Chapter 21

Dear Milburn,

I think you are very wise to suggest two persons for the job. It indicates your sense of responsibility which I very much appreciate. After all you are taking expensive property and you are going on a very long trip which you have never made before. You show the proper caution. I would like your father to go along if he can. If, however, I can get my affairs arranged so that I can take an extra day, I will probably drive up from here, so in any event you will not be alone.

I looked at the trailer today and the man is making some progress. I also went to the Wilson Packing House in Kansas City, Kansas, which is being torn down, and made arrangements for the posts and for the lumber for the body. It will not take as much as one would expect the way I am arranging it. I am going to pick up a water tank carrying about 300 gallons. It weighs only 200 pounds. The first thing you know, we will have to take your Farmall [tractor] to tow us along.

I think I have made arrangements for all the possible uses of that chassis, but who knows. Before we are finished we may decide to make a school bus out of it!!! It will be the first of November before the man gets the trailer done and the lumber for the posts and body is properly cut. Everything goes together with bolts so that any one thing can be removed or restored very easily without damage to the lumber. Let me know if there is any chance of getting some ducks out there. I have two good shot guns.

Very sincerely yours,

Paul S. Bliss

Dear Mr. Cayette:

That was mighty interesting news—the first rain in two months. I hope it did not stop before your letter was written. In fact, I believe it did not, as I noted the weather report this morning showed nearly a half inch in Rapid City and a little more in Bismarck. That would seem to mean that you had quite a good rain.

I was much interested in the report about the corn picking and I hope the boys succeed. I am in on to the corn, as I propose to get you some steer calves to fatten up. I never have liked the idea of selling anything at all. In fact, I wish I didn’t have to sell any of that wheat. I would rather feed wheat than sell it. Sorry wheat has gone down, but go right ahead.

Getting back to the corn, please make a “snow fence” corn crib and cover it with some building paper. A couple bundles of lath and a little barbed wire should do it. Don’t shell the corn until you hear from me again. In any event, I will not want all of it shelled, so go ahead and make the snow fence corn crib. Better get that wheat to market as soon as you can, as it may be back to fifty cents. Too bad to sell it now, but I am saving my cash for cattle.

Please send my mother a little corn and a little wheat in the small bags I’ll send you. She wants it to grind in her little mill, for making graham bread and corn meal.

Good luck.

Very sincerely yours,

Paul S. Bliss

Dear Mr. Cayette:

I was delighted to receive your two letters only a day apart; you are getting to be a very rapid correspondent.

Now to take up your letters in chronological order. I had begun to worry about the snow—or lack of it; when I saw in the Adams County Record there had been a little snow on February 11. It amounted to .15, which means a fairly good snow. I was glad, at the end of your letter, you reported that it was coming down in big flakes, but you remarked that it wouldn’t last long. Anyway, I have a continued hunch that March is going to be wet.

You certainly have got those steers to eat well, and I am glad that they are doing so. Do they really look fat? Of course they are growing so rapidly that they are still a little bony, but they ought to soon start waddling.

I really wish you would get them halter broke as soon as you can. Why don’t you just take an ordinary piece of rope and get them used to having something on their heads? When I was at the University of Minnesota Farm School, they were leading the suckling calves to nursing mothers merely by putting a rope around the back of the ears and making one twist around the nose. This was a simple sort of thing and it seems to work well enough, at least the calves minded it very well, however, I am not giving any orders on this point and anything you see fit to do will be appreciated. The steer that is so wild had better be conquered pretty soon or it will never be tamed by you.

I was very sorry to learn that the steers had lice. It looks to me as though you have taken the proper steps in getting the Doctor Hess treatment. [Doctor Hess was a brand name for a disinfectant used to rid cattle of lice, a common problem in winter on the Great Plains.] Next time I see young Turner, I will ask him if he has had any trouble of that sort. I expect they won’t make their best grade until you have cleaned them up.

The wheat slips were enclosed. I always have a little trouble figuring out the price per bushel. You see I want to keep account of what everything sells for so as to keep a proper record; therefore, when you sell some corn or wheat, I want to know what it came to in cash, and then what you bought came to in cash. That is the only way I can keep books.

Now as to the second letter dated February 16. I was much interested in your comment about the second map, and I think your points are well taken. You will see from the enclosed map that I have adopted your ideas for the most part.

I will leave the land northwest of the house all fallow. The red mark on the land southwest of the house is for a peck of hybrid corn called “Southwest 60-day Corn” and is supposed to be very drought resistant. I do not want to get that mixed up by pollination with the corn in the northwest Quarter of Section 7; however I have written Professor T.E. Stoa about that and he may tell me that it is all right to put the corn all together, in which case all of the 15 acre fields southwest of the house could be used for flax.

I am allowed 227 acres of soil depleting crops. The map, as it stands now, allows for 110.1 acres of wheat, 75 corn, 15 flax, 10 oats, all of which totals 210.1. So I think your idea of putting in more oats is good. By putting in 27 acres of oats, I would just come up to my soil depleting acreage. This includes 25 acres of corn for you and also 21 acres of wheat for you in the Northeast Quarter. Please let me know whether or not you want them. You will recall you had in 27 acres of corn last year and 15 of wheat. I expect to use Markton Oats. Yes, flax is a gamble, but if I could get 100 bushels of flax off of that 15 acres it would probably bring me $200.

I will pay the gas bill when it comes. I am sending the check to you.

Good luck with the rocks and ice.

Sincerely yours,

Paul S. Bliss

Dear Mother and Miriam:

I really had a splendid trip to Scoria Lily Ranch. I took Milburn Turner, a young farmer who lives 18 miles north of Kansas City. I met him at the American Royal Livestock Show where he won prizes for his Hereford and Angus steers. I left about 9:00 Wednesday—the night before Thanksgiving here.

Hooked to the Pontiac was 5,340 pounds of weight in the shape of a 4-wheel work trailer loaded with all sorts of farm equipment. I know what the weight was because when I arrived at Lemmon, I called on Sam Rein who Mother will remember having called with his wife, bringing us some trout which they had caught in Wyoming. Mr. Rein runs the Central Lumber Company at Lemmon. He weighed the trailer and the load. He was very much surprised; in fact, I was too.

We drove 24 hours straight, changing position at the wheel every hour or so and arrived at Aberdeen on Thanksgiving night. We stayed over night there and got to Lemmon on Friday noon. I called on Rein and others there and got to Scoria Lily Ranch about 2:00 p.m. Young Turner was immensely interested in the rammed-earth building and the whole layout, of course. We went over to Cayette’s and showed Cayette all the stuff. He was indeed surprised. Besides the trailer I had on it a winch for pulling up rock; a 1½ horsepower pumping engine together with pumpjack; a 200 gallon water tank; a 150 gallon water tank for stock; two scrapers dragged by the Farmall for digging irrigation ditches and trench silos, vegetable cellars; a lot of timbers for the floor when the trailer is used in the form of a hayrack. I showed Cayette, last but not least, a pipe framework for a cab for the tractor, together with a canvas and celluloid windows. These things will help him to farm easily; you know he has a double rupture, so the winch will do the hard work of lifting things onto the trailer. The cab will keep him warm and enable him to work when otherwise he wouldn’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t. He is 73, but I think he is good for several years more. However if he drops off or can’t do the work I have Turner who is a good smart 21-year-old lad with a good head on his shoulders and a stout pair of hands. I think he would go up there.

We called on the Bratchers and several others. I bought 5 young Hereford steers for $37.50 each from Lee Johnson, near Reeder. They averaged 350 pounds and are about 6 months old. I will feed them and finish them as fat butcher steers to be sold in the fall of 1940. The five should bring at least $500 at market time. Of course there will be some expense, but I had all the corn I needed to feed them. I will have to buy a little bran, Tario and oats to tease their appetites. I have plenty of hay and straw. They will be kept at Cayette’s as it is too far for him to go to chore at the ranch.

Next year we will remedy that because I will build a big stone barn where the stone house is. [Bliss had purchased the quarter section owned by the Brown brothers, on which the stone house was located, the previous year.] I will have tenant quarters connected. It sounds like very intimate connections between the house and barnyard, but the arrangement I have made will take care of that nicely. Young Turner thought it ideal because the farmer can watch the stock easily from the second story; you cannot see north and east from our house. By the way, I am going to preserve the old stone house and use it for storage or other purposes. Eventually it will be a museum or art craft shop or the two combined. Miriam can make silver buckles and all sorts of things there. I shall have a loom. At first I thought of tearing it down but I realized what a criminal thing that would be since it represents pioneering.

After leaving the material at Cayette’s and arranging it we had supper with the Cayettes. They had fried chicken and it was fine. We had put a great deal of coal on the fire at the ranch and it was gloriously warm and comfortable when we got there. We put up our cots and promptly went to sleep. We were awake at 4:00 the next morning. It was a busy Saturday. I called on the Bobbs and Jim McIntire. (The Bobbs were Bliss’s closest neighbor, and McIntire—actual correct spelling is McIntyre—had supervised construction of the rammed-earth garage a few years earlier.) They all wanted to be remembered to you. McIntire was enthusiastic about the future as he had 23 bushels of wheat and 40 bushels of barley per acre on a 40-acre fallow field. I also called on Hallan and business men in Hettinger and McLachlan [actually, McLaughlin, S.D.—the secretary misspelled the town name when she was transcribing the letter]. Later I typed out a complete feeding schedule; in this Turner was very helpful as well as in selecting the steers. Johnson showed us some steers which Turner apparently did not like. The second group appealed to him so he said “I like this bunch,” in an off-hand way as “like” was our code meaning “desirable.” They are to be delivered next Monday. I left a book for feeding with him. He was very nice about it and Turner dictated the manner in which they should be fed. That is why I took Turner along as he was experienced in stock.

We left Saturday at 9:00, drove to Mobridge, stayed there overnight and went to Aberdeen where I caught the plane at noon. Turner made a great hit with Mr. and Mrs. Bobb. I told him I may need some help and would like to have him come up and take hold of things. I think he feels that things aren’t as bad as they sound.

Arriving in Kansas City Sunday night, I lost only 1 day and 4 hours work. It is 877 miles from here to the ranch. We averaged 50 miles on pavement and 45 on gravel. When not eating at Cayette’s we cooked our meals over the fireplace.

With love,

Paul S. Bliss

Dear Mother,

I had a lovely Sunday, although most of it was spent going around in the automobile visiting the steel plants and industrial sections and the airports and new construction, which seems to be going on everywhere. I get lots of ideas out of these things I can use up at Scoria Lily Ranch.

Alfred Cayette wrote that he can take care of some stock for me—I guess I wrote about that in the Sunday Special. I think he is a pretty fine old boy and the more I deal with him the more I like him.

I am having a lot of fun with the old twenty foot chassis, which still has to go up to Scoria Lily Ranch. I guess I told you about it. I have had it sitting up at the Turner farm and they used it to haul some hay. I left it there, of course, so as to avoid payment of storage. It is now down at the welding shop and I am going to add one or two little things that will make it very useful. In the first place, I am having a small winch put on the front end of it so that old man Cayette can haul up the larger field stone which he is going to collect for the barn we will build next spring or summer. Some of those stones weigh five hundred pounds. I am having a small channel welded to the back of the truck so that it will support the end of the planks which he will use as skids. Thus he will have no trouble getting the heavy stones up on to the chassis. The chassis is floored, of course.

While I was about it, I thought that it might be a good idea to have that chassis fixed so that one could put up a temporary crate or fence so as to haul a couple of heifers, so I have told the man to weld some iron pockets on the sides which will take the ends of the two by fours. The stock crate can, of course, be put on or taken off with very little loss of time.

It is probable that I will have to go up there on my Thanksgiving vacation, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then I will haul up the trailer, going straight from Kansas City to Hettinger. I propose to take Milburn Turner along, as he is a very good stock buyer and I will go over to the man who owns the herd you saw on the road to Hettinger. His name is Due. I can probably buy some animals rather cheaply. I think probably Mr. Bratcher is a little high, although there is no question but that he has about the best blooded stock in that part of the country. What I would like to do would be to have the bank at Lemmon loan the money to buy this stock and take a mortgage on it, getting their payment when I sell it. It would be a perfectly good deal for them, as I have plenty of hay and feed for them and Mr. Cayette is perfectly willing to take care of them. When you stop to think that a good steer, bought for about $30 at this time of year and weighing about three hundred pounds would, in a year, add approximately six hundred pounds in weight and bring about $80, it would seem that we ought to begin making use of all of that feed. So you may picture me at Hettinger about Thanksgiving, dragging the trailer with the cow crate along and buying a steer here and a heifer there, and toting them over to Mr. Cayette.

By the way, you may wonder how I expect to drive to Hettinger and back in four days. What I propose to do is to have Milburn Turner start about Monday, driving the car and towing the four wheel trailer. He will go from Hettinger with the car to Bismarck and meet me at 11 a.m. Thanksgiving morning. I will go up by airplane and come back the same way. Turner will drive the car back.

With love,

Paulie