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Farm girl —Marian Pagel – B

Last week we met Marian Pagel and began learning about growing up on the Schroeder family farm just west of Marshall. They lived in a large house with an interesting history as a former stagecoach stop. Marian and her three oldest siblings were deeply involved in the farm operation from an early age. There was plenty to do helping their Mom with the garden and with food preparation and preservation and helping their dad with livestock and crops.

Marian explained how the small grain harvest in late summer or early fall brought an additional set of chores to support threshing small grains like oats and wheat.

“I learned how to shock grain. You did the bundles — they had twine on them and you’d pick them up and stack them together like a tepee — put them in one, big shock.”

Once the grain fields were cut and shocked, farmers collaborated to haul the shocks to a central location where a massive, mechanical threshing machine would separate the grain from the stalks and chaff.

Marian recalled that her dad used his team of black Percherons during threshing.

“They used them to pull the bundle wagons. I remember there was a runaway one time. One team of horses came around the grove and turned like this and everything went – no one got hurt.”

Marian described the work involved in supporting threshing crews.

“When they had threshing, they had big crews and they’d go from farm to farm. When we had the threshing crews, you fed them – morning lunch, dinner, afternoon lunch, and supper because they’d work late into the night. We were cooking constantly, sometimes baking bread twice a day.”

Marian smiled at another memory from threshing time. “Well, my Grandpa taught me how to drive a car [around the shocks in the field]. He said, ‘Every bundle you knock over, you have to build up again,’ so I learned how to drive,” she remembered, laughing.

Marian recalled how her family suffered a great loss in April of 1942.

“The house burned down in April. I was probably 11 years old. It was early morning. Dad got up to do the chores and when he came back out of the barn, he saw the house on fire. So he came and yelled, ‘Fire.'”

“We all came downstairs. My mother was on crutches. My brother, Bill, was a baby, so he had to be carried out. Dad put us in a car and drove way back by the trees so we wouldn’t see it. And we came out with nothing – no clothes or anything because the house burned so fast — it was windy. Sparks flew to the next farm over, it was so windy.”

The Schroeders were temporarily homeless, yet still had a farm to run, complete with livestock that needed daily care, including dairy cows that required milking. Their short-term solution to this dilemma was just a mile away – the County Poor Farm.

Most Minnesota counties had a Poor Farm at one time. They were a means of providing public support for needy persons such as indigent elderly persons, emotionally or mentally ill persons, and impoverished families. Lyon County’s Poor Farm was west of Marshall near the Redwood River. The home is still there on 225th Avenue, owned by Rich and Mary Ahlers, and is host to Poor Farm Woodworks, a custom woodworking shop.

Marian recalled, “We moved to the Poor Farm. We lived there for – probably three months. I remember very little about the Poor Farm. I know we didn’t have any clothes . . . people must have given us clothes.”

Marian described what she could remember of the layout of the Poor Farm’s house.

“There was a big kitchen. In the middle of the house there was a huge, wide stairway and that’s where we were upstairs. I don’t know which side of the stairway we were on. The only thing I remember, there was this little lady (who was mentally disabled) and she would hide and watch us kids. I was scared to death of her. Every time I would come down those stairs, I was looking for her because I was afraid of her. That’s my memory of the Poor Farm,” Marian ended with a laugh.

Marian’s family did not stay long at the Poor Farm because her folks created another temporary home while they built a new house on their farm.

“They built a garage on the farm place and then we lived in that garage,” she said. “The kitchen and the living room were downstairs and they took wire and made (the upstairs) into fourths. So, Mom and Dad had a bedroom; the hired man had a bedroom; the boys had a bedroom; and the girls had a bedroom. There were four spots up there, but the walls were sheets. It had to be in the summertime because it was so hot in the top of that garage.”

The Schroeder kids returned to their farm routine, but when they finished chores, they had a new pastime that involved their new home.

“I remember we kids, when we weren’t doing anything, we’d sit and watch them lay brick, she said. “We watched it being built.”

Life on the Schroeder family farm involved much more than farm chores and recovering from a house fire. The kids attended school, hung out with friends, and invented their own good times. We’ll explore those times next week.

I welcome your participation in and ideas about this exploration of prairie lives. You may reach me at prairieviewpressllc @gmail.com.

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