he was going to have to go back into the service. So they just literally, as they say, left between the suns with nothing. And then came here to the United States. “From North Dakota it wasn’t clear how they got to Nebraska, but that was the promised land, so to speak. It was kind of at the tail end of the era where you could get free land by homestead….It was out in Sioux County…Marsland was the closest town, and that was an all day’s drive with a team and wagon. Sioux County, in that area, has no trees whatsoever. So they didn’t have anything there for firewood, or so forth

CHAPTER ONE | THE EARLY DAYS

there, and I remember my mother telling about picking up cow chips, you know, for fuel in the wintertime.”

Don Reynoldson “My great-great-grandfather came over that hill, which is over here about a mile and a half off the side of the river. And 1878, I believe that’s when it was, he had heard that there was—he had a land buying company, a land speculation company—and he heard here was land for sale here, in this region, because this is one of the last railroads that was built in central Nebrask. So he came over to look at the property. And he was 64 years old at the time. And then he bought six sections right here, all at once. And then over time, sold them off, except for this one home place section that we’re sitting on right now. And then he moved here and stayed here until he passed away. He was about 92 years old. So he lived here about almost 30 years…. “And he came from Garrison, Iowa. Before that, he’d come from Olean, New York. And so this community right here, there used to be a little village up here, a train stop, you know, livestock yard, grain elevator, and about five or six buildings, right here on the property. And that was called Olean. I think he named it that because he was the first one here, I guess. (laughs)”

Chuck Zangger

THE EARLY DAYS | CHAPTER ONE

Reynoldson Farm, Crawford, Nebraska. Image courtesy of Don and Delila Reynoldson

LIFE ON THE FARM

Mostly there were chickens. Dogs and cats, too. And cows, pigs and sometimes sheep. And gardens. What with the animals and gardens and crops, always there were chores to do, the century farmers remember. And it was those chores, they say, that instilled a work ethic that remains. While all of the interviewees expressed fond memories from childhood on the family farm, they looked back with realism, not rose-colored glasses.

LIFE ON THE FARM | CHAPTER TWO

“You always had a job. I don’t care what age you were. There was something you could do. As soon as I was capable of carrying buckets and things, mother always gave me a choice. In the summer or when school was out, did I want to work indoors or outdoors? Outdoors meant I carried the water and the feed to the chickens and ducks….and indoors meant that I did the dishes, made the beds….If I was capable, I might have to peel potatoes or whatever to get it ready for lunch. “And the things that we had then for food, we always had boiled potatoes for lunch that were peeled. See, we didn’t have refrigeration and those would keep for supper without spoiling and mother would slice those up and fry them for supper. Same every day. We always had pancakes for breakfast. And what pancakes were left over was the dog food. We didn’t have dog food. You had to find something for the dog to eat and for us, it was pancakes.”

Phyllis Tooker “My mother raised chickens. A thousand to twelve hundred chickens at a whack. Now that’s a lot of chickens. She hatched the eggs in incubators right in the house. We had a bedroom off the kitchen and she’d go in every several times a day and roll the eggs around just as a hen would have done.”

Phyllis Tooker “I made a pet of anything that moved. I had a whole set of pet chickens. I had pet cats. I even dressed them up in doll clothes and gave them a ride in doll buggies. We always had a dog. We had cattle, hogs. We didn’t have sheep until later because the coyotes were too prevalent and it was a little hard on your sheep herd.”

Phyllis Tooker “My dad had pigs and one was a real runt. It wouldn’t have lived if it had been left with the mother so he took it out and put it up with the chickens in the brooder house….And this little pig was only a couple inches long. Just a little tiny thing. Well, of course I made a pet of it. Carried it around, fed it. It grew up and in those days girls didn’t wear slacks. You only had dresses. That pig had never seen anybody except mom or I in a dress because the men were never around….It didn’t like the men….I named the pig Nancy, and it was not going to have any man around it. It wouldn’t do anything for them.

CHAPTER TWO | LIFE ON THE FARM

“Well, dad decided he must sell that pig … so he had the trucker come. He couldn’t get the pig in the truck. I was about 5 years old and had to lead that pig into the truck, bawling the whole way. (laughs) I never knew how bad my dad felt until I got married. (laughs) He came back one day and handed me a leather pouch that had 61 silver dollars in it. (laughs) He couldn’t make himself spend the money (laughs) for my pet pig. He had to give me the money for it. And you know, most of those dollars are still in the safety deposit box in the bank. “But those are the things that happen when you’re a kid on the farm. Yes, I bawled and I got over it.”

Phyllis Tooker “I started driving a tractor, pulling the machinery full time all day when I was 8 years old and didn’t think anything about it….The year I was 9 years old, I got to pull a combine with a tractor and for then, it was a lot. We had 1,600 acres of wheat, which is a lot of wheat for back then, a lot of work…Just loved it.”

Edward Kester “I didn’t get to drive the tractor. My dad didn’t think that girls should drive tractors….I’d help my mom with the gardens and we had chickens…So I’d gather the eggs, took care of the chickens, fed them, took care of the hogs, milked cows. Anything that a farm girl does I pretty much did, except drive tractors.”

Marilyn Kester “My earliest memory was chasing chickens out of the yard. My mother had chickens. And we would gather the eggs, but the chickens always seemed to like our yard the best. And they would scratch the grass out and it was just dirt by the time they were done. And she always had me go out there and chase the chickens out of the yard fence.”

Linda Schaben “We had a swing out in a big tree by the house and we always went out swinging in it. That was one thing we always did. Everybody did that.”

Marvin Classen

LIFE ON THE FARM | CHAPTER TWO

“Cattle was our only livestock that we had. We never had any hogs. Or sheep. Oh, we had sheep there when the kids have a [4-H] project out there. But nothing amounted to anything. It was mainly cattle on there and raised wheat for cash crop. A lot of that country there [near Crawford, Nebraska] should never have been plowed up.”

Don Reynoldson “The furthest thing I can remember was sitting in the old ranch house. My grandma Gertrude, everybody called her Gertie, but we called her grandma. But eating homemade ginger snap cookies, dunking them in coffee as far back as I can remember. So I think that’s one reason Danes like coffee is because we started early (chuckle). Homemade ginger snap cookies and sitting at our kitchen table and a wood fire stove.”

Tom Hansen “Always had a lot of dogs. Had a homemade bow and arrow all the time. Stick guns. When it rained, I made boats and floated down the creeks that were formed in the yards….It was fun, it was fun. “So I think when I was 9 years old I went into 4-H, and that was a whole bunch of fun. Then I could have calves, you know, and show calves. Then I went in high school in the FFA, and I raised chickens. (laughs) It was one of my projects anyway. But, you know, showed calves, showed heifers, didn’t do much with horses. I mean, horses were work…we use horses all the time. We still do use horses about every day. But…horses were for work. I had no desire to do high school rodeo because I did it all week. But the calf thing, that was always fun and my sister did, too.”

Tom Hansen “You know, if you have 4-H calves when you’re 9 years old or 10 years old, your folks are going to make sure you get out there and feed them. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a head cold, or a sore tooth, or a bad foot, you’re going to go out there and do those chores anyway. And, you know, unless you’re deathly ill you better get out there and do your chores or you’re going to hear from your dad. “I started when I was in eighth grade in the hay field, and there wasn’t a day off. And when it was a day off, you clean the shop, you cut down old junky trees or something like that, clean up the yard. But

CHAPTER TWO | LIFE ON THE FARM

you learn, and I enjoyed it. I mean, what’s more fun than running a chainsaw when you’re 13 years old?”

Tom Hansen “I enjoyed it here growing up as a child…I went to grade school and I had no one in my class. The one closest to me was five years younger, so it was kind of a lonely situation….But we had a lot to do. There was always a lot of work. I started working on various projects probably from the time I was 10 or 11 years old…. “The farm was irrigated by then. It was irrigated by open ditch. You know, where the water is running down an open ditch and then you have siphon tubes. You fill the siphon tube, put it over the bank, and then the suction takes it out and puts it down the row. So you had to move these tubes all the time. Every 12 hours you’d move these tubes. It was pretty hard work…. “I was always interested in farming. I grew my own corn in this little patch here….I grew open pollinated Indian corn, or flint corn….Then I kept that seed all those years, and that’s the basis I PHYLLIS TOOKER use for hybrid popcorn that we now sell. Popcorn is a flint corn, it’s of the flint family. So that was one thing I did. And then I had hogs, I had purebred Hampshire hogs. I really liked working with them. And then we always had cattle and stuff…I enjoyed working with the livestock…. “I liked the animals. We had really good dogs. We had good working cattle dogs when I was growing up. Fairly intelligent dogs, and, you know, if you’re alone as a kid, you think they’re talking to you anyway, you know? I mean, you’re talking to them, they’re responding to you, they’ll pull your wagon for you. Keep anything bad from happening to you, kind of like Lassie, you know? I enjoyed it, as I look back. I enjoyed it very much.”

“You always had a job. I don’t care what age you were. There was something you could do.”

Chuck Zangger “We would have hogs to feed and then also we would help dad to milk the cows…usually had about 10 or 11 cows. So when I went to LIFE ON THE FARM | CHAPTER TWO

high school I would get up in the morning and help dad milk cows…. So it was mainly livestock chores and of course in the evening when coming from school, then it [had] to be repeating the evening chores. “And we had chickens so help gather eggs and take care of that and sometimes even help clean eggs because we would have eggs to sell. We had to either sand them clean or wipe them clean, put them in a crate, take them to town, and at LINDA SCHABEN that time they’d be marketed right at the grocery store….We also sold cream. So selling cream and selling eggs went, we might say, to a good part of the grocery bill. The farm chores, they lent very well to not only give us occupation but a few dollars for the folks to buy provisions.”

“My earliest memory was chasing chickens out of the yard.”

Howard Nelson “We used to walk beans…when I was growing up. I walked—we walked—cornfields for weeds. You didn’t spray them, you didn’t hoe them, you walked. And that was a lot of walking back then. And that’s just how things have changed since back then.”

Norma Jane Classen “I don’t miss, don’t really miss the old days.”

Marvin Classen “I grew up raising chickens for eggs basically, but every now and then I had a house full of broilers. We would miss the chickens. I would sell the eggs…. “Early on, my dad raised hogs. He had quite a large hog house for that period of time. He probably had a carload of beef that he would raise and fatten out. We always had to have chickens. Probably a hundred or so. But as I got into high school, one of my projects was chickens and I expanded that and then I got more interested in ag college. I followed the chicken path….But I didn’t have any hogs or any beef….I had a dairy cow that I milked for the family. We had six kids and I milked that dumb cow for about 10 years.”

Bob Graff 22

CHAPTER TWO | LIFE ON THE FARM

“My mother…would make cobblers and cakes because there were nine of us in my family, and you couldn’t make a pie. You had to make more than one pie and she wasn’t about to do that. With a cake, it might just last a little bit longer. So I never learned how to make pies.”

Margaret Graff “I miss the chickens. I enjoyed starting the little chickens. Those little chickens are tiny peeps. They grow so fast, too. I enjoyed starting baby chicks. I really did.”

Bob Graff

LIFE ON THE FARM | CHAPTER TWO

Charles (Chuck) Zangger and his son Josh at Zangger Farms, North Loup, Nebraska. Photo by Madeline Christensen

COMMUNITY LIFE

One-room schools, country churches, Saturdays in town and neighbors helping neighbors figure prominently in the memories of the men and women who shared their century farming stories. They also shared observations about the shrinking rural population that has led to rural churches closing their doors, country schools consolidating with neighboring districts and small market towns of their youth dwindling away.

COMMUNITY LIFE | CHAPTER THREE

“There were eight grades—first to eighth. And we were all crammed in there and we had one teacher….It was tough. I just didn’t have any help. My mother and father were busy working on the farm. Several of the gals in my class…there was three of us, their mothers were teachers. And so they got a lot of help from their mothers to get through the lessons. But my parents didn’t help me. So it was a struggle, but I made it.”

Linda Schaben

“You walked a mile and a half to get there and a mile and a half home. You didn’t have delivery like we do now. They had a round stove and being Z [her maiden name was Zeilinger], I got sat the furthest from the stove even though I was the littlest. That year I caught pneumonia…. “I liked school. It was easy. And in…a one-room school, which has eight grades, the older kids always were your tutors. And as you got good in a subject you tutored someone that was younger than you along the way.”

Phyllis Tooker

“So we were five children in the family and our parents Fred Nelson and Helen Nelson. My mother was a Nelson before she married so we used to always say we are full Nelsons. “I went to rural school, which is at District 21, located northeast of Bertrand, and it was a one-room school house, one teacher and usually we had from 18 to 20 students in school…classes one to eight.…There was no kindergarten of course, but we started in the first grade, but as we progressed in school, we got to hear what was going on in all the way up to the eighth grade because classes were held in a small room. We could hear what is going on. So actually we probably were in the first grade but we also had some of the eighth’s grade work. “So after elementary school I went to Bertrand High School. This of course was an adjustment to come out from the country and go to town school, and of course that was different from the fact that when we got there we came as individuals, but the town children, they already knew others. But we kind of came in and had to get it reacquainted and so on, which was sometimes sort of felt a little bit out of place, but we soon got to know each other and proceed from there.”

Howard Nelson

“We had no running water in the [country school] building. All there was was a privy outside, an outhouse. And so everybody—one of the

CHAPTER THREE | COMMUNITY LIFE

older children—everybody had duties, putting up the flag and stuff like that, you know. And when I first went there, there were 21 kids. And then the last five years or six years there were only six of us that went to school there. So I quickly got all the ‘older person’s’ duties....This sounds gross, but what we would do was boil water in a tea kettle, little bigger than the ones they have now, but a good size, probably a gallon. And you would then pour that into this porcelain bowl, which was about a foot and a half, two feet across, and mix some cool water in with that. And then there was a bar of soap there, and everybody came in, the youngest first, and washed their hands in the same water. You all washed your hands in the same water. Now, I don’t know if we were inoculating each other every day, making sure we all had the same germs quickly, but I’m not sure if we PHYLLIS TOOKER were actually doing anything, see. After about three or four kids, pretty soon you’ve got everybody’s germs. And then you’d take the water, throw it out, rinse it a little bit with what was left in the tea kettle, and throw that out the door…. “I had the same teacher for eight years. Well, I had one teacher for six months in kindergarten. And then from then on it was the same teacher…. And she was really interested in science. And even earth sciences, especially plants and soils and stuff like that. And I think that’s what really got me interested in that. Although I probably had a propensity toward it, she encouraged it. I have her and one science teacher in the high school [in Ord, Nebraska] to thank for being a plant breeder today.”

You helped each other. You had to, to survive.”

Chuck Zangger

“I think I remember the first time I ever went to town. You know, it was on a Halloween night. I dressed up like something. I don’t remember that. I didn’t know we had to stop and watch for cars. I mean, I was on the run all the time and had neighbor kids that were that way, too. We just played and had our own, made our own, fun.”

Tom Hansen

“Saturday afternoon, everyone went to town, and that was just the thing to do…Everybody go to town on Saturday afternoon and sit there COMMUNITY LIFE | CHAPTER THREE

on the street corner and exchange lies, I guess, of what went on during the week or what they’re going to do next week… “And a favorite little pastime there in town, we’d play ‘ditch ‘em’. You know, and…I got ditched there…but I spotted them across the street…. They’d all take off and go across the street and I didn’t make it. Got ran over by a car….But I survived. “Go to the movies. That was usually a Saturday afternoon occasion there. We’d…go to the movie and get a sack of popcorn [and] candy bar, I think, for a quarter. The whole works. A little different than now.”

Don Reynoldson “We went to dances. They always had wedding dances every Saturday night and it was open to the public so you went to wedding dances. [Marvin and I] met, I think, through that. And I only lived four miles west of here so we seen each other quite often. And then after graduation I went to work in Omaha and we started dating down there when he’d come down there and he was trucking at that time besides farming and that’s kind of how we met.”

Norma Jane Classen

“The days that we had [the threshing crews], for me as a girl, you worked hard, providing, getting the food ready. Most of the time you killed the chicken that morning because you couldn’t keep…without refrigeration. And you actually fried chicken and fried chicken and fried chicken… You fixed everything from scratch. There was no nice convenience foods like we have now. But everybody has a job and with the neighbors you just went from farm to farm, the whole crew. Everybody. That meant the LOYAL DOESCHOT kids went, too. The women didn’t go to the next farm. They provided the food without the neighbors helping. But for my brothers, they went right along with everybody, pitching in, driving the horses or whatever.”

“Back then, everybody was your neighbor.”

Phyllis Tooker “My dad…was active in church. He would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and go start the wood fire or coal fire in our parish, which was

CHAPTER THREE | COMMUNITY LIFE

Salem Lutheran Church, and then go home and milk his cows. And then him and mom, who was the organist at the church, would come back and participate in catechism and then the service…There was about 60 families…It was a big church…That was our social life: the church and the school. I went to Salem Lutheran School up until I was an eighth grader. Then the teacher left and the congregation kept getting smaller and smaller.”

Linda Schaben

“My mother was quite active. She belonged to the Women’s Auxiliary in Eustis and she also belonged to the Lutheran Ladies’ Aid. And very active…cleaned the church, played the music. We went to catechism at the school an hour every morning before school started. And that was five days a week. And then we would go [to] the church on Saturday and have an hour of catechism. And then on Sunday before the service started, we had an hour. So it was seven days a week of religion—Lutheran religion, Missouri Synod.”

Linda Schaben

“Back then we did have a telephone, but it was a party line. And my dad got caught in a cave-in. He was digging in the backyard in the cave part, and it caved in on him and pinned him. My mother went to the phone, called the operator and said I need help. Operator put out an all call—there was a certain ring that she would give. Everybody who picked it up instantly came to help. You helped each other. You had to, to survive.”

Phyllis Tooker

“The phone came in in the 1950s….And it was a party line. And there was probably five or six people on that line and you couldn’t use it if somebody was talking, but you sure could listen to their conversation. And then if you were in an emergency, you could ask them to hang up ‘cause you had an emergency thing to do. It was quite interesting. (laughs)”

Linda Schaben

“Way back when I was young, of course, our telephones weren’t quite the same. You used to have the old party line when you heard everybody’s ring. So if somebody else’s ring went, you’d kind of quietly pick up the COMMUNITY LIFE | CHAPTER THREE

receiver and see what they had to say. You heard a lot of news that way that you don’t get these days. Now it has to be done on Facebook or whatever. That was one thing. And a central [operator] sat in town and she ringed up whoever you needed and you didn’t really have to know numbers. You said a name and she could figure out how to call those people. That’s interesting to me. Same way with neighborliness.”

Carole Doeschot

“Back then, everybody was your neighbor. You knew somebody five miles away; they didn’t change. You knew him by name or by sight and the closer ones you visited. They did a lot of visiting; there was no TV and very little radios, all battery radio, no electricity, and so they did a lot of visiting. Whereas today you have people moving in and out from the city and our area where you don’t know them personally at all. “The electricity and the different ways of communicating, you just don’t have that any more. It’s changed. As you get further away from the city, you tend to be more back like we were, which I think is a good thing. It would be nice if it was that way here, but times have changed and it isn’t.”

Loyal Doeschot

“I can remember two grocery stores [in Firth, Nebraska]. At one time I think there was three and now there’s none. They have quick shops. We had a barber, we had a hatchery where you could go get your baby chicks. We had a pool hall that I never went into, and we had the drugstore. And when televisions first came out, we actually had a television store or someone who had a television [in] his store window, and you could watch the snow, which is about all you could see on it. “We had a bank and we had a lumberyard. I remember they had some toys in the lumberyard and when we lived in town, my folks told me I could go down to the lumberyard one day and pick something up. And I had a doll that had a pram that I pushed home so proudly. “That was the kind of things we had. As far as the size of Firth, it hasn’t grown a whole lot over the years, but it has changed because I know virtually nobody.”

Carole Doeschot

“Back when we were going to school there [in Crawford, Nebraska], it was pretty close to Fort Robinson, which was an active fort….There were just multiple businesses in Crawford that went [away]. And over time

CHAPTER THREE | COMMUNITY LIFE

there, like small churches and what have you there, they have just about dried up, you know. Just a wide spot in the road now. “They had an opportunity to get the Chadron Teachers College there in Crawford. But the city fathers, they came down and that was too close to Fort Robinson for a very good mix, so they turned that down. So that went to Chadron. But over the years,…it just doesn’t bear any resemblance to what it was at that time.”

Don Reynoldson

COMMUNITY LIFE | CHAPTER THREE

Nebraska experienced its worst drought of the 20th century in the summer of 1936, when rainfall statewide averaged just over 4 inches from June through August. Image credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Martha Shulski, Nebraska State Climatologist and Director, Nebraska State Climate Office

Summers of sustained high temperatures added to Nebraskansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; miseries in the 1930s. The average high temperature in 1936 reached nearly 77 degrees, compared to an average high of 71.7 degrees during summer months throughout the 20th century. Image credit: Image credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Martha Shulski, Nebraska State Climatologist and Director, Nebraska State Climate Office

SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Farmers have always been gamblers. They plant crops or invest in livestock. Then they wait for rain to come at the right times and hope predators don’t kill their newborn calves. They watch the skies for funnel clouds and keep an eye out for unexpected animal or plant diseases that could reduce or destroy the year’s production. Modern irrigation systems, seeds engineered to withstand drought, and sophisticated, data-based farming and animal husbandry practices have evened the odds for farmers gambling against weather and destructive pests. But the gamble isn’t always against Mother Nature. Sometimes man-made threats pose dangers, like the stock market crash in 1929 that led to the Great Depression, World War II, international developments that affected commodity exports, and double-digit interest rates that forced some farmers off their land in the 1980s. In Nebraska, and across much of the Great Plains, though, the Great Depression coincided with a natural disaster, causing much of the region to suffer economically throughout the 1930s as unprecedented drought plagued the region. Many areas of the state experienced record-high summer temperatures and record-low rainfall year after year throughout that decade. In North Loup, for example, where the Zangger family lives, 1934 was the driest year on record, receiving just over 12.5 inches of rain that year, about half of the long-term average of 24.16 inches. Statewide, 1936 marked the state’s worst drought in the 20th century. Persistent dust storms through the region gave rise to the term Dust Bowl to describe prevailing conditions, famously documented by novelist John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Farmers’ migration to California in those Depression and Dust Bowl years hastened a decline in the nation’s rural population that had been underway since the earliest years of the 20th century. The 1910 U.S. census recorded that 54.2 percent of Americans lived in rural areas, a proportion that dropped to 19.3 percent by 2010. The farmers interviewed for the Pioneer Farms Oral History Project represent families who stayed. To them, coping with and surviving farming’s travails--whether natural or man-made—are just part of the price they pay for living the life they love.

SURVIVING HARD TIMES | CHAPTER FOUR

“My mother told me that [during the Dust Bowl years] she would wet bedsheets and put them over the windows and doors to keep the dirt out of the house. They lived in a wood-framed house, and the windows were not as tight as they should be.”

Linda Schaben “There was dry years before the ‘30s, but that’s the one everyone remembers and there’d be banks, dirt banks like snow banks behind them and dirt mounds…. “They [my parents] often talked about people that lost farms because they owed six hundred or eight hundred dollars on it and they couldn’t even raise that much because there was no way to make money, that they ended up just to lose it. So that was instilled in you pretty strongly. “I can remember, not ’36 of course [he was born in 1936], but I remember a lot of the talk about it that there was no crop, but they had enough to make feed for the horses and cattle. They went out with a binder and cut it and chopped it, but there was no grain.”

Loyal Doeschot

“As a little kid in the ‘30s we were poor. I didn’t know we were poor because I was never hungry. We raised chickens, we raised a garden, we irrigated it, we canned everything. We didn’t have electricity so we didn’t have a freezer, so it had to be canned if we were going to preserve it. Or we put potatoes in the cave to keep them over winter so they wouldn’t freeze but they wouldn’t grow, and then we’d take them out and cook them, peel them and that type of thing. We raised everything…. “[My mother] had purebred White Rock chickens. She sold roosters and eggs all over the country and that’s the other thing that brought them out of the ‘30s so that they could afford to buy a farm…. “Yes, we had some tough times, but as I said, we didn’t know we were poor. Everybody was in the same boat. You didn’t have new clothes. Maybe a new dress now and then, but you might have had to make it. Shoes were a priority because that doesn’t grow on trees….But mostly we were healthy and you couldn’t have had better food than we had.”

Phyllis Tooker

“This country went through a horrible dry time and the wind blowing and everything else in the ‘30s. And then we had another extremely dry period in the ‘50s, and then we just ended a couple years ago, another

CHAPTER FOUR | SURVIVING HARD TIMES

extremely dry period out here. And what I’ve seen is that we’ve been depleting the organic matter. We need to grow—and this is what my oldest son, his main bane is rebuilding these soils—we need to focus more on this area, and everywhere, on cover crops and on rotations that actually do help build the soil.”

Chuck Zangger

“[During World War II] everything was rationed. You didn’t go to the kitchen and make fudge or anything like that because you didn’t have the sugar. Sugar was rationed. Gas was rationed. So to get to school, I was still in elementary, the one-room school, the neighbors a mile away on the way….they could pick up the neighbors’ kids. We had the Model A and my brothers would drive them over there, drop me off early in the morning, pick up their two kids and drive to town to the high school. They combined their ration stamps so that they could buy enough gas to get the kids to school. Those were the things you did without. “We had no electricity yet because…about that time right after the war, they would put in power lines if everybody would sign along that line that they would take it. We had one neighbor that wouldn’t sign so we couldn’t get it until after the war was over. Then we finally got electricity.”

Phyllis Tooker

“World War II took a lot of the young people and the workforce was less. There was rationing. You couldn’t buy tires without a coupon and you could only buy so much gas. Groceries were rationed, sugar and whatnot you could not get and so it put a whole different slant on things. But a lot of times back then they had steel-wheel tractors, so with cars and that, you couldn’t drive very long distances. You were pretty much confined during World War II. “The prices were not so bad because of the need for the products it was raising and the years weren’t that bad. Dry weather was nothing like the ‘30s. They had pretty good crops actually, I think, and after World War II it was a good time for a while. Things changed quite rapidly after that. That’s when a lot of the guys came back and a lot of the innovation that went into producing things for World War II became into the mainstream of life, and they just changed a lot of the way things were done and the implements that was used, and so that’s when modernization really started to take off.”

Loyal Doeschot SURVIVING HARD TIMES | CHAPTER FOUR

“[In the 1980s] interest rate was about 18 percent, 18 to 20 percent and inflation was just going up. It started in the ‘70s, and inflation would go up five to seven to eight percent a year or 10 percent. They said ‘buy now’ because next year is going to be a lot higher, I can remember that. ‘Buy now.’ You better be buying because this is going to get more expensive, and so it did….Land back then, it got to a thousand dollars an acre to twelve hundred dollars an acre was an extreme price. “Then the early ‘80s hit. To be able to pay off your mortgage became really tough because it really wasn’t a drought. It’s just that the economy changed so fast that the prices were low on the farm side where you couldn’t raise the money to pay off even that type of land….Some had to consolidate. They sold off part of LINDA SCHABEN it. They maintained the rest....Some just plain lost their ground because they said they’d give it up and start over. So that was because of rapid inflation and high interest rate….It didn’t affect the city economy…. “All of my parents’ discussing the ‘30s over and over, I was always cautious…but then as the ‘80s progressed, it became a very good thing. So, long about late ‘80s, land price is on the way back down, that’s when I ended up buying most of my ground, in the late ‘80s, mid-‘80s to the late ‘80s.”

“We have faith that God will take care of the farmers because they’re the souls of this earth.”

Loyal Doeschot

“You had land payments to make and you were afraid you weren’t going to make them. You didn’t do a lot of things. You stayed home or you met with friends and we’d go to the park just for the kids to play because you didn’t have the money to go sit in the bar or sit in the restaurant and go out and eat, so that was entertainment at the time. And that was in the ‘80s.”

Norma Jane Classen

“We went through that [the 1980s farm crisis]. It wasn’t funny. My husband was an over-the-road trucker and we farmed and he trucked and we kept the farm together. And the banks were selling everybody out at

CHAPTER FOUR | SURVIVING HARD TIMES

that time. It was really tough but we worked at it. We raised three children and they all went to college. It was hard but we made it. We did it and we appreciate everything we done and we appreciate our children for helping us and working with us to get down the road. But the drought hasn’t helped and people are in debt again…and here we go again. Farm prices at rock bottom and we don’t know where this is going to end, but we have faith that God will take care of the farmers because they’re the souls of this earth.”

Linda Schaben

SURVIVING HARD TIMES | CHAPTER FOUR

1929 farm sale bill. Image courtesy of Marvin and Norma Jane Classen.

REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

At one level, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a certain timelessness to farming. Put seeds in the ground. Water them. Wait. Harvest. And do it all over again next year. So it has been for millennia. But also for millennia, the one constant in farming has been change. The pace of change accelerated in the 20th century, but it did not start then. Seeds and livestock themselves have changed from the beginning of agriculture as has the technology used to plant, nurture and harvest them. Farmers interviewed for the Pioneer Farms Oral History Project identified changes in land stewardship practices, increasing mechanization and sophistication of farm equipment, and expanded irrigation as key factors that had the most dramatic impact during their farming lifetimes. Those changes, in turn, influenced and were influenced by the steadily declining farm population. The men and women interviewed clearly expect the evolution of their industry to continue. But they wonder sometimes about the future of their farms, the land they hope will stay in the family, linking tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s generations with today and yesterday.

REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE | CHAPTER FIVE

No one could live on 160 acres. You had to have more land….The young people just left. They couldn’t farm because there wasn’t enough money available. Maybe if there was only one or two farms, or maybe one child, yeah, maybe he would pull up and farm from his dad. But if you had more than one child, then the children left. And so all my cousins—they left. They lived all over wherever there were jobs. On both sides of the family. And I just seemed to be the one that stayed home.”

Linda Schaben

“Each time you work the soil, you lost more moisture. In our particular case, our moisture is usually our biggest detriment to our yield…Every time you went to the field, you lose half inch, three-quarters of an inch of moisture. Now, with no-till, you don’t lose all that moisture. Once a crop is up and you’re going to till it, instead of spraying, you tilled it, you’re going through there, you open the ground up. You cut roots and you trim the roots off…and dry the ground out. The new practice [notill] that seemed very odd when it’s first come out, it has been a real boon to our yield in this area.”

Loyal Doeschot

“[No-till fields] looks terrible, but I’m glad when the crops come up so I don’t have to see it.”

Margaret Graff

“From an economical standpoint, there is less diesel use [with notill], less equipment wear and tear because we used to have to disk and then field cultivate and then disk again, so there are a lot of man hours. Of course, the other side of that is to control the weeds, you are using herbicides, and we are always looking for the safest herbicides we can use and herbicides that aren’t going to go down the river because you want to be a good steward. But there are definite advantages from a water standpoint. There is all those decaying roots from the previous crops [that] create capillaries for all of that rainwater to make it into the soil so that then the new growing crop will be able to take advantage of that moisture. “The next thing, and I haven’t had time to talk to my dad [Bob Graff] about this, but the next wave or idea is the cover crop or companion crop where you are growing, kind of going back to old school where you have clover to help bring in nitrogen-fixing plants or using radishes

CHAPTER FIVE | REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

to help break up those hard pans that might still be there from the old disks, that haven’t been on the field in over 15 years. A way to keep that soil working organic growing things, not just when there is crop growing but more over the year to help raise that organic matter and provide a better home for those seeds of the crop that you are looking for.”

Tim Graff

“Everything evolves.”

Bob Graff

“Farming practices have changed so much. At my age, when we got to the farm, when I was in second grade, my dad still farmed some with horses and her [Marilyn Kester’s] dad did, too. But it didn’t last much after that and then they started buying tractors. And I’m old enough, I still remember seeing the first self-propelled combine….It’s unbelievable. And then the way they take care of cattle. You can take care of 100 cows with so much less labor than you used to because of pickups that unroll bales and—and just unbelievable improvements. I hope they’re improvements. I’m not really sure.

Edward Kester

“The Sandhills look better now than they did, I mean when I was a child, because I remember a lot of blowing dust, and through not only technology but just different things, you know, the university and common sense told you to… not over graze. Only take half, leave half, you know, and your grass is going to come back next year. It wasn’t always technology, but it was just common sense and smaller pastures. “That technology is great, but CHUCK ZANGGER just the common sense of making smaller pastures, doing some rotation, letting the grass rest. You know, the university promoted it, there’s grazing associations who promoted it, and I can’t say that everybody’s doing it, but a lot of it is…. “But technology has changed a lot. And weather projections used

“Observe and appreciate what you’re doing, if you’re in farming.”

REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE | CHAPTER FIVE

to be, you know, you’d see a cloud coming up. Well, it’s going to rain. Well, you didn’t know if it was a tornado or not. I mean the first few tornados I saw when I came back, got married, lived in a double-wide trailer house, which wasn’t good for tornados, but I saw a few. And with it there’s no sirens. I mean, not out in the country, there was no weather radio. Weather radio we didn’t have until probably the mid‘70s or late’70s. And you’re pretty much on your own.”

Tom Hansen

“In my dad’s case there, he started from absolutely nothing. And in my case there, we had, we inherited what he’d accomplished, you might say, throughout a lifetime and expanded upon that, which was luck on our part. So the places have gotten bigger and the people are fewer in that part of the state. So each generation there has it better than the one before them in certain areas there. People say, ‘what’s been the most significant change there that you’ve witnessed?’ and the answer to the question, I’d have to say, is the electricity. And how dependent that we are on electricity for almost everything. And if you can imagine living without that…It’s a little different.”

Don Reynoldson

“Life on the farm is different now with everything mechanized and everything…You can farm much more if you’ve got 12-row equipment than you can when you’ve got two- to four-row equipment that we had back in those days. And horses. Horses were not very reliable. You had to catch them half the time.”

Phyllis Tooker

“Technology has changed a lot since we started farming. The chemicals and everything else, the herbicides and the breeding of the corns and beans, it’s just changed a lot. It was mainly the last few years, since about 1990, it’s really changed since then….The yields have gone up considerably since the different change has come….We went from 40 to 50 bushel corn [per acre] to couple hundred bushel corn, and beans are about the same way. They went from 30 bushel to 50-60 bushel beans, and it just made a lot of difference.”

Marvin Classen

CHAPTER FIVE | REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

“I don’t even get in the tractors hardly any more except to move them around in the last three years because they’ve gone to these satellite systems. Although they’re not that complicated to operate,…they’re complicated enough that I feel uncomfortable doing it. Anyway, that’s kept me out of the tractors. “And these are very good things. I can’t see anything that’s been developed in the last few years for farming that’s not really advantageous, and excellent in order to grow more food and be more efficient with our resources, that’s the main thing. “We’ve cut, just in tractors alone, the tractors we’re using now to plant use a third or 60 percent less fuel than the tractors I used 30 years ago. And that’s quite a savings. You know, I don’t think cars are going that well.”

Chuck Zangger

“We didn’t irrigate years ago, and now we irrigate a lot, and when our three older boys we irrigated with gated pipe, 10-inch pipe, 30 feet long, and every spring they’d lay six miles of pipe. And it’s a lot of work, and now we have underground pipe going in the middle of quarter sections and we have center pivots….We don’t use pipe any more. It’s all center pivots. And we can water a lot more acres because you don’t waste as much water and stuff. And there’s a lot of stuff that’s big improvements, but the prices of machinery—I don’t know how farmers do it.”

Edward Kester

“It was all dryland up until 1958, when the neighbors had started putting in irrigation and my dad said—we had just gone through a drought—and my dad said go borrow the money and put up an irrigation well, and that was in 1958. He worked at it. He irrigated corn and he irrigated soybeans. And I guess that’s what helped us make a living. And when my parents died, they still owed $2,500 on that irrigation well. And when I inherited the farm, I paid it off. And that was in 1981.”

Linda Schaben

“With seven billion people on the Earth, this ground is going to be important and even more important will be the water. I’m sure you have heard people talk about that, too. We may be looking at a complete overhaul of the agriculture industry to be able to support this many people on the planet. But that is where 200 bushel of corn [per acre] REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE | CHAPTER FIVE

comes into play. This is where they will move it to 300 bushel. And they will probably move the irrigated to 500. We don’t know what things will look like in 20, 30 years, but we do know there will be more people wanting more food…. “With irrigation you’re kind of guaranteeing that that crop will have water, that it will have the resources to meet its fullest potential. So that means you can plant more seeds per acre and then if they aren’t as stressed because it didn’t have enough water when it needed it, then it will produce the most that that plant can produce. “With dryland situation, you are just at the mercy of when the rain comes in and if you happen to miss a rain by a couple weeks and that corn plant shuts down, there is no coming out of it. But newer varieties of corn can weather these dry events and still produce a pretty decent crop. Milo, grain sorghum, on the other hand, when it runs into a dry spell it will kind of just shut down and go dormant till it does get a little bit of rain, and then it says, OK, I can keep growing again. And then it will produce a crop. Unfortunately, it is a warm season crop, and if it doesn’t quite mature before hard killing freeze, then you don’t grain. So there is trade-off with the two different crops.”

“We may be looking at a complete overhaul of the agriculture industry to be able to support this many people on the planet.”

Tim Graff

“If you want to believe the people that look into their crystal ball, some people are saying with robotics we will be able to have small tractors with four-row planters and you will just have a small fleet of tractors that you just turn loose in a field and it plants that field and says ‘where to next?’ in its little computer voice. And that way farming could go planting 24 hours a day until the planting is done. With a lighter tractor and lower horsepower, presumably less fuel use, less imprint, less [soil] compaction. People say crazy things and you think, ‘oh, that will never happen.’ But who would believe that tractors, I have a tractor that can drive itself, but I’m in the cab with it. And that takes a lot of stress away, and you can put in a better day and monitor what is going on while you are planting or harvesting or spraying, much

TIM GRAFF

CHAPTER FIVE | REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

better than you could with just following the last imprint of that mark you made in the soil and hope you have straight rows.”

Tim Graff “How will it evolve? I think you’ll see more and more mechanization, what I’m seeing now is a movement back…you know, there’s only so much horsepower you can use, and there’s only so much satellite getting me perfectly straight [rows]. You can’t be straighter than straight, right? So if you’ve obtained straightness, can you get more straightness? No, see? So that technology…it has a finite limit. “Well, the study of the soil and the interaction of the plants in the soil is infinite, because it’s genetic. So you have constant changing…. So I see what really is going to happen is that technology is going to transfer most of its energy into what we can’t see, underneath the soil and to the root, how the root absorbs the nutrients. What is the most efficient way the nutrient is to be absorbed? What state that nutrient should be in to be absorbed? What we can do to advance the health of the root, absorb the nutrients, and be more efficient. This is where the work is going to be done. And I see it starting to be done now, and that’s the area that has been really lacking.”

Chuck Zangger

“You know, some things don’t change. Windmills don’t change. Windmill technology doesn’t really change….Genetically I think there’s some improvement still on cattle. I mean, certainly we haven’t hit the end of that change. So cattle will be different….some people are raising goats. I mean, we may be raising goats because goats and cattle can graze in the same pasture, and they don’t run each other out because they eat something different. Goats eat weeds; cattle eat grass. So there may be some of that increasing. “Horses versus four-wheelers. You know, there’s more and more people using four-wheelers rather than horses. But there’s still, and yet we have more horses now than we did in 1950. (laughs) But they’re pleasure horses. Weekend horses. That’s where people get hurt. But things certainly will change. Don’t know exactly what.”

Tom Hansen

“As far as who’s going to be farming, it’s a good question because I can see the next generation not wanting to do what we’ve done, very REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE | CHAPTER FIVE

few. There are some that will stay on the farm, but as I look around to the people there farming, some have sons that will take it up, but there’s a lot of them that don’t have sons that are going to take it up. I don’t know who will be farming it.”

Carole Doeschot

“There’s no way to get into farming if your dad isn’t a farmer to get you started. There’s just no way you can have that outlay because it’s getting to be a real select community that way. To start farming would be astronomical and to get enough acres to sustain yourself. So, as to who’s going to buy this ground of all these older farmers that I consider older, I often wondered about that. It’s been the one question I pondered over the years. What’s going to happen? That I think about.”

Loyal Doeschot

“I say to young men or women that they should first, if they want to go into farming, marry some banker’s child. (laughs)….You know, I think the first thing you need is a very good, solid education in some area of agriculture….And then find somebody that’s got a lot of money. Because it’s going to take a lot. (laughs)….Just get a good education. And look at what you’re doing. Watch what you’re doing. I mean, observe and appreciate, I should say. Observe and appreciate what you’re doing, if you’re in farming….Just stand out there and communicate with the corn.”

Chuck Zangger

“None of our kids farm, but they’re all smart and they know the farms….And we have six grandsons. None of them want to farm. Three granddaughters and now great-grandkids, so I don’t know what they’ll want to do…. “It all goes to our family. We just intend on every acre going to them….The kids will figure out what to do with it…I can’t picture them selling it, but you never know….I look at it as if our grandkids and great-grandkids, if they do like it they should and hang on to it, they can, a lot of generations can earn a living off of it because it can support a lot of generations, and I think they will.”

Edward Kester

CHAPTER FIVE | REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

“I guess the work ethic on the farm was probably worth it all. Five of the six [Classen sons] are farming now and they enjoy it. So it’s good.”

Norma Jane Classen

“None of our kids was all that interested in going back to the farm and ranch, but they don’t want to see us sell it either. So I guess we’ll hang on to it as long as we can.”

Don Reynoldson

“I miss the serenity of the pine trees with the wind blowing through it. It’s just a sing-song sound. I miss it. I have to go up to the homestead every once and awhile and just listen to wind blow through those pine trees….But it’s the quietness and being on God’s land. It is God’s land. The Lord gave it to the farmers here in America to make what they could of it, the freedom and liberty we have…We are hoping we can keep the farm for our children and grandchildren. There’s no promise to that. We’ll just have to wait and see in this day and age.”

Linda Schaben

REFLECTING ON THE PAST, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE | CHAPTER FIVE

OH, NEBRASKA Susan Werner wrote this song while on tour in Nebraska in 2015. Oh, Nebraska How I love you How I love your windswept skies And your prairies Winding rivers And the western hills that rise High above the plains Somewhere in the distance I can hear a train singing Oh, Nebraska My true love I am never leaving you again. Land of kindness Land of plenty Land of peaceful dreams at night Stars that fill the dark I can hear the calling of a meadowlark singing Oh, Nebraska My true love I am never leaving you â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Til the day my days are through I am never leaving you again. ÂŠ Susan Werner (Frank Chance Music, ASCAP)

O PIONEERS!

A song from CATHERLAND the Musical

CATHERLAND centers on the journey of Susan, a Chicago novelist, and her husband Jeffrey, a native of Red Cloud, Nebraska. The two have made a decision to move to Nebraska to start a family and find a simpler life. Susan is hesitant, but as she leans into the beauty of her surroundings, her mind begins to change. Susan has just met their new landlord and town physician, Dr. Delmar Dittmar. Upon his exit, Susan reaches out to Jeffrey with this hopeful song about where their lives are going. SUSAN That old man’s a weirdo, But I think that he’s kind, And the prairie’s a playground, Spun gold out our window. I get hung up in ways, That doors close in my mind, Sometimes I think maybe, I just need to walk in, though... Sun›s gonna shine, Warm up my bones, And bring me to life. I am ready! Stars intertwine, Light up the sky, And show me the way. Feeling heady, Let go of fears, O Pioneers! JEFFREY When you’re a kid on the plains, all you want is “away,” Think about who you’ll be, When you are finally someone. Red Cloud›s a place, Where you visit, not stay. But you are my home, And we›re in for the long run. With you by my side,

I wake up each day, Looking forward to life. Exploration! We›ll be just fine, And raise up a glass, Out in the tall grass. Celebration. SUSAN Live out our years... JEFFREY O Pioneers! And in the summertime, When the moon is high, And the lightning bugs, Fill the nighttime sky. Do you know what I›m going to do? SUSAN What? JEFFREY I’ll fall in love with you, All over again. Over and over again. Over and over again. SUSAN Sun’s gonna shine, Warm up my bones, And bring me to life. I am ready! Stars intertwine, Light up the sky, And show me the way, I’ll like it here... JEFFREY You’ll like it here. BOTH O Pioneers! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh. ©2017 lyrics by Becky Boesen, ASCAP, music by David von Kampen, ASCAP

STUDENTS’ REFLECTIONS Some, but not all, of the students who participated in the Pioneer Farms Oral History Project themselves came from farming backgrounds. But none of them ever had conducted an oral history interview. At the end of the project, they shared observations about their experiences. Here are some of their comments:

“A number of people associate a family farm with the traditional picture of a husband and wife holding a pitchfork. The reality is that most family farms are much more complex than that and are very modern.” “I was surprised on the amount of information that my grandpa had to share and the great detail that he told. At times I felt like I was actually back in time, growing up with him.” “Family farms are a way of living, not a job, not a career, but a lifestyle. Family farms make up tight-knit communities in Nebraska, and I want to continue to build them.” “Family farms are the most frustrating, memorable, fulfilling, heartbreaking, satisfying, and loving places to work, love, grow, and learn. Family farms and agriculture are the backbone of this country and are what have helped make the U.S. such a powerful presence within the global economy. There are many facets to family farms that are both frustrating and beautiful. However, I wouldn’t trade my ag background for anything, and one would be hard-pressed to find another farm kid who felt any different.”

ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS Becky Boesen is the recipient of three Mayor’s Arts Awards in Lincoln,

Nebraska, and has been an artist in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and KANEKO. She received an Individual Playwright of Merit Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council and is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Women’s and Gender Studies 2017 Melba Cope Community Associate. Her work is frequently commissioned and has garnered awards from prominent organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts. Boesen’s produced works include “Bullet,” “In My Daughter’s Name,” and “What the Wind Taught Me.” She has also written two musicals with composer David von Kampen: “Catherland” and “Puddin’ and the Grumble,” a 2017 Richard Rodgers Award finalist that premiered at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. She is a proud member of ASCAP and the Dramatists’ Guild of America.

Dr. Deepak Keshwani is an associate professor of biological systems

engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Originally from India, Keshwani came to the U.S. in 1993 to pursue a college degree at UNL. A mentor pointed him, while an undergraduate, to a career in research and teaching. After receiving his Ph.D. in biological and agricultural engineering from North Carolina State University, Keshwani returned to UNL as a faculty member. His research interests are modeling biological systems and student success in higher education. He provides leadership to his department’s undergraduate teaching and advising mission and teaches courses ranging from first-year through graduate level. He also coordinates the Justin Smith Morrill Scholars, a campuswide co-curricular student program focused on civic engagement and critical societal issues in food, agriculture, and natural resource systems.

Dr. Mary Kay Quinlan is associate dean and associate professor of

journalism at the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications. A Nebraska native and UNL graduate, she worked as a Washington correspondent for the Omaha World-Herald and Gannett News Service and served as president of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Quinlan is editor of the Oral History Association Newsletter and is coauthor of numerous oral history books, including The Oral History Manual, Community Oral History Toolkit, and The American Indian Oral History Manual: Making Many Voices Heard. Quinlan has taught oral history classes at UNL and Wesleyan University and frequently presents oral history workshops. She holds a B.A. with high distinction from UNL and an M.A. in journalism and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland.

Petra Wahlqvist is a project creator, educator, and producer. She most

recently served as the education and community engagement director at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. While at the Lied, she won six consecutive grant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts for interdisciplinary and/or community outreach programs in the arts. Recent high-profile projects include work with artists such as the Actorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Gang, STREB, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Pilobolus, as well as multiple extensive Arts Across Nebraska tours. Wahlqvist teaches in the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film at UNL. She is the co-founder and CEO of BLIXT (www.blixt.space). Before moving to Lincoln, Wahlqvist worked as an actress on multiple international tours and as a performing arts specialist and mentor with Artis, a performing arts education company in London, UK.

DOZENS OF PEOPLE PLAYED A ROLE IN MAKING THIS PROJECT POSSIBLE. THEY ARE: INSTRUCTORS:

DEEPAK KESHWANI MARY KAY QUINLAN BECKY BOESEN PETRA WAHLQVIST

STUDENTS:

MADELINE CHRISTENSEN KELSEY CONNELLY BRYCE DOESCHOT KELLI GREEN SCOTT JENKINS TANNER NELSON RACHEL NOE RACHEL ROSINSKI DEBORAH SCHABEN GARRETT TOOKER

INTERVIEWEES:

MARVIN AND NORMA JANE CLASSEN LOYAL AND CAROLE DOESCHOT BOB, MARGARET AND TIM GRAFF TOM HANSEN EDWARD AND MARILYN KESTER HOWARD NELSON DON AND DELILA REYNOLDSON LINDA SCHABEN PHYLLIS TOOKER CHUCK ZANGGER

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN PARTNERS:

RURAL FUTURES INSTITUTE (RFI) THE LIED CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES THE COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES

COMMUNITY PARTNERS:

NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEBRASKA ARTS COUNCIL AND NEBRASKA CULTURAL ENDOWMENT FRIENDS OF LIED SINGER SONGWRITER SUSAN WERNER (PART OF THE LIED CENTER’S ARTS ACROSS NEBRASKA PROGRAM 2014-15) TRINA HAMLIN AND NATALIA ZUKERMAN BECKY BOESEN AND DAVID VON KAMPEN (WRITING TEAM OF CATHERLAND) CAST AND CREW OF CATHERLAND (PART OF THE LIED CENTER’S ARTS ACROSS NEBRASKA PROGRAM 2015-16) THE MIDWEST THEATRE, SCOTTSBLUFF (SITE FOR SOMETHING TO BE SAID PROJECT IN SPRING 2015) THE GOLDEN HUSK, ORD (SITE FOR SOMETHING TO BE SAID PROJECT IN SPRING 2015) HOMESTEAD NATIONAL MONUMENT OF AMERICA, BEATRICE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS