Homesteading (Sorta)

11 Jul 2011 1 Comment

by The Mom in Uncategorized

When I moved my little family from Wisconsin to Wyoming in 1982, I had no idea what to expect. Well, that’s not exactly an accurate statement either. I had visited once and was wrapped up in the romantic Western way of life.

I was used to living in big, old, Victorian type houses. The frugality of Wyoming citizens seemed to allow for more basic residences. The style and size that weren’t difficult to clean, heat, or maintain. They were/are small. The economy of the past, maybe 40 years, has shown a change, but the homes my family would be living in, in the early times, would be small.

Red and I first rented a ranch house 15 miles from town. It was in the middle of a 1,000 acre cattle ranch and was no more than 800 square feet. This house was the only one you could see from the road since going west of Mule Shoe (another ranch homestead). This house had been a one-room school house that had been used in the early 1900’s. Since Julius Gallager was the oldest attending, when his teacher moved on, he was chosen to replace her. When we moved there, Julius was in his 80’s. He died at 105. He was a fascinating man, but that will have to be another story. We also learned that Julius’ wife’s Uncle, from Switzerland, had lived there. One day while walking around the place I found a partially buried mailbox with the name Barnhart painted on it. It was given to Elisabeth that very week.

We were pretty remote. The nearest telephone was at the neighbor to our east about 3 miles away. When I inquired about phone service I was told that it would cost something like $100/foot to lay the line. We never had phone service in the entire year and a half we lived there. It took about 3 months for me not to hear a phone ring. After that, it was actually quite pleasant.

Wood was the only source of heat for our little house. We burned pine cut from the nearby mountains. Since Red was working in Craig, CO all week, and only home on the weekends, we spent the majority of the weekend cutting and splitting wood. We didn’t own a chainsaw then, so we would use a bow saw. He worked us pretty hard. His goal was to make sure we wouldn’t run out of wood before the next weekend. It was tough for the boys. They were only 9 and 6 and definitely not used to working so hard. They did the very best they could, and slept really well those nights.

The prairie near the Medicine Bow mountain range was active with antelope, coyotes, cotton-tails, and jack rabbits. Many times we would see eagles and owls. The mountain blue birds were a treat, as well as the Stellar Jays, and the Magpies.

We would occasionally see a rattlesnake, but Red was very good at chopping their heads off with a shovel. When I first met Red, he was working on the pipeline in the Red Desert near Rawlins, WY. One of the first tasks of the day was to roll the big sections of pipe and kill the rattlesnakes. Every week he would bring home the trophy rattles in a sandwich bag.

To be continued…

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