Returning to early farm conditions, we find that for several years many of the new settlers did not have enough grain to have a threshmachine on the place, but hauled what little they might have to some nearby machine.
As can be seen, there was not much grain to be sold for some time for these farmers. Butter and eggs, and, a little later, cattle, were the chief products which could bring a little ready money. To this should be added hay, which many hauled to Yankton with oxen, getting $2.50-$3.00 per ton. Even at this price, and with such slow transportation, this hay traffic was for many the chief source of any money, and some spent most of the fall and winter months at this work when travel was possible.
CHAPTER XII[ToC]
A Bird's Eye View of the Country as it Appeared In 1800-3
We ought, at this point, to make a visit around the neighborhood as it appeared from '81-'83 and even much later. Beginning in the Turkey Creek Valley, we have already indicated the half dozen families which had located there in the early seventies. As we have spoken in another chapter of this earlier wave of pioneer immigrants, I shall pass them by now as also those of that same group who had settled to the south, toward what is now Volin.
Berhaug Rise moved his living house from where it was first placed, viz., one quarter mile west of Ole Solem's, to about one mile west, that is, from the creek bottom at the junction of the ravines which traversed the place from east to west, to the higher land at the head of these ravines.
To the southwest of our place, about a mile distant, was John Johnson, who had settled there in '74 and lived in a log house. To the west one mile was Ole Johnson, who had filed in '79 and was living in a dugout with his family. Another mile or so still farther southwest was Peter Moen, also living in a dugout and having a considerable family. Then going back to Ole Johnson and going north were Peter Johnson, Jonas Vaabeno, Ole Liabo, and John Moene. To the east of Peter Johnson there was in 1880 a man by the name of Roser who, however, left about that time. All of these, as far as I remember, lived in dugouts, with the exception of the first named, who lived in a loghouse.