Beginning Of Machinery

By Art Lundgren
Transcribed by Virginia Clawson Freberg
1977

All of the work had to be done by Amy (I don't know who that is) and me - we used scythes to cut hay and more hay until about 1915 when machinery began to be used.

The land we cleared mostly by hand with horses. Some of the luckier ones with money had pullers & had different things to help them, but otherwise there was no machinery until about 1916 when some of the other farmers began to get more machines and hay rakes and one-way ploughs.

Land began to open and they had already dug up the ties and the rails off the railroads for roads. The county and state began to improve the roads a little bit.

People moved in - pretty near every section had a couple people living on it - some of them stayed on the land just a little bit so that they could prove up and get their land for speculation. Others, of course, tried to make a go with all they knew.