"A Mell of a Hess"
Delve into a surprising, hand-written account of farming in west-central Iowa 130 years ago.
Century Farms are an important part of agricultural heritage here in Calhoun County and across Iowa. The Century Farms program in Iowa honors families who’ve owned the same parcel of farmland for 100 years or more—and oh boy, the stories you uncover when you dig into this history.
The Century Farm program began in 1976 as part of America’s bicentennial celebration. Since then, more than 20,000 Iowa farms have been recognized. My family (the Dougherty family) is blessed to own two Century Farms in Elm Grove Township in Calhoun County.
As I’ve documented the history of various Iowa Century Farms through the years, the stories that survive of any Century Farm often depend on the keeper of the history. In the case of the Wulkow family in Sac County (just northwest of Yetter), that keeper of the history was Ernest Wulkow (1885-1979). He was born on his family’s farm two miles west and three miles south of Lytton.
“In 1960, Ernest handwrote many pages of memories in a notebook,” said Barbara (Wulkow) Gregory, his granddaughter. “We were always hearing the family stories when I was growing up.”
These stories are often sobering. Just five years prior to Ernest’s birth, his father, Carl Wulkow, had purchased 100 acres of Sac County land in Coon Valley Township in 1880. To say times were tough is an understatement.
“When I was seven years old, I had to start work in the field,” wrote Ernest Wulkow, who received a fourth-grade education before he had to start working full-time. “My first job was to drag with two horses and a two-section drag after seeding oats, walking all day. Then when I came in at night, I had to chore till dark, then eat supper, then to bed.”
Then he and his family were up at 5 a.m. the next morning, every morning, to milk the cows. “We didn’t have barns like we have now,” he noted. The cows, heifers, steers and bull were all in an open shed. We had to go in there and find the cow we wanted to milk. After we found her, we got her all lined up and sat down and started to milk. Then some darn steer or another cow would come along and bump her in the ‘bettey’ on the other side and upset us.”
Whenever the cow was in heat, Ernest recalled having “a heck of a time” keeping the bull away from that cow. “In the winter, the cows were covered with snow. There would be lots of manure on them. The manure would be 6 inches deep in the shed—hard to walk in.”
Chores included carrying straw from the straw stack, which was 100 or 200 feet from the barn. “In the winter, when the snow was blowing, we would have an awful time getting some over to the shed,” wrote Ernest, whose family didn’t build a barn until the spring of 1901. “Whenever I would have a fork-full and get halfway to the shed, the wind would blow it away.
The hay was stacked on the north side of the shed. “We would have to cut it with a hay knife,” Ernest wrote. “The damn thing was dull most of the time and wouldn’t cut. When we would get a fork-full piled up and started for the shed with it, then the good old wind and snow came around the stack and blew half of it away. Those were the good old days!”
In 1894, when Ernest was nine years old, his father told him, “Well Ernest, I think you’re old enough to plow.” “So he started me out with a 14-inch walking plow with two old horses,” Ernest recalled. “One horse was white and the other one was black. The white one was Lena, and she went like hell all the time. The black one’s name was Kate, and she was slow as the devil. I had an awful time learning to plow. The ground was hard, and I could hardly keep the plow in the ground, but I soon caught on, and then it worked a lot better.”
Ernest and his brother Richard had to do all the fall plowing. In 1895, Ernst also started to plow corn. “We had a couple of Avery corn plows; they had four big shovels on them. The shovels were 6 inches wide and 10 inches long—big enough to plow your grandmother out of the grave. Later on, Dad bought a riding corn plow that worked better.”
Then came haying time. “Dad would send me out to cut wild hay,” Ernest wrote. “We had lots of ponds in them good old days, and the grass was 5 feet long around the pond. I had to keep on cutting till I got up to the water. Then my sickle would ball up. I just had a ‘mell of a hess’ to get out of it.”
The Wulkows let the hay dry for two or three days, and then they raked it. “We had to pitch the hay on the rack wagon. The rack didn’t have no sides on it, and it was hard to load. Whenever I loaded a load, half of the time we would upset before we got home.”
The Wulkows occasionally socialized with some of the neighbors. “Whenever somebody had a birthday, they would get a keg or two of beer and have a good old time,” Ernest said. “Dad and Maw left Rich and me home to do the chores that night. They would always leave after dinner and take the rest of the kids along. Rich and I would hurry up a little so we got the chores done a little early. Then we would start out walking, sometimes two or three miles.”
When the brothers arrived at the party, their father would corner them and ask an array of questions. “Have you got the chores done? Did you feed the horses? Did you feed the pigs? Did you give the pigs water? Did you pick up the eggs? Did you milk all the cows? Did you feed the little calves some milk?”
“We would say, yes, yes, yes,” said Ernest, who noted that he and his brother arrived at these parties about the time the sun went down. “Dad would take us up to the house. They would give us a piece of bread and butter and a chicken leg or wing and a piece of cake. Then Dad would say, ‘Well, it’s time to go home,’ and then we would hitch up the old team to the spring wagon and go home. Once in awhile we would get a chance to play with the other kids.”
Watch for more stories from the Wulkow farm in upcoming Keepin’ It Rural columns.
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