Turner Family History

On January 1, 1917, Dad, John and I arrived in Weiser with 10 head of the best horses we owned, with some equipment and household stuff. There was a shack house and barn, but didn’t either amount to much as the temperature went down to -20.

The folks had their house plans drawn up with an architect in Boise, so that is where we started. The contract was let for $7,800 with the understanding we would do the excavating and haul the material. The rest of the family stayed in Washington to finish up as Dad agreed to plow part of that place in his deal with Johnson and Brent. Also, Rose and Estelle were teaching school there and were planning to marry two young farmers there, so that is where we left them.

Dad got his sister (our Aunt Ella—we called her Aunt El) to come from Rupert to cook for us (Dad, John and Guy). John and I went to hauling brick (45,000 of them) digging the basement, hauling gravel sand, lumber by the carload, cement, etc. – farming in our spare time. I farmed and John continued to haul material. I think it was the 1^st of July when we got into the house. The rest of the family had arrived. The girls were anxious to get in because Dan and Sam Lyle were coming the 4^th.

So much for that; now the sad part. We weren’t cautious enough in instigating the water supply or the operating cost. We knew there was a $20 per acre bond on the land for construction of a pumping facility but didn’t look into power charges. So the first water bill we got was for $10 instead of $5.

There was about 80 acres of hay in production, but the rest was unleveled and had been dry farmed until it was farmed out and so hard that what water we did get didn’t help much…it wouldn’t penetrate. However, just let some alfalfa seed get scattered on it even with a short water supply and you sure had bought yourself a job of haying. We averaged 7 tons on ripper land, 9 ton in Moore’s Hollow, but we still had bought into a losing battle.

The pump pipeline from the river pump station West to the Charley Joseph place had been buried underground (it was made of fur staves, untreated) deteriorated until the irrigation company had to dig it out and replace it. This was no easy job to do either financially or physically, but some way we got it done. However, we didn’t get water in the spring of 1918 until the first of June. Of course, it had to be a dry year; no rain at all after February 1. The grain was mostly a total loss, but that everlasting haying job was still with us.

John left for the Army the day we got the water. Incidentally, Oliver Conner was in the same bunch (going to the Army). The irrigation district added another 200 horsepower pump to the river plant. It helped quite a lot with the water supply.

We didn’t have any commercial fertilizer, so the best we could do was to sow some more hay and plow out the old. That don’t sound too hard, but you must remember that horses were our only power. We used a bottom gang plow with eight big horses, and you wanted to have plenty of oats. We had to raise 20 acres of oats per year for horse feed. We started plowing the old meadows and then could raise corn. The grain yield got up to 50 bushels. We raised hogs, some ranch sheep and fed some cattle. Dad managed to keep us milking cows; not enough for a business but to buy the groceries. Also, we sold the extra hay and grain.

John got out of the Army in the spring of 1919, and he always liked sheep so we bought about 400 young ewes, put in extra pasture and thought it would help get rid of the hay (but, no way).

About 1921 we had a depression and prices hit bottom—hay 4 cents, wheat 75 cents, hogs 5 cents, lambs 6-7 cents, etc. All three of the banks in Weiser went under. We didn’t have much cash in there to lose. I don’t remember, but suppose it was money we had borrowed through one of them. The Idaho First National of Boise closed, but got refinanced through R.F.C., a government finance corporation set up to help defunct banks and agriculture.

Well, we managed to exist as we were operating with slave labor (I called it). There were six of us brothers after Elwyn got old enough to work, and we practically lived just to work.

Well, in 1924, we bought a band of 1,000 head of fine wool range ewes, sold our ranch ewes to help pay for them, and rented a grazing timber lease from Boise-Payette Lumber Co. at New Meadows for summer use. The fall of 1925 we bought another band of 1,000 head and ran into trouble. We had them on ranch pasture on hay and grain stubble in very wet weather. The grain heads that were left on the ground sprouted and grew moldy causing them to be very poisonous. The whole band was affected and we lost 350 head in a day’s time ($13 per head; $1.50 pelt recovery).

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From Kathryn Turner Baker