Chapter 10:
Pioneer Living
Farming on the Luneburger Heide did not result in much soil disturbance. The primary crop was sheep, used both for meat and wool. The next important crop was beekeeping. The honey was a valuable crop in that it keeps its quality for a long time without any special storage, such as refrigeration. The secondary crop was the beeswax that was left after the honey extraction. Its main use was for candles. The final crop was a garden that was manually dug or hoed. Some of the primary garden produce was centered on root crops such as mangel beets, which were used as a supplementary winter livestock feed. For human consumption beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots and potatoes would be grown.
On arriving at Strathcona, the Drewes’ would bring along the techniques of the Heide. They would also learn from their neighbours the Fuhrops, the American influence that had been acquired in Wisconsin. The cutting, raking and stacking of hay for horse and cattle feed was necessary for their winter survival. Along with it would come plowing with a walking plow, covering the seed with a harrow, and cutting the crop with a reaper or a binder, and finally threshing with a tractor powered thresher.
Wheat was grown for flour milling and oats for horse and cattle feed, both the grain and the straw. A picture of J. Heinrich taken in the late 1890’s at Ellerslie shows him with a prize horse. In the background can be seen the reel of a reaper.
Horses would be an important part of the farm life on the Drewes and later the Erichsen farm, up to the end of the 1950’s. Until the 1930’s the average farm would have four to ten horses. Half of the grain, hay and pasture grown on the farm was used to feed horses. Rural life depended on the horse. It was vital for transportation. It was ridden by adults going to town and children going to school. Families would use teams of horses pulling buggies, wagons or sleighs to go to town, delivering produce for sale, and to bring supplies home again. In the early years the only alternatives were to walk or stay home.
Starting about 1910, the horse was slowly being replaced by cars. But a problem for cars was that there were no roads – only a trail through the grass, and often not even on the road allowance. In the fall, after the first snowfall, the cars had the water drained from the engine, and were parked for the winter.
Highway 12 from Botha to Stettler was a low-grade dirt road that would be drifted shut in the winter, and flooded after spring break-up. In the late 1930’s a small grader with an 8 foot V-plow would try and keep it open. It wasn’t until 1952/53 that Highway 12 would be widened and paved, finally becoming an all-weather road.
I can still remember two wet spots in that old highway, before 1953, that big sloughs would flood out the highway. One was on the west half of 36-38-19 and the other east half of 33-38-19. Dad would stop on the edge of the water, take the fan belt off so that the fan wouldn’t splash water on the ignition, and then drive through the water. Once through he’s stop and put the fan belt back on. Albert Bauer was continually pulling out cars for people who had wet engines, or who had driven off the road while attempting to drive through the water.
In the winter it was the horses and a sleigh making a trip to the store in Botha. Dad would tie the horses on the south side of the store, put horse blankets on them and then go into the store to buy groceries and visit. I was old enough to go and can remember many trips. When Klaus went to Botha to curl he often walked.
After World War II the rural municipalities got more aggressive about building roads. Prior to that they had tried to build a higher grade through the sloughs using horse-drawn scrapers and graders. After the war they started using a Caterpillar drawn elevating grader and a “motor patrol” to grade it level. I can remember walking behind the elevating grader in 1948 as they built the road north to the highway.
Klaus, in taking things into his own hands, had a small 3 foot wide V-plow made that he pulled with the team of horses. He’d make a trail up and back with the V- plow leaving a space between for the car wheels, then followed the plowed trails with the car straddling the unplowed space.
Horses supplied most of the farming power. Starting in 1905 steam tractors did some sod breaking. But the main role in life for those big engines was to supply power for threshing machines.
The farm tractors built in the 1910 -1920 era, while smaller and less clumsy than their steam counterparts, were anything but dependable. The tractors had no air filtration, open final drives and a short lifespan. To last 500 hours was a miracle.
The tractors built in the 1920’s and 1930’s were a great improvement. Some models worked better and lasted longer than their peers. Some were still junk from the day they were made. But tractors became popular and during the 1930’s horse numbers would drop. The loss of young men during WW II would increase the shift away from horses. The farmers that straight grain farmed were the first to eliminate them.
So while the tractors built post 1930 were better, especially those on rubber tires, they didn’t completely replace the horse. I can remember a trip with my Dad to Julius Stacks in the late 1940’s. On that day his son Art was using a tractor to disk the field. But Julius still had 4 horses hooked to a seed drill.
Even though Henry Drewes had a Sawyer Massey steam tractor from 1906 – 1909, he would breed and raise horses all his life. After Klaus took over farming, Henry had a farm sale, dispersing his horses. Klaus ended up with 4 matched roan Percheron mares - Pat, Bess, Irish and Florrie. As a young lad, I remember they were used to pull a mower, a dump rake, and finally when stacking the horses had to pull the fork up the incline of the overshot hay stacker (my job).
In the winter the horses pulled sleighs filled with hay and straw. They also pulled the manure spreader to haul manure out of the barn. If the snow got too deep they still had to haul manure, but now on a stone boat. The last of the Percherons would die of old age in the late 1950’s.
At the time that Henry was involved with Carl Stettler’s Swiss-German community some things had modernized. For example, Henry would use a Sawyer Massey Steam engine to pull an 8-bottom plow to break the prairie soil. At this time many pioneers would still use a single bottom plow, pulled by 2 – 4 horses. The plowed land would be disked with a single action disk harrow, 6 – 8 feet wide, and pulled by 4 horses to level and pack it.
1907 Sawyer Massey
Broadcast seeding had been replaced by horse-drawn drills, 8-12 feet in width. They would have single disk, double disk, or Lister openers with the seed covered by drag chains. I saw both Julius Stack and my father Klaus Erichsen still using these drills in the late 1940’s.
As the farms increased their cultivated acreage, a shift was made between 1915 and 1920 to threshing from the stooks rather than large stacks. Part of this was the result of more threshing outfits being available. For example, Charlie Bauer had a 1912 Titan 18/35 and a threshing machine.
During the 1920’s gasoline-powered smaller tractors became available. As well smaller threshing machines with 22 or 28 inch wide cylinders came into vogue. The Drewes family’s last owned outfit was sold to Fred Wischoff in 1921. When Wischoff sold out in 1932 threshing was done by the Bauers, then the Gerlachs and finally Fred (Butson) and Albert (Big Guy) Scheerschmidt. In 1952 at John Wettstein’s auction sale Klaus bought a 22 inch IHC separator. He would be the last to thresh in this community about 1959 or 1960. The binders would be pulled by 4 horses, and then came the hard work of stooking the crop. Binders after the 1930’s would be powered by tractors. Many of the old ground-driven horse binders would be updated with a Carlson PTO drive.
The trend to combines started in 1950 with the Gerlachs buying a pull-type John Deere #65 combine. Albert Bauer used a Massey Harris Super 92 combine for a few years. In 1965 Alfred Erichsen purchased a Minneapolis G4 pull-type, followed by a second purchase of a MM G4 by Klaus and Donald in 1967.
Henry purchased a couple of gas tractors but they were primitive and basically non-productive. In 1939 Klaus would purchase a Twin City 17-28 tractor made in the 1920’s. Klaus had paid $325 for what was realistically a piece of junk. In April of 1941 he would buy a used John Deere Model D for $650, and he finally had a tractor that worked. In 1942 he purchased a new Ford 9N tractor with a 3-point hitch plow and cultivator. This would be his favorite tractor. The old John Deere D would be replaced by a Twin City Model KTA, and this performed well on the threshing machine.
The hay had been cut with a horse mower until 1954 when a new Cockshutt power mower was bought and pulled by the KTA. Horses had been used to pull the dump rakes, but in 1955 Klaus purchased a 14 foot John Deere dump rake, and it was pulled by the Ford 9N. The hay had been stacked by using horses pulling a “buck pole”. In the late 1940’s the Gerlachs had built Klaus a wooden overshot stacker, with the hay basket pulled up by a team of horses.
In 1954 Klaus purchased a nearly new Minneapolis Moline Model “R” tractor. The year before he had purchased a hydraulic loader to fit on the Ford 9N. The loader was too big for the Ford and also tied it up. He had Art Gerlach modify the mounts so the loader ended up on the MM “R”.
In 1947 Henry Bauer had purchased a John Deere 116W automatic wire-tie baler. He came and baled some of Klaus’s hay, but it was expensive, and with Henry’s death in 1951 that ended. But it did leave a lifetime supply of baling wire.
In 1942 Klaus had bought a horse-drawn John Deere model “E” manure spreader, allowing the manure to be hauled and spread. Previously it had been piled to compost and was never spread.
The hauling of hay home in winter was a daily or weekly project using the horses and a sleigh. It involved a lot of pitch forking. But if that wasn’t work enough, Klaus conceived of “making silk purses out of pig’s ears”. In 1949 he bought an IHC hammer mill with a so-called hay feeder attachment for $397. And so began the painful process of pushing handfuls of hay into it. So we created short pieces of hay out of long ones. The sad part is I don’t think the calves could even see a benefit, and never really appreciated our effort.
In terms of livestock, J. Heinrich and Henry were still sheep herders. They proceeded to encircle and cross fence the south half of 30-38-18 with sheep fences (page wire). The rusty remnants are still there over 100 years later. Klaus didn’t share their feelings about sheep, and the last of them were sold in 1946 after Henry died. The only survivor of that era is Anna Drewes’ spinning wheel.
Honeybees were even less popular with Klaus. The last hives were in his yard at the east end of a row of maple trees in what is now Gary Erichsen’s yard. A row of flat-bottomed steel grain bins now sit there. Charlie Bauer came and got the last hives at Henry’s passing.
Right from the start chickens were important. Henry had built a building (which still exists) to the south of his house. It was divided in half with the north half containing a workshop that included a forge. The south half was a chicken house, with a small door on the south for the chickens, and a people door on the east. It had a ceiling lined with flax straw to help hold heat, and a row of nesting boxes for the hens to lay eggs into. A roost on the north end was about 3 feet above the floor. Martha would later add geese, ducks and turkeys.
Klaus concentrated his attention on hogs and cattle. Hogs were always an important source of income and were a farrow to finish operation.
The cow herd always had a milking component and cream was a valuable income source. With the arrival of electricity a milking machine was purchased in 1948. The milking was greatly expanded in the 1950’s as the Central Alberta Dairy Pool in Red Deer did milk pickup of 8 gallon milk cans every second day. The Erichsen boys were in the 4-H Dairy Club, resulting in development of a Holstein herd.
The new settlers coming to Stettler brought with them seeds that they needed to start raising a crop. Unfortunately they had no good ways of cleaning the weed seeds out and they came along. In the good years they weren’t too important as an actively growing crop, while not weed free was able to compete fairly well. The problem became acute in the Dirty Thirties. Under drought conditions the crops and weeds both struggled, but the light showers gave some of the weeds a chance to excel and take over.
Fanning mills were developed that could eliminate some of the weed seeds. These small cleaners could clean 10 – 30 bushels of seed an hour. These machines had a primary shaking sieve with a fan to blow out the straw, chaff, heads and large seed. The seed was then dropped in a slanted round roller screen. Different sizes of holes in the roller screen allowed the grain seed to pass through and the small weed seeds and cracked grain fall out. Their failing was the inability to separate seeds similar in size and shape, such as wild oats from the oat seed.
During WW II weed sprays had been developed as part of the war effort. In the 1950’s two products MCPA and 2-4D would become available. Early sprayers were farm concocted, usually by buying a pump and a boom. The farmer would then mount a platform on the 3-point hitch, or create a cart to hold one or two 45 gallon barrels with the tops removed. The barrels would be filled with spray solution and the hired man would keep the solution agitated by stirring with a hockey stick. A short 16 or 20 foot boom would be mounted to the tractor or cart.
Initially in the early years at Stettler the entire area could be plowed up or “broken”. When the settlers came there were no trees. After the buffalo were wiped out by 1875, there was nothing to eat the grass. After a couple of years in the dry part of season the tinder-box would blaze into massive prairie fires. The settlers quickly learned to eliminate the tinder-box by grazing and breaking the land.
A problem arose in wet years, especially on land that wasn’t flat. The low spots would have “pot holes” or sloughs. So now if a wet area around a slough was not worked, it provided a natural place for trees (Aspen Poplar and Willows) to get a start. This was no big issue as long as the farmer used horses. They don’t get stuck in the mud.
But once tractors started being used, getting stuck became an issue. The steel wheels acted like spades to dig big holes. The heavy weight of the tractor compared to its low horse power meant getting stuck in deep holes in the mud. This resulted in tractors staying far away from sloughs or wet spots, allowing trees to get started. By the 1930’s most of the sloughs had a ring of trees around them. But the trees then stopped the snow from drifting and the spring melt would fill the slough. The use of summer fallow caused more runoff, and the slough would get fuller. By 1962 when I bought the SE 14-38-19 from Fritz Klaffke he was farming around 32 bush- lined potholes. In one spot he was farming a 12 foot opening between two competing bushes. With tractors pulling plows and tillers, or one-way disks, a ridge was created at the outer edges. As the bush was expanded a new ridge was created. Some of the sloughs would have as many as 4 of these ridges.
Now what about fuel. Well, the horses needed hay, pasture and grain, and God willing, you hoped to grow that. But what do you use for fuel to cook and heat with? If some whimsical fairytaler starts talking about buffalo chips – quit listening. With the buffalo becoming extinct in 1875, no self-respecting buffalo turd survived 30 years of the elements.
That was one of the hold backs of homesteading here before the railroad. There was no ready supply of coal or firewood. Both had to be hauled with a team and wagon. Local coal was found north of Gadsby and Halkirk. The small mines provided a poorer quality coal, but at a much lower price. The stories are legion of making cold winter trips with a sleigh and horses for coal.
The arrival of the railroad brought the delivery of coal. Coal sheds were built at railroad elevators or stations to provide the needed fuel. Because this fuel was relatively expensive the houses were small, usually being between 300 and 400 square feet.
Another source of fuel came into use in the late 1920’s and 1930’s -- firewood. Those bush patches around the sloughs had poplar and willow trees. The fuel was now “free” – sort of. It needed a labor substitution. Labor to cut, haul, saw and split.
Fuel for steam engines was generally railroad coal. The better coal provided more power. Wood was never used because in the steam tractor era there were no trees. Rarely a steam threshing outfit would use straw for fuel.
With the introduction of the gas engine tractor a new source of fuel had to be supplied. While the automobiles needed gasoline, the tractor could also run on cheaper fuels such as kerosene or naphtha. The gas or kerosene was delivered to an agent in town to a site along the railroad where tank cars were unloaded into storage tanks. The fuel was then pumped into 45 gallon barrels or “drums” to be delivered to the farm. The barrels would sit on the ground with a pole under one side to tilt the barrel so that rain water wouldn’t run into the vent or filler hole. Farm bulk tanks would arrive in the 1950’s, along with the bulk trucks to deliver the fuel.
Marketing has always been a problem. Prior to the arrival of the railroad in Stettler the early ranchers trailed the cattle west to stockyards at Calgary and Edmonton. After the arrival of the railroad in Stettler and Botha, stockyards were built next to the railroad. Access ramps allowed the cattle and hogs to be herded onto the stock cars. The cattle were usually bought and paid for before shipping. The hogs on the other hand, were tattooed and were paid for after they had been slaughtered and graded at the packing plant. Botha was typical in that one of the elevator operators also ran the stockyards. From the start the cattle were herded or trailed to the stockyards. The pigs on the other hand, were hauled in horse drawn wagons, and starting after WW II, by truck.
Cream was kept and hauled in 5 gallon cream cans. The cans had a tare weight painted on them, and when they were weighed, a net weight was quickly calculated. Any cream that was contaminated or spoiled (as sometimes happened) was downgraded. Stories are legend of the things that weren’t cream that arrived at the creamery. The creameries were usually co-operatives, with a set pricing schedule.
The grain was sold to grain buyers. Those that didn’t own an elevator had facilities to convey the grain into the box cars. As the elevators and elevator companies became more numerous, track loading was phased out. In the 1970 – 1980’s a revival of track loading was made by loading “producer cars”, and bypassing the elevator.
The elevators all had a scale large enough to weigh a grain wagon. On top of the scale a lift platform was located. The horses or tractor would be unhitched from the wagon and a winch would lift one end up, tipping the wagon so that the grain could run out of an opening in the end gate. These lifts were later used for trucks. The early trucks did not have a hoist to tip the box. As a result the lift would be used to tip the whole truck.
To compete with the “Line” grain companies the farmers created co-ops to build elevators and market the grain. The result was that members all got the same price. There was no bonus for quality or cleanliness. (Do you still want this paragraph?)
In 1940, after the start of WW II, the Canadian government took over the grain marketing, creating the Canadian Wheat Board so that it could set and control the price of grain. This control was to eliminate exploitation of the price of grain going back to war-torn Great Britain. But it also resulted in lower prices for the farmers.
Automobiles started to replace the horse and buggy, or horse and wagon in 1920. The Dirty Thirties brought a reprieve to this transition. The cost of fuel and repairs forced the abandonment of many cars. Some were converted to horse-drawn by hooking on a pole and evener and using horses to pull them. They were labelled “Bennett Buggies” named after the Canadian Prime Minister of that time. The Bennett Buggy did offer a more comfortable ride than a wagon.
Car makers of that era weren’t concerned about many safety considerations. One of the features of the smaller 2-door cars or “coupes” was the ability to open the trunk and expose an air-conditioned seat, called a Rumble Seat. I can still remember trips to town sitting in the Rumble Seat with Henry Drewes, while Mom and Dad and the twins rode inside.
Prior to the arrival of electricity to run a deep freeze or refrigerator, food preservation was a lot of hard work. The first step was in digging a small cellar under the house, coming in 2 to 4 feet from the outside walls to provide a frozen insulation. The entrance to the cellar was a trap door in the floor, with a ladder or small staircase going down. A bin was constructed in the hole to hold the root vegetables, potatoes, turnips, parsnips and carrots. The bin was placed so that there was an air space or gap between the wood bin walls and the dirt. Cupboards, or shelves, were built to hold the jars of canned preserves. Racks were built to hold the smoked meats -- ham, bacon, and sausages. Quite often barrels would hold salted meat and sauerkraut.
In late summer and fall the women would do a lot of canning of both vegetables and fruit, usually raspberries and saskatoons. Jams and jellies would be made of chokecherries, currants and gooseberries.
Butchering a pork or beef was usually a major affair. Quite often neighbors or relatives were involved in some form of sharing, enabling a shorter storage period and having a fresh product more often.
After we had electricity and a deep freezer in 1947, the Erichsens became more self-sufficient. A neighbor, usually Albert Bauer, would help with the butchering. The beef animal would be shot and bled. The dead beef would be pulled by a block and tackle on a tripod to be bled and skinned. The blood was collected to make blood sausage in a jar, rather than in a casing. After the hide had been removed, the intestines would be removed and disposed of. The lungs, liver and kidneys would be saved to go into the sausage meat. In our family the liver was separately cooked and canned in jars as liver sausage. The carcass was tarped and left hanging until it had aged. The steaks and roasts would then be cut out and frozen. The remaining meat would be deboned and run through a hand-powered meat grinder. Some would be frozen as hamburger and some would be saved for sausage.
The pig was slaughtered by shooting and bleeding. A large kettle had been hung by a tripod over a wood fire in preparation. The kettle holding about 50 gallons of water was used to scald the pig clean, with the dirt and hair being removed with round scrapers. After cleaning and gutting the pig was cut up. The bacon and hams were put in stone crocks containing a salt or brine solution. After a period of time the bacon and hams were hung in a smoke house to be smoked.
The balance of the pork would go into the sausage mix along with the beef. After grinding they mixed in whatever spices were needed for flavoring. Also the right amount of saltpeter (sodium or potassium nitrite) was added to kill botulism organisms and preserve the meat. For the record, it’s a myth that saltpeter had an effect on sexual activity.
Dad pre-bought sausage casings from the butcher shop in Stettler. We had our own sausage press and this was used to press the sausage meat into the casings. The sausages were then hung in the smoke house along with the bacon and ham. The preservation of food was very time consuming and labor intensive.
The early houses were very primitive and small. The cheapest were made of sod. The sod was cut into slabs about one foot square. They were then piled brick-like by stacking to build the walls. The walls would never be over six feet in height. The poorest would have a pole framework for a roof, with sods placed on top. That worked well until it rained. Then the ceiling would drip for a week afterwards. The big improvement would be a wood framed roof with shingles, along with a window. The floors were always dirt.
Some pioneers opted for log houses, though a challenge on a treeless prairie such as Stettler in 1900. In 1904 Henry Drewes and George Stack would haul logs 20 miles by horse and wagon from the Red Deer River valley to build two log houses of approximately 16 feet x 20 feet in size. They hauled lumber from the rail head at Alix to build a frame and shingled roof. Henry’s log house would be used as human habitation until 1955.
With the railroad came lumber, and after 1905 that became the standard construction material. These houses were often built with an outside layer of board, a liner of tar paper, and an inner layer of boards – no insulation. They were also small, ranging from 12ft x 20 ft. to 24 x 32 feet. If more space was needed a raised attic with 4- foot sidewalls was added on top.
Houses were small due to the cost of heating. The main fuel from 1900 to 1930 on the prairies was coal hauled in by the railroad, and expensive at that time. In the parkland, such as at Ellerslie, or later after 1930 when Poplar trees grew on the prairies, firewood was used. The cost of firewood was a lot of manual labor. Because wood burns quickly there still was a need for coal that could be “banked” and allowed to burn slowly all night. Most houses would have a coal/wood stove or range and a pot belly stove, each heating half the house. If there was an upper floor it was heated by the theory that heat rises. The upper floor was used only for sleeping with lots of blankets or quilts, and a fast trip downstairs to get dressed.
Eventually by 1930 furnaces would make their appearance using large pipes and the theory that hot air rises to provide heat. Because water freezes, plumbing a water system into a house would not happen until rural electrification in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. The sewage system consisted of unheated outdoor biffys or outhouses. For night-time convenience, pots and larger chamber pots were used. But someone always had the chore of emptying and cleaning them.
Water was pumped from wells, usually by hand, and carried to the house in buckets. An early morning wash on a cold winter morn would usually start by breaking the ice on the water pail. The kitchen ranges had a reservoir or tank on the side (fireboxovenreservoir). This tank provided warm water to wash dishes, food and people.
The Canadian government established a tree nursery at Indian Head, Saskatchewan in 1901 to provide shelter belt trees. The first plantings were caragana, a pea tree (legume) brought from Siberia. The next expansion was to Manitoba Maples. These were supplied free in large numbers to settlers. Later on, settlers could receive smaller quantities of evergreens and poplars. In the Stettler area if viewed at height most of the original homesteads can be identified by wind breaks.
Socializing and entertainment centered on visiting relatives, friends and neighbors either in evenings or Sunday afternoon. After church on Sunday families and friends would gather at someone’s place for a potluck dinner and visiting. In the summer this would often evolve into a picnic at Buffalo Lake (Boss Hill or Rochon Sands), the north shore of Lone Pine Lake, or Content Bridge on the Red Deer River. It is not surprising that in a German community someone would have purchased a keg of beer.
Dances were also popular. There were always local musicians who could play the piano, accordion, violin/fiddle or saxophone. Schools (Kindergarten), the Botha Hall and occasionally a barn were always crowded.
Early sports started with baseball in 1905. Teams included Botha and Lone Pine Lake. Lone Pine Lake games were played on a cow pasture diamond on Albert Viger’s place. Hockey was also popular, especially in the late 1920’s and later. Locally the game was totally pond hockey. Curling started in the 1920’s with Botha’s curling rink built in 1928. In the early years curling rocks were owned by individual curlers, which resulted in a great variation in shape, size and weight. My Dad owned two sets of 2 rocks, one set weighing 38 pounds each and the other set weighed 44 pounds. I still have the 44 pounders.