Plowing, Planting and Harvesting, 1872-1972 • Chapter 12

Chapter 12 • Plowing, Planting and Harvesting 1872-1972

The ground was dug up with a crooked stick until it was loose enough to put the seed in and was covered over with a wooden rake. Next came the oxen, pulling a home made wooden plow to break up the land. This went faster so more land was planted. Then came the walking plow, pulled by two horses and a wooden drag, then came the breaking plow to break up the virgin land. The oxen were driven from both the back and front with a little stick. Haw was left, gee was right, and they knew very well which way to go. Then came the gang plow with two and three plows pulled with four horses, which plowed many acres a day.

The wheat and oats were first sown by broadcasting it by hand across the land. Then it was covered by raking over with the wooden rake. Next come the hand cranked seeder. As you walked and turned the crank, it would broadcast eight feet. The faster you walked, the more ground you seeded.

Cutting grain was done with the cradle, a scythe with fingers to catch the grain and lay in a neat row when cut. Then they came along and tied it into sheaves by hand by taking a large wisp of straw and twisting it into a rope, laid on the ground lengthwise. You put in as much as you could hold by pulling up with ends and twisting it tight around the sheave then twist again and stick both ends under the band. Here you have a sheave or bundle, we called them.

Harvesting tools

Then they were put into a shock, about ten bundles or more to a shock. I helped Dad tie these bundles. Sometimes the binder dropped a loose one as we shocked. We would tie these loose ones like this, all butts were put to the ground, and these shocks stood till they got them all stacked into grain stacks, or flailed. These stacks were small at the bottom, wider in the middle then built to a peak with the heads to the inside of the stack, with a sharp stick driven down the center of the last bundle with butt up.
This made the stack waterproof. It could stand for two years. The outside could be pretty weatherbeaten but inside real dry and in good shape to start flailing. The flailing was done when It was dry weather. They made a board platform or laid canvas or a blanket on the ground. A flailing stick was made with a longer stick, about two or three feet long with holes bored in one end; then a shorter stick, about eighteen inches or so, with a hole in one end of this one also. A leather strap was put through the holes and tied which gave the big stick a long swing. Some had a leather on the hand end too, to put your arm through to hold it if it got away from your hand. Then you swing the long stick around and around over your head, and let it down to the short stick hit the grain every time it came around. This was the way they threshed in 1870. Then came the threshing by oxen, they had rollers or beaters to beat the grain from the straw, and the oxen walked around and around to pull it. The straw was made into small bundles and stacked, or just stacked.

To clean the grain, they held it up in the wind. The wind blew out all the dust, straw and chaff, so it was ready to take to the mill to make the wheat into flour.
There was the reaper that cut the heads off the rain, but was not used very long because they lost the straw this way. Then the self-tying binders came, and it did it all in one operation. It clamped the bundles in one pile. Now the combine harvesters cut, thresh and dump grain into trucks, as well as make bales of straw in the field. This is 100 years of progress!

Richwood Roller Mill, built in 1874. Operated by Jasper Johnson

Jasper Johnson

The first flour was made by grinding the grain between two flat rocks turned by oxen, then came water power. The bottom was stationary and the top stone was turned by a shaft from the water wheel.

Richwood mill was run by water and stone ground, and later it was made into a roller mill. Harry's Dad ran this roller mill for two years. He ran the mill eighteen hours a day during the war years. The mill was at the head of the lake on the Buffalo River. Down in the basement of the mill, where the wheel and machinery was, Harry said the thing was alive with great big rats. All you saw was eyes in every place, till your hair stood on end! Nobody really wanted to go down there to check the machinery.

In March 1919, our teacher Miss Helena Heuters and us eighth grade girls and one boy left Pelican Valley School about 7 in the morning. We walked four miles to Westbury to catch the Soo passenger train that left Westbury at 9am. We arrived in Detroit Lakes in a few minutes, walked from the Soo depot to the Northern Pacific depot and took the train to Frazee, about ten mites away. When we arrived there, we walked down through town to the big sawmill to take the tour of the mill on the Otter Tail River. A guide was provided who took us all through the mill. We saw these huge logs come up the ramp, and fall onto the skidway and rolled on the carrier. They moved on to where the big circle saw sawed off the slabs. They flipped it over and over till all the slabs were cut off of and then it was a big square timber. It was then sawed into planks and other boards and two-by-fours. The slabs were thrown on conveyers and a carried one way, the planks on another conveyor, and the boards on another.

Frazee sawmill taken in March, 1918. Miss Helena Heuters, Annie Edgerdol, Hazel and Myrtle Anderson, Ernest and Agnes Erickson, and Elsie Peterson

Then it was noon and the mill stopped for lunch. We found a warm, sunny spot on a lumber pile, took out our lunch bags and had a picnic in the lumber yard. We spent the afternoon looking around, took pictures, and walked back to the depot to take the train back to Detroit Lakes, then to the Soo depot, and back to Westbury. It was getting late as we started walking back to the school. It had thawed quite a lot that day so the snow was soft. Every step we took we went to the bottom, lots of water under the snow. By now it was dark, so we could not see where we were going, so we stumbled and fell down. By the time we got home, we were cold and hungry, but it was a wonderful educational field trip.

In 1930, my brother Frank, husband Victor, and friend Henry were deer hunting west of Itasca park and game reserve In this area there were wooden trestles and railroad grades all through the woods. There were branch lines that fed into the main line, the rails had been removed, but the railroad brought timber in from all over the area and was dumped into Elbow Lake. The logs were driven through the lake into Ottertail River and through more lakes on the river into Frazee millpond. Here they had booms to hold them until the mill could use them. Nichols and Chisholm owned and operated the sawmill from 1897 until 1918; they bought logs from all the jobbers in Minnesota. There was heavy timberland in that area. In 1918 the mill was sold and taken down and shipped out west.

This story was told by dad a long time ago, date unknown. There were sawmills up in the Strawberry Lake area and they needed a large steam engine, so one was shipped to Detroit Lakes by rail. Then they had to figure out how to get it to Strawberry Lake, so they built a large heavy sleigh, big enough to haul the engine on. It was loaded on the sleigh and pulled over the frozen field and lakes by a twenty-horse team. The ice was the easy way to travel, it was level for such a heavy load. They had a very long double rope fastened to the sleigh, and when they came to the bigger lakes, they extended the rope longer from the load, so the men and horses were far away from the load. One man sat behind the horses with a sharp axe, so if the ice gave way, he could cut the rope and free the men and horses from the load, so they would not be dragged into the lake.

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