Turner Family History

Page 4 (of 4)

[ Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]

Now about the early roads—the roads here in 1917 were all dirt and the dust would be 6 or 8 inches deep in the summer. There was no telling how deep the mud would get in the winter and spring. There wasn’t any gravel until the people concerned donated as much money as they could and hired Johnson and Brent to lightly gravel the road from the Snake River Bridge to the foot of the hill. That was as much as we had until after World War I when (in about 1920 or 1921) the government built Highway 30 from Omaha, Nebraska to Portland, Oregon, which went through our territory. Later the State built connecting links into Payette and Weiser and also connected us with other valley towns. The roads were rough until oiling was complete. Our cars were mostly Model T Fords, Chevrolet Overlands, etc. If you wanted to go to Boise, it took a long day to go and come with very little time to spend there.

Our first tractors were cumbersome, heavy built contraptions and didn’t last long. It wasn’t until 1928 that we bought a case tractor that we could depend on. In 1930, we bought a Model 20 Caterpillar, and we sure made use of it. That is about the time we got enough land leveled and built up its condition until we started to raise potatoes (more fun).  We planted 20 acres to Early Bliss Triumphs and 28 acres to Idaho Rurals. We bought a Model A Ford truck for hauling (cost $800), a one-row planter (horse drawn), a one-row digger to go with our new 20 Cat and thought we were in business.

When the reds were ready to go in July, the same old story…no market. We had an offer of 80 cents per 100 pounds loaded. The older raisers refused to dig, but being greenhorns, we took on for what we could load in so many days. They had to be picked by hand, run over a field sorter, sacked and sewed, hauled and carried into refrigerated railroad cars. It was terribly hot weather and the first job of the summer for the pickers, so we didn’t get the field all out. There was no market at all until the last part of September when we got an offer of 25 cents with sacks furnished for one car a day. We took it on but run out of days before we did spuds.

The next year we planted 20 acres of reds and gave the rest of our seed potatoes away for 50 cents per 100. Danged if we didn’t get $2 for them. That was 1932; equal to $10 now. We had one good year when we had 100 acres and got from $1.25 to $2.00 loaded. Glory be, that put us out of debt. Bought a new Diamond T truck and the next year used it to load potatoes at 45 cents.

It got so you couldn’t sell a spud unless it was washed. We set up and washed potatoes for two years, and things got so bad the last two years we raised spuds we sold them in the ground to Jack Simplot for $35 per acre. That is how he got his start. He loaded them bulk in railroad cars, no inspection or refrigeration. I don’t know where he sent them.

As time wore on, so I stated before, we sold all the sheep in 1942 at which time we lost part of our method of fertilization as we always fenced a piece of ground where we would winter the ewes. When you have tons of hay and scatter it on the ground for sheep to run over, the first thing you know you have a grand amount of fertilizer. You couldn’t use this ground for spuds as it caused them to scale. However, it raised big corn.

We sold part of our hay baled out of the field until 1945 when we rented part of the ranch on a crop basis to Floyd Stoneman for row cropping. He farmed it for five years, John Almer for 3 years, Harold Wines for 10 years and Yano Bros. for eleven years and still going strong. We continue to farm the rest of it in hay, grain and corn and continue to feed enough cattle to consume all we raise. However, we continue to rotate the land so as to keep the land in a high state of production.

Elwyn and I have bought the interest of the other members of the family (as they wished to quit) until we acquired all the original acreage except for 60 acres, which Paul Saito now owns. We have had it all re-leveled by an expert contractor with a three percent grade, which makes it perfect for most crops.

John never married, and we bought his interest with the understanding that he stay with us, which he did until he had a fatal car accident in September 1972 at the age of 83.

Now we have incorporated the farm and are in the process of transferring management to younger members of the family. I am trying to reconcile myself to the fact that at the age of 80 years and after 60 years of farming this ranch it is time to quit. Elwyn is 68 his next birthday so he will have to follow the same way whether he wants to or not. We turned the management to Johnny, and with Larry Baker (Kathryn’s husband) and Jim Hogg (Elwyn’s son-in-law) they should be able to carry on for several years.

Well, it is time to quit this too.

Guy Turner