FAMILY HOMESTEAD
Although I know it will be difficult to make it interesting, I'm going to try to describe the homestead where I was born and where we lived until I finished the eighth grade. The looks of the old place, the lay of the land, the location and nature of the buildings, and the adjoining lands are clearly printed in my mind--but are not completely shown in any photographs. I am including a couple photographs showing something about the house and yard.
As I told in another chapter, Dad and Mom came out to Montana in l9l3, and settled on a plot of 320 acres, the maximum amount of land allowed under the Homestead Act, if the homesteader wanted to retain mineral rights. The agreement with the government was that they would build a liveable house, and live on the land at least six months of each year for five years. Then they would be given title to the land.
The land they chose lay in a fairly broad coulee through which ran Black Creek. This stream (a stream only in spring or after a cloudburst!) ran roughly north and south, though it wound around a lot. Ultimately, about six miles directly south of the homestead, it joined another small creek, and together they emptied into Milk River, maybe ten miles (straight miles, as a crow might fly) south of us. North of our place, the creek and its coulee ran another ten miles or so, originating in the Laundry Hills, a range of hills named after a man who had ranched there in very early years.
The creek ran diagonally through our land, entering at a point about three quarters of a mile north of the house, winding around a bit, and then running out at a point about one hundred yards east of the house. The land, which our Dad fenced right away (that was another requirement of homesteading), was in a big rectangle, a mile long north and south, and half a mile wide east and west. Our house and the other buildings were located in the southwest corner of the land. A good share of the land was covered with sagebrush--the little low variety which grows about a foot or two high. The rest of the place originally had buffalo grass or wild bunch grass on it. Along the creek wild rose bushes grew in big thickets. There was only one "tree" on the place--a skinny little diamond willow, maybe eight feet tall, with just a few branches.
Oh, I forgot to mention the rocks! A part of the land was literally covered with a sort of gravel and cobble mixture, although the bottom of the coulee had few rocks, but was covered with a heavy clay gumbo soil. I understand from my scanty knowledge of geology that the land had once been covered by a glacier which had left long ridges of rocks and gravel when it melted. One of those ridges was on our land. Beneath the topsoil and gravel deposits lay hard yellow sand, I don’t know how thick.The hills to the west of our fence line, and one fairly large hill just east of the house, were also glacial deposits of rocks and sand. Some boulders were quite large. We never lacked rocks to throw!
We actually used additional land, whether rented, or just loaned to us, I'm not sure. Just west of our house there was a fenced pasture of about l60 acres which I think belonged to our neighbor to the south, John Goodmanson. We used that pasture for our horses a good share of the time, and sometimes for the milk cows. Then to the north was strip about 2 miles wide, beyond the fenced portions of our land, and running several miles to the east, was what we called ‘open range.’ That is, it was land once farmed by earlier homesteaders, but relinquished for some reason or other. There were no fences remaining, just a few old homesteaders’ shacks here and there. Thus our cows and horses, when not confined to our pasture land, could wander off to their hearts' content, going about 12 miles east and then north clear to Canada, without finding a fence. It offered great possibilities for wandering, but a nice free addition to the needed pasture for the live stock. We were glad to have it available.
Now--the buildings. The original homestead
building was a "shack" about 14'x 16', built to comply with the government ruling that homesteaders must build a dwelling on the land chosen, and live there at least six months of the year for five years, before getting clear title to the land. The building was of very simple frame construction, with absolutely no insulation to keep out the cold. In preparation for winter, an outer covering of tar paper was nailed on, to keep the wind from blowing through. Hence the common name "tar paper shack." Early on Dad added a kitchen, about 10'x 12', in which was located the wood-burning cook stove, table and benches for eating, cupboards, a wash stand, and a trap door giving access to the cellar.
The two rooms had no concrete foundations, but rested on rocks embedded in the soil. The cellar was deep enough that it only rarely allowed frost to get to the canned vegetables, fruit, and raw vegetables stored there. In the spring of the year, Dad also used the cellar as the location for the incubator in which we hatched out dozens of little chicks.
Kitchen added; clothes line, turkeys, sister Mary When I was about three or four years old, Dad bought another homesteader's shack, and with help from neighbors, moved it to our place to attach it to the east side of the house. I can imagine how happy my mother was to have the extra space, as up until then all of us had slept in the original room, which also housed Mother's semi-grand piano, the heating stove, beds and bookcases, etc. The new addition had lots of room, and an attic accessible by stairway. That attic was the bedroom for my brother and me except in the coldest winter weather, when our bed was moved downstairs. More about all this later. The roofs of all three parts of the house were covered with heavy roofing paper over tar paper, and were quite weather proof. Then on the back of the whole structure Dad built a room called the "back room"--small, but helpful, as there was room there for a washing machine, and some storage. This room, which had no heat at all, was also used to store meat, and Mom's great home-made sausage, during the cold winter months. Just outside the "back room" was located a large, round stock tank used for
storing rain water when it was available. Sometimes in the winter it was filled with snow, and provided a deepfreeze for meat.
Directly behind the house, about fifty feet or so, was another very important building--the toilet. Most of our neighbors referred to such buildings as "out-house" or some unprintable title. We were more elegant--it was "toilet" to us. A standard one-holer, with a good tight door, and a few knot holes to give ventilation and some means of seeing what was going on outside, it was a popular place. Discarded mailorder catalogs provided reading material and....(We all hated the "slick" pages! Once in a great while we had the luxury of using apple wrappers from a box of Washington apples.) During warm weather this outdoor facility was no problem, but in the winter time it was a real test of character. Little time was wasted when the frost on the seat might be, and often was, as much as an eighth of an inch thick. Oh, how I hated to have to make that last trip out there before going to bed on a cold night!
Just east of the toilet was our wood pile, which was composed mostly of firewood carefully gathered and hauled home from the woods along Milk River, about ten miles south. But there was also there a modest collection of discards, including, I remember, an old sleigh with fancy curled runners. We never used that sleigh, so far as I know. I don't know how Dad came to have it. Also, of course, we had a chopping block or log, where we chopped up the willow firewood, and a saw horse to hold logs while cutting them with a bucksaw. Dad also had his cold frame right next to the wood pile, at its south edge, used for starting his many tomato, cabbage, and other plants there each spring.
Just a bit east and south of the woodpile was the granary. Compared with granaries on other farms around us, ours was a midget--maybe eight feet square, and only six or eight feet high. It had a good "Dutch" door on its west side, a door which opened in two halves, top and bottom. In the granary were stored such things as oats, shorts and bran (these latter two items were mixed with water to make mash for the chickens), and similar things. There never was very much stored there, as the folks rarely had enough cash to buy very far ahead. Also stored in the granary were old magazines, and sometimes my brother would hide in the granary, to read. He was always a great reader.
On the north side of the granary there was a sort of bench, on which each of us kids had a box for our own collection of "queer stones." We took a lot of interest in watching for special rocks, small pieces of petrified wood, agate, and such. Dad encouraged us to be on the lookout for anything like that. Just to the east of the house, and immediately behind the granary, there rose a fairly sizeable hill--at least it seemed large enough to us kids. It was a glacial deposit, I think, mostly of hard sand with a liberal covering of cobbles and gravel. That hill separated the house from the barn, and was named "Pilot Knob" by my mother, according to my brother, Robert. (My recollection differs here--I thought "Pilot Knob" was the hill to the west of the house. That hill was much higher, and thus better qualified to serve as a landmark.)
Back to the hill between the house and the barn--just behind the granary, and up the hill maybe thirty or forty feet was our smokehouse. This was used for smoking hams and bacon. Dad had built the smokehouse of boards, in a box-like form about three feet square and maybe forty inches high, and covered it with tar paper to keep the smoke in. It had a fairly tight-fitting cover which could be raised to allow us to hang the salted meat on hooks inside, where the smoke would surround it. About twelve feet down the hill from the smoke house was the fire pit. A little trench had been dug from the fire pit to the smoke house, to carry the smoke up to the meat. The trench was covered with slabs of sandstone.
The whole thing worked beautifully--if one of us kept the fire at the right level. We would start a nice little fire in the fire pit, then put on heavy green wood to make a lot of smoke. The fire had to be tended pretty carefully, so that it wouldn't burn too hot, or go out. The meat had to be smoked for quite a few days before it would be completely cured. That smoked ham and bacon was just not to be compared with the hastily cured, unsmoked meats one buys in the stores today. As for the rest of the farm buildings, gardens, and so on, they must wait the next installment.