Homesteading Continued…

Life in our early years was a bit tough. The years before coming to Wyoming I pretty much lived in town. The convenience of town life is…well, convenient. Even though we lived on a paved county road (locals called it being “on the oil”), living 15 miles out of town, with the nearest neighbor 3 miles away, was extremely remote for me. We had no TV reception, and very poor radio reception. However, Red being a musician himself, and myself having long musical roots, and by combining two households, each with an extensive musical library, we were able to keep ourselves immersed in music as much as we wanted. Whew! That was sort of a run-on sentence…

For the size of Wheatland, we have a very nice library. I’ve never been much of a reader, and my younger son was too young yet to be reading much. I struggle with not comprehending much of what I read, so, I’m very easily bored with the written word. I have a hard time just getting through a magazine article, let alone an entire book. On the other hand, my husband, and my oldest son, were never without a book to read. They remain that way even today. I admire people who can read and remember what they’ve read. I’ve just not been that type. I tried, but it just didn’t happen.

We first lived at what I call “The Honeymoon” place.  Just a little run down place, used mostly for ranch-hands not terribly concerned with anything except a place to lay their head at night.  It was a converted 2-room schoolhouse.  At that time we had a very small mudroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms.  The entire structure was warmed by a homemade woodstove that didn’t draw very well.  We ordered a new woodstove from Montgomery Ward that first winter.  I believe it was called a “parlor stove”.   We had decided that would be our wedding present to each other.  It warmed our home and our hearts.

There were several times, in the year and a half we were there, that we’d see a car at the fence line by the road.  One time, I was near enough to the road that I went up and visited with the couple for awhile.  It turned out that they had also lived there and were as happy as we were.  We were given the first option to buy the 1000 acre ranch, at $100/acre, but we could barely handle the $150/month rent.  After we left the Honeymoon place, the ranch was bought by a couple who also loved it, but they were well off enough to remodel and add to the house.

—More another day 🙂