Bowyer Farm

Previous entries have referred to the Bowyer Farm in regards to the management or, mismanagement, i’ve allowed on the property. Though i am no longer leasing it out and have begun low input, high animal impact to bring it to better production than before (the goal was to reduce the amount of toxic endophyte fescue and i believe that will be accomplished but it could have been done with much less invasive practices i have since learnt), it will take years.

This entry, however, is to report some history and memories i have put together. It is interesting to me that the bulk of the farm (the exception was those 10 acres which exchanged hands at extremely high price – this is a mystery to me) has stayed in my family since January 29, 1878 to my 3rd great grandparents.

History of Bowyer Farm, Linn County, Missouri

US granted to State of Missouri – June 10, 1852

State of Missouri patented to Hannibal & St Joseph Railroad Co – Sep 20, 1852

Hannibal & St Joseph Railroad to Spencer P Bowyer and wife Sarah A January 29, 1878 for $656.08 (82.01 acres) $8.00/acre

Spencer P and Sarah A Bowyer family to Walter M Bowyer, Sep 1, 1898 for 72 acres $1575 ($21.88/acre)

Spencer P and Sarah A Bowyer to Price Bowyer, Nov 27,1899 for $5440 for 10 acres ($544/acre)

Price Bowyer  and his wife, Malinda Bowyer to Lester Phillips and his wife Floy Phillips Mar 27, 1908.  $3000 for 10 acres ($300/acre)

Lester Phillips and his wife, Floy Phillips to Dallas A Falconer Oct 26, 1914.  10 acres for $4500 ($450/acre)

Dallas A Falconer to Walter M Bowyer Dec 21, 1914.  Ten acres for $900

Walter M Bowyer and Edna, his wife, to Dallas Falconer and Hermia (Bowyer) Falconer, his wife, on Jul 18, 1940.  82 acres for $4000.  ($49/acre)

Dallas and Hermia to their son, Virgil Lee Falconer and his wife Virginia Pulliam

              June 13, 1946 the east half of the northeast quarter (82 acres +/-) for $4000 ($49/acre)

              August 31, 1946 the SW quarter of the NE quarter (40 acres +/-) for $1500 ($37.50/acre)

Virgil Lee and Virginia to Tauna M (Falconer) Powell upon his death in 2009.  Appraised to stepped up basis of $1200/acre.

Unfortunately, I do not know much history of life on that farm.  Why do we take interest after everyone who was involved has died?  I do remember working calves and yearlings in the smaller of the two barns left on the property – the one which has the home-built head catch.  Quite rudimentary, but it worked.  Grandpa had feed bunks in a large fenced lot just to the south and east where he fed Silver Moon Grain Plus pellets to his heavy grass yearlings for a couple weeks before selling them at Milan or Green City sale barns.  Until livestock trailers became affordable and popular, we used a ramp to load into 2-ton trucks fitted with stock racks out the south door of the barn previously mentioned.  Up until I took over in about 2011, cattle were still loaded out that south door but in livestock trailers.

When i was a little tyke, Grandpa would let me ‘drive’ the pickup in super low, while he threw small round bales off the back to the cows. Of course, he would put the pickup in granny low even when i wasn’t there, but it made me feel helpful and involved – it is a good strategy for piquing the interest of the next generation.

There is an old cistern/well to the west of the dairy barn which was set up with a very slow electric pump which supplied water to a tank for the yearling cattle when they were shut up the night before load out next morning or whenever it was needed.  The pump took a very long time to fill the tank so we’d turn it on before feeding the cattle or taking out hay or whatever needed doing.  Later, he set some home-made poles in the ground to the windmill in the center of the field and cattle watered out of the Ritchie fountain.  Later, we set up a tire tank with more holding capacity since refill is slow out of the old pond on the west 40.  The windmill and well have long been abandoned by 2010. The west 40 had always been a brome hay field in my memory, but i incorporated it as part of the grazing programme.

In the big dairy barn, we kept our horses for riding out on the farm to check cattle when I was up visiting.  It was handy place to keep them instead of hauling them every day.  I don’t think Grandpa rode as much when I wasn’t there.  He certainly indulged my passion for horseback riding and getting to check the cattle whilst riding with my grandpa was pretty much the top of my life at that time in the 1970s.  It was sad to return to my home in the town of Mexico vs the freedom of the farm, cattle, and land.

I don’t know for sure, but I think my dad, Stanley (b. 23 Sep 1940-d. 04 Sep 1962), and his brother, my Uncle Stephen (b. 23 Mar 1942-d. 15 Jan 2016) spent their earliest years at this house and farm.  I remember Grandma saying that’s where they ‘went to housekeeping’ after they were married on February 10, 1940 (which is also my birthday in 1962!), so that would make sense.  But did my great grandparents also live there before them? When were the house, cellar, chicken house, and barns built? Sadly, i simply do not know.

There was very little of the house to explore even when I was young.  In 2011, I had the old house razed, the well and cellar filled in since all were hazards by this point. My son, Nathan and family friend, Christian Finck picked up and loaded all the old chimney bricks which are in storage and i hope to find another use for them.

Corriente Cows

As you know from reading my blog, i really like Corriente cows.  I’m nearly out of the purebred ones, but most of my replacements have a percentage of Corriente in them and that adds to the cross.  It’s a slim profit raising Corrientes unless you can find a niche market.  Also, they will not ‘finish’ like a beef cow, so are far too lean with next to no fat cover to make it profitable to butcher them.  (However, the meat is absolutely outstanding and that is pretty much all we butcher for ourselves.) So they remain relegated to entertainment (rodeo).

Anyway, a short article came out in the most recent edition of Working Ranch and I’d like to share it with you.

Shabbat Shalom!

tauna

 

 

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E+ Fescue History

Not even going to bore you with a long history of a specific grass – I don’t even want to read about it.  Given the little dab of history i’ve uncovered that was already known about toxic endophyte infested tall fescue, E+ tall fescue being sold as a wonder grass in the early 1940’s must surely have been one of the most duplicitous marketing schemes ever played on the American farmer.  And we fell hook, line, and sinker for it.  Now planted and still being planted on at least 35-40 million acres across the midwest and southwest United States.

Tall fescue has good attributes – it surely does.  You can overgraze it, trample it, burn it, freeze it, mow it, dilute it (with other forages), plough it and it will come back year after year even stronger yet.  But, as i have shared earlier, that persistence is purchased with losses in the health of livestock and decimated wildlife forage and habitat.

As evidenced by the following documents, I suspect we could keep digging backwards in time and discover that at least one cultivar of Tall Fescue has been wreaking havoc for many, many years.

These two pages are scanned from “Forages,” a 1973 college level curriculum.   Note that the New Zealand worker reported his observations in 1913. (on page 300)

A page scanned from “The Clifton Park System of Farming and Laying Down Land to Grass” by Robert Elliot.  Quoted here as seeing in a book already written as to the New Zealand species of tall fescue containing ergot.  (we now know that it is ergovaline produced by the fungus endophyte which is hosted by the fescue plant)

County Rest Home Provides Shelter for Many Oldsters

Here is an article written by Lena Green Rogers and published in the July 28, 1953 edition (Volume LXX, No. 59) of the Daily News-Bulletin, Brookfield, MO about a rest home that was located about a mile west of Linneus, MO on Hwy B. Many of you may remember it as the Infirmary on Infirmary Hill.

Please share this story around and i want to encourage you to add stories and photos to the comments area of this blog.  It would be keen to gather more details of this historic, yet long-gone, institution which provided homes to many who had nowhere else to go.

Huge thank you to Tom Morris for having a copy of this article in his desk drawer! (i have, by and large, left the sentence structure and punctuation as it was published in the paper).  I plan to visit with his parents, Bill and Crystle Morris in the near future to collect more info.

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A contract was signed on November 1, 1948 whereby the State of Missouri agreed to furnish financial aid to the homeless and aged of Linn County, providing the county, which retrained ownership, would still be responsible for the upkeep of the 28 acre tract of land and all buildings thereon.  Thus “the County Farm” sank into oblivion and the Linn County Rest Home, located one mile west of Linneus, Missouri, the county seat, came into being.

The patients are housed in a two-winged, grey stone building which contains ten private rooms, four wards, and five bathrooms, as well as a spacious dining room and ample kitchen space.  It was constructed in 1898 at a cost of $10,000.  However, at today’s prices its estimated value is $100,000.  (2015 dollars would be $879,446).

The superintendents, Mr. and Mrs. Vern Turner, are not strangers in this community as they once lived on a farm north of Brookfield.  They are the parents of four children.  That they are not amateurs in this great humanitarian work has already been proven.  They operated “the farm” three years previous to the state-county operation, which, this fall will make a total of eight years they have been there.  Certainly they merit the praise of every resident of the county.  Periodically they visit other similar institutions and compare methods.  They have sought and received much valuable information in the matter of handling border-line mental cases from the management of State Hospital No. 2, at St. Joseph, Missouri.  So far very few patients have become so unruly, they have had to be sent away from the rest home.

At the present time, fifteen women and sixteen men, whose ages range from 39 to 90 years, are being cared for.  Of that number , five are bed patients and two are sightless.  The oldest on record is a man who passed away in 1948 at the age of 95 years.

“I have the best group of women to be found anywhere,”  said Mrs, Turner, “they are just like children — will do anything I ask them to do.”

Those whose health will permit, assist in light tasks such as washing dishes, making beds, and preparing vegetables.  A great deal of canning is done.  The largest amount that was ever “put up” was in 1950 when 1400 quarts of fruits and vegetables awaited consumption — that winter.

Of the men, Mr. Turner said: Most of them are quite feeble. “They’d help if they could,” then after a pause he added this information, “as a group our patients are from fairly good families, and with one exception, they all have ‘next of kin.'”

Most of Them Keep Busy

That one exception is Charles Overjohn, who at one time was Brookfield’s beloved blacksmith.  But never let it be said he does not pay his way.  He is now 78, but continues to fire the not-too-good furnace with as much punctuality as he did when he started 28 years ago.  He likes to “figure,” too.

Last week he reminded Mrs. Turner that, at the present rate, she will have prepared 33,945 meals — just for the patients alone — by January 1, 1954.  No doubt he is right, because all except the bedridden have excellent appetites.  Practically all vegetables are raised in the farm’s two large gardens, five cows supply the dairy products.

The interest the Turners take in their “girls and boys” as they call their patients, is almost unbelievable.

For instance, after they took over, they burned every piece of old bedding in the place and replaced it with new which they purchased themselves.  And that isn’t all.  They purchased new dishes, towels, and table coverings.

Religious services, while always welcomed by the superintendents, are not held with any regularity with the exception of The Assembly of God, of Bucklin, Missouri, which sends a group out twice a month.  Occasionally, a group of entertainers breaks the monotony.

Because of the lack of help and the many duties pertaining to health, food, and shelter, birthdays are only celebrated by the addition of some special tidbit.

Speaking of health, four times each year a nurse from the state health department accompanies the state inspector to the home and all cases are reviewed.  If any changes are indicated their instructions are carried out to the letter.  Other than that, all medical attention is in the competent hands of Dr. Roy Haley, of Brookfield, the Home’s physician.  He responds readily whenever he is needed.

Life Has Lighter Side

Primarily, the Home is a place of shelter, but there is also a lighter side of life for those forgotten men and women, who, due to their own personalities, enliven things  One patient, who weighs only 90 pounds is a Czechoslovakian.  She speaks English fluently except when she is visited by her relatives.  Then she rattles away in her native tongue and immediately puts on a “swing your partner” dance for which in her day she always used to capture first prize.

Another woman patient, claims the privilege of helping unload the supply truck on its arrival from town, but last week she was stymied.  Before the attendant could stop her she had broken the seal on a can of condensed buttermilk.  After rubbing her face and hands with it, she put some of it to her nose and said: “Golly, I don’t know what that stuff is!”

Life’s ebb and flow determines the number to be cared for, naturally.  A little over a year ago two extra beds had to be set up to accommodate the number seeking admittance, but right now the home is not filled to capacity.  The superintendents have the say-so as to whom shall be taken in, but, so far, they have never refused to admit anyone who has no other home to which he can go.

Visitors are always welcome on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons from one to five o’clock.

The guest register (which Mr. Turner calls his hobby) now contains over 8000 names.  Among last year’s 972 signers was a young man from Venezuela and a woman from India.

Yes, you may make a gift to those unfortunate people, such as candy, fruit, or cakes.  Many are received each month from individuals and organizations alike and all are highly appreciated.

Useable clothing is always in demand, but lawn chairs and benches and rocking chairs are especially needed at this particular time.

The inmates of the home are only children of yesterday who have “come to the end of the end of the long, long road,” Do not forget them!

And to those of you to whom life has been kind, I recall to your minds the words of a well-known hymn…. “Count Your Blessings, Name Them One By One.”

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Notes:

Mrs Vern Turner is Nellie Stevenson

Their four children are:

Crystle Turner Morris

Bill Turner (deceased)         twin brother, Bob also deceased

Donald Turner