Page:Bohemians in Central Kansas.pdf/46

 mostly “nubbins,” and several tons of hay for the oxen. Before freezing weather came I laid up a sod stable which I covered with coarse bluestem hay laid on poles. These I had cut in the nearest wooded creek, on vacant land, and had also hauled my firewood from the same place. I had sowed broadcast ten acres of wheat and five acres of rye, which got a good start before cold weather and made some pasture. The real winter weather, however, did not arrive until the middle of January, when several heavy snowstorms in quick succession piled up big drifts which lasted pretty well into spring. The first summer of my stay here my parents in Wisconsin had become so interested in Kansas land that they authorized me to purchase for them a fine half section of unimproved railroad land lying just alongside of mine. With the opening of spring my father and eldest sister came out here and made their home with me temporarily. Father bought a yoke of wellbroken oxen and a milch cow, while sister Ann kept house for us. This took the most disagreeable task off my shoulders, and enabled me to devote most of my time to the building of my father's dwelling house, a substantial oneand-a-half-story stone structure twenty by thirty by fourteen feet. I also built for him a small barn. And thus the second summer rapidly passed away.

In the late fall the rest of the family, having sold off everything in Wisconsin, moved into their new home here, and so the entire family were united again. In the meantime new settlers had been pouring in in a steady stream. By this time all the available government land, as well as the more desirable sections of railroad land, had been taken up. In 1878 all the proceeds from my farm which I could spare sold for $93.40, and the 1879 crop brought me $161.55. In the summer of 1879 I exchanged my oxen for a horse team and paid a difference of $85.

The following spring I took the most important step in my life, when I married Catherine Peterka on the 20th day of March, 1880, being then in my twenty-eighth year and my wife in her twenty-fourth. This event put new life into me, and as my wife was a willing worker and helpmate, we both buckled down to our work with hearty good will. That spring and summer we planted and kept in good growing condition thirteen thousand forest-tree seedlings, started an orchard of seventy-five apple, cherry and peach trees, besides tending to our other farm work. My wife also milked two cows and kept a flock of chickens. Our income that year from all sources was $271.20. The following spring our daughter Rose was born, and in September of that year my father died after a short illness. This year also witnessed a new departure in the harvesting of small grain with a header, when I, my father and father-in-law purchased a ten-foot-cut Hodge header for $280. With it we cut all of our grain and enough of our neighbors’ to amount to two hundred and seventy acres. The sum total of our farm products that year was $374.30, and the year following $385.58.

The year 1884 found me, my brothers, father-in-law and neighbor Vincent Ptacek, partners in a new twelve-horse Belleville threshing rig, horse power, which cost us over $850. For the next eight years we did all of our own threshing and that of the entire neighborhood besides, with this machine.

All statements up to this time have been taken from my diary, but after I went into the threshing business, as well as farming, I was a very busy man and discontinued my journal. Therefore all further statements are from memory only.