Peering at the Past – Wild Hay at Root River Bottom

Trees could be both a blessing and a curse for the first white settlers in 1850s and 1860s southeast Minnesota. Firewood for heat and cooking were necessities for both farmers and the few town dwellers. Large trees provided lumber for buildings or rail fences. “Raising a house” was the term used for putting logs in place, one in top of another until the structure was high enough for a cabin wall. This was a cooperative effort as neighbors were needed. Logs were too heavy for two men to accomplish the job alone. 

The men cut down tall trees and after removing all the branches and bark, cut the tree into desired lengths. Cottonwood trees were cut down and taken to a sawmill to obtain floorboards. But there was no way of having them planed; you made do with the way they came from the mill. Such floors were difficult to keep clean, but they were smoother than floors made of “shakes,” – wood, crudely split into boards and then nailed down. Some just tamped down the earth as hard as they could and lived on dirt floors.

A pioneer family also used logs to build a chicken house and a barn for the oxen and cows. With villages being small, there was not yet a market for firewood. So, farmers would pile and burn the extra wood for which they had no use. Why would they cut down more trees than they needed for heat, cooking and construction? Why might they have extra wood? 

If land was claimed in a predominantly wooded area, you had to clear trees to create farm fields. That was time-consuming as well as labor intensive. The first harvest was usually small, since it was difficult to clear much land the first year. Trees had to be cut down, and then most tree trunks had to be dug out. They could then hitch oxen to a breaking plow and plow up the patch they had cleared. They would then use a primitive tool to drag the field, smoothing and loosening the soil. Augusta Burow Arnett (1865-1947) recalls her father, Friedrich Martin Burow, making his own drag out of wood.

She described her father then seeding by hand his fields on South Ridge in Houston County. “He would take a big pocket with a strap on it, hang it around his neck and one shoulder. He’d walk and while walking, his hand would be dipping wheat or oats out of the big pocket in front of him. He scattered the seed as he walked along. When it was seeded, they would hitch the oxen to the drag again and go over it again. Then, they would let it rest and trusted that God would provide sunshine and rain to make it grow, and it did grow.”

When it came time to harvest, they cut the grain not with a binder or reaper, but by hand with a scythe, which they called a cradle. Augusta described it as having a long narrow blade or knife like a sickle but twice as long with four or five wooden fingers above the blade; it looked like a great big hand.”

Men would swing the cradle and cut the grain close to the ground. Someone would rake the grain into bundles and then tie them up. It was a slow but rewarding process to finally harvest the crops.

Augusta remembers seeing the flails her father used to pound the grain, separating the seeds from the husks, while threshing by hand. Later, they were able to thresh with a machine that was operated by a horse walking on a treadwheel. It was still a slow process; farmers had to wait their turn until late autumn. There would be progress when four teams of horses could be used, walking in a circle to power the machine.

In those early years, before they were able to clear much land, the pioneer farmers were unable to raise enough hay as needed to feed the cattle. However, the South Ridge folks were able to go down to what was known as the Root River Bottom. That big piece of government land was open to anyone who wanted to cut all of the wild hay they needed. They had to cut it and rake it by hand.

It was a challenging endeavor, especially to haul the hay by oxen power the three or four miles back up to higher ground on South Ridge. Oxen were very slow, especially on the primitive roads in that era. 

Augusta’s mother, Emilie Freischmitt Burow, told her children about one harrowing Root River Bottom experience. Mother had stayed home to prepare a meal for the outing and therefore had to walk by herself. While walking downhill with her basket and pail along a grassy path, she stepped on a snake, which whirled around her leg. Fortunately, it was not a poisonous reptile, but it was certainly a frightening experience. 

After they were able to clear enough land, they were able to produce enough hay to alleviate any further ventures down to the Bottom. And homegrown hay was considered much better for the livestock.

At threshing time, farmers separated the chaff (grain husks) from the straw and blew the chaff into a chaff shed. That chaff made good feed for the cattle, which helped preserve the supply of hay. The men made a large, long basket out of willows, called a keep. It was about three feet long and two feet wide with a bar across the top. Augusta’s grandfather would fill the keep with chaff and carry it to the livestock.

Source: My Parents, by Augusta Burow Arnett, 1944