Life on the Prairie

 

Lindsay

 

Living on the prairie was hard at best.

Surviving the elements was the test.

 

Ranchers came for open range land.

Cowboys were needed for helping hands.

 

Round-up was exciting, held in the spring.

Riding skills cowboys did bring.

 

Ten-year-old Lindsay was just the right age.

Her independence was center-stage.

 

Rustlers and blizzards she did endure.

Triumph and success made her secure.

 

 

Please note the blog posts on the first and third weeks of the month.

Prairie Girls

Lindsay

This is the final time I will be writing to you. I am Lindsay, the independent cowgirl. My brothers and I got caught in one of the first blizzards of the season and nearly didn’t make it home from school. Pa and Hank were able to save us. Other blizzards followed this one, and they destroyed cattle by the hundreds. Any cowboys caught outside died. Several ranchers lost everything as a result of the deep snows and severe cold.

You will have to read my book to see if the M Ranch survives and what happens to my family.

It’s Snowing!

                                                                                                            by Judy

                                                                                                                   

Like Lindsay, I attended a one-room school in Kansas and just as it snowed when Lindsay was young, it snowed when I was young and attending a one-room school. My family did not have a telephone until I was out of grade school nor was there a phone in my school. After a couple of hours of heavy snow falling, though, my dad would come in the Jeep to collect my brothers and me.

There were no official snow days yet, and if it wasn’t Friday, we were all back in school the next morning. We students were happy to have snow. Recesses and lunch hours were now spent playing Fox and Geese or building forts and waging battles with snowballs. Although our coats and gloves were placed near the one stove in the room, we often wore damp coats and gloves home.

However, there was one drawback to a good snowstorm for students attending my one-room school. There was not an inside bathroom. It was at least a mile from the school house. (Well, maybe not quite that far, but it seemed like it in the cold, blowing snow.) I will mention, too, it was not well-built. There were cracks in the walls and a gap between the walls and the roof. These building issues allowed for snow to drift inside and settle on the seat. On cold, snowy days…well, a trip to the restroom was not pleasant.

Killing Storms

Blizzards of the 1880’s

One of the main factors in the decline of the cattle industry in specific areas of the Great Plains occurred from climatic change. Killer blizzards over the years, followed by droughts in the summers, and overgrazing of the native grasses left many ranches in ruins. Thousands of cattle were destroyed in the storms, a couple of hundred cowboys were stranded and lost their lives, and no one bothered to count the number of Native Americans who died.

Driven by northern winds, the cattle simply started walking south. If they were on the open range they wandered into southern Kansas and Oklahoma. After the thaw, ranchers found them piled up against fences and frozen on top of each other. Passengers on trains were stranded along tracks buried in deep snows at the mercy of the weather for days. Life on the Great Plains stopped until the next thaw. The new cattle kingdom moved from the Great Plains into the Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana and was funded by foreign interests in many instances.

The following could be useful for additional research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Blizzard
http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/blizzard-of-1886/119
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/wdl/Climate/cok/index.asp?page=253

Prairie Recipes

Prairie Recipes

This is an older recipe Lindsay might have known about since they used a persimmon to determine the severity of the coming winter.

Persimmon Bars

1 cup persimmon pureed                            1 ¾ cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda                              1 teaspoon salt
1 egg                                                           1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sugar                                                 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup salad oil                                           ¼ teaspoon cloves
8 ounces chopped dates                              1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
(about 1 ½ cups lightly packed)                  lemon glaze (recipe follows)

Prepare puree; measure out one cup and stir in baking soda and set aside. In a large bowl, lightly beat egg; then stir in sugar, oil and dates. In another bowl, stir together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves; add to date mixture alternately with persimmon mixture, stirring just until blended. Add nuts. Spread batter evenly on a lightly greased and floured cookie sheet with a rim. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until top is lightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for five minutes. Prepare glaze and spread over the cookies. Let cool completely; then cut into bars. Store covered.

Lemon Glaze:
In a small bowl, stir together 1 cup powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons lemon juice until smooth. Spread over cookies.

The following is a fifty-year-old recipe for snow ice cream.

Toni’s Snow Ice Cream
2 eggs, beaten                                             ½ teaspoon salt
2 cups milk                                                 3 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups sugar                                           roaster pan of snow

Blend all of the ice cream ingredients with a mixer. Gradually add snow until the dessert is the desired consistency. Other flavorings may be added just like regular ice cream.

Blizzard

Storyteller’s Corner

Nearly 40 years ago, my soon-to-be-husband and I attended a wedding close to the Colorado/Nebraska border in January. I don’t remember paying attention to the weather forecast, but surely I did. I just knew I was singing in the wedding, so I had to go regardless of the weather.

You guessed it. A blizzard struck the day we were to return home to teach and attend school. We made it to Hayes, and being young, stupid and fearless, thought we could make it to Topeka on I-70. Getting low on fuel, we decided to exit the interstate at Russell, only we turned one exit too soon. We literally came to a stop at the first intersection we encountered due to the driving snow.

As we pondered what to do next, we were startled when a couple knocked on the window. They wanted to know if they could sit in our car to warm up because they were out of gasoline while trying to run their car’s heater. They informed us there was another car at the intersection with us. They, also, asked for shelter, and now the car was full.

I had a laundry basket of clean sheets and towels in the trunk of my car, and we used them to cover ourselves for added warmth. Someone had cookies and snacks we devoured. All the while, the snow was getting deeper and deeper. We discovered the other two couples were returning from skiing and visiting family over the Christmas break, and all of us were teachers except my fiancée.

My attentive husband-to-be had noticed a farm house after we turned off the interstate. He thought he could walk back to it and borrow a tractor to pull our car out and tow us to town. Once again, we thought something that dangerous was a good idea. He set out see if he could get us help.

The longer he took the more apprehensive I became about his plan. Finally, we heard the tractor and felt so relieved. The main reason it had taken so long was because the farmer did not believe my fiancée knew how to drive a tractor. (Remember he was the one who started driving one in second grade.) The farmer had followed him with his pick-up, and we climbed into the back covering our heads with the canvas he brought with him to ride to town.

It took two days for my car to dry out because so much snow had blown in through the grill and packed itself under the hood. I missed two days of school, as did the others stranded at the intersection. My future husband has asthma and ended up with frostbite on his lungs. Our decision-making skills have improved over the years together.

Christmas Letter

Dear friends and family,

By Judy

I like to write the first draft of my annual Christmas letter in August, or maybe September, for sure in October. I really must have it started in November. Okay, so we are now in the first week of December, and I have not started it yet. The timing of the writing of this Christmas letter is always an issue for me. Ideally, the end product would be in the mail by the first week of December. That is always the plan. That is never reality.

Oh, I always start thinking about it in August. And I think about it in September and in October. During Thanksgiving weekend I sometimes jot down a fleeting thought about some interesting tidbit of information I want to include in the letter. Some years I have actually composed a paragraph or two of the letter. However, when I am down to the deadline and must get the letter completed (or it becomes a Presidents’ Day letter), I can never find that piece of paper. Some years, too, I can’t find the Christmas cards that were such a good bargain at last year’s after-Christmas sale. (I do have a list of about fifty other reasons for not getting the letter out in a timely manner if you need them.)

Yet, the Christmas season is getting calmer as I age. For one thing, writing one check to each family member is easier than spending hours in crowded stores shopping to find just “the perfect gift.” Writing multiple checks to multiple stores to pay for those “perfect gifts” takes time.”  No, it is not as much fun to watch the ten and under grandchildren open an envelope and pull out a check as it is to watch them rip happy Santa Claus paper off a new doll or truck. On the good side, though, they don’t whine as much when they get a check as they do when they get underwear.  I’ve observed, too, the family members who are over twenty are very satisfied with finding a check in a Christmas envelope.

Well, Christmas is fast approaching, and I’ve got to find those Christmas cards. I need to reconcile my bank account, too, wouldn’t want to give a hot check for Christmas. And, of course, I’ve got to start my Christmas letter to family and friends…. Oh yes, Merry Christmas to all!