Brandon Farm

When I was growing up in Lowry, the Brandon farm seemed to me like a hobby farm, somewhere my grandfather would spend time in the summer playing farmer.  Ignorant grandson. For the son of an immigrant, that farm was a sacred bond to his 1879 immigrant father's dream of land ownership and the struggle for a better life for his family.

My great-grandfather Nils emigrated from Norway,  worked on the railroad until he had accumulated enough "wealth" to purchase some land, which he added to over a 20 year period.

What follows are memories of the "Hoplin Farm" from my father, Glenn Hoplin, written for me as part of a "Hoplin Family History" I assembled nearly 10 years ago.

{Editor note: I think you will be surprised – and possibly bored – by the level of detail in these descriptions. I find it fascinating and the type of record unusual in a family history. The author of these epistles was notorious for his curiosity, particularly about mechanical apparati. This was all dictated to me from memory.} 

The Hoplin farm is located in Brandon Township, Douglas County, Minnesota on the south shore of Little Chippewa Lake. Nils O. Hoplin emigrated in 1879 from Norway and purchased pieces of land, accumulating about 200 acres. Much of it is spread out, but connected with many hills and sloughs. Nil’s wife Hanna died in 1923 and Nils in 1927, leaving the farm in estate. Ole was the administrator. Bessie and Nettie were daughters living on the home place. Somehow Ole, Bessie & Nettie became owners and began operating the farm. The farm was managed with the help of numerous hired men over time: Dan Fry, Bill Jacobson, Frank Bartos, August Lehn, Wencil Simek, and others. Field work was done with horses, a team of “blacks” – Bertie & Coalie – very dependable and well matched. The second team – Beauty & Min – with Beauty very high-strung and Min lazy - was not quite the same story. All four were used on the grain and corn binder and at times on the manure spreader and gang plow.

The house was built of logs and had a stone cellar with an entrance from the outside through double cellar doors. Potatoes and canned goods were stored here. Through the years an addition to the north provided an entry, a pantry and kitchen. 

An addition to the south provided a little used living room. It had a pump organ, a davenport and a few chairs.



Upstairs over the living room was a large bedroom. The central area of this log house was a combination living-dining room and kitchen with a wood burning stove. There was a small downstairs bedroom to the east which also contained a very steep stairs to the upper level. There were two upstairs bedrooms as well as access to the added south bedroom. The front bedroom was always for the hired man. Most hired men worked the winter months for $12/mo and room, board and laundry. From May to October, they were paid $30/mo. There was no indoor plumbing. The outhouse was in the willows behind the house. I slept many nights in that first bedroom, often needing to visit the outhouse in the night. Occasionally, to avoid the steps I relieved myself through an open window, with a rusty screen as incriminating evidence of the misdemeanor.

Nils & grandchildren by the "summer kitchen"

The house was essentially abandoned in the summer months except for sleeping, as the separate summer kitchen to the north became the living area. The summer kitchen was divided in half, the north for food preparation and everyday living area. It had a wood fired kitchen range and a dining table. There was a window near the table that allowed us to observe what was happening outside. 

"Mail route" road between house and barn

A mail route ran between the house and the barn. The south half was used to feed the threshing or silo filling crews. Sometimes there were fifteen men to feed. Nettie and Bessie prepared the meals. They usually would go into the yard and snare a number of chickens, chop off the heads and prepare them for the work crew. Good eating. The summer kitchen had bare studs but the kitchen was wallpapered with newspaper. An addition to the north added extra kitchen space and a well dug by hand in the corner produced no water so it was converted into a cooler with a box, with a rope and pulley for lowering the food into the well to keep it cool.

Hand washing was done on a metal washstand outside. Water was taken from the rain barrel next to the winter house. Since this was outside, you could empty the basin with a toss – no slop pail to deal with.

1941 - soon after the arrival of "electricity"

There was no electricity until REA became available in 1938.

Making ice

There was a building between the house and the barn for storing ice that was harvested from Little Chippewa Lake. All the ice was cut with a two handled ice saw. Ice was piled high and covered with sawdust. This building was later converted to a garage after Nettie and Bessie learned to drive their 1926 Dodge. 

The barn was built in 1900 and was a basement type. The west side was grade level with four doors opening to the barnyard. The east side was the hay storage level and accessible through large doors up a ramp.The barn had a cupola in the middle with a horse weather vane on top. I shot a couple holes in the horse and was severely chastised. The barn had a hay track going both ways from the middle of the driveway. It had an Olson Hay Carrier on the track that could be turned 180 degrees to deliver the hay north or south. The hay was cut with horse drawn ground driven mowers pulled by Bertie and Coalie. They seemed to know when a kid was driving as the would walk slow so the mower would plug up and they could rest. They also seemed to know when it was near lunchtime and they refused to turn and make another round. 

Nelson barn, but illustrates a haying operation

Hay was raked with a dump rake, put in windrows and then into individual cocks. From there it was pitched by hand into the hayrack. The hay slings were 1⁄2” ropes – two ropes to a common ring and individual rings on opposite ends. Some slings had three ropes.

After the load was half full, a second sling as laid on top of the hay so the hay could be unloaded by halves. When the load was full, the team pulled the rack to the barn. The team was unhooked and hitched to double trees for pulling the hay on each sling up into the barn. When the sling reached the top of the barn, the track below the ridge pole carried the hay to where it was desired and at trip rope released the sling and the hay fell into the hay storage area. Unloading was the easiest part of the haymaking process, except when the barn was full and the slings had to be dug out of the haystack. It could be desperately hot in the hay mow.

In the early ‘30s, the barn was modernized with concrete floors, manure gutters and mangers. Anton Olson was the cement contractor. The old plank floors were removed and liquid pits eliminated. A litter carrier was available at all four doors. The horse barn was on the south end. It had a sand floor and yearly, sand was hauled from the lake shore to replace the sand that went out with the manure. A lean-to to the south housed chickens that produced eggs to exchange for groceries. A small enclosure on the north held a hand-cranked cream separator, which was replaced with a DeLeval gas engine mounted on a stand. Belts drove a water pump that drew water from an open pit well below the barn and discharged into a large galvanized tank on the hay mow floor. It had a cover and hay was laid on top in the winter. The tank had an overflow pipe that drained to an outside stock tank. New drinking cups were connected to this elevated tank. Another belt drove the cream separator ending the need for the hand crank. Still another belt drove a generator for charging a battery that provided light in the barn to 6 volt lamps.

We carried skim milk in 5 gal buckets to feed the hogs. The hog house was about 200’ from the barn. South of the hog house was a shed where the binder was stored. Much of the milk for the hogs was wasted because the hogs would lie in the trough and spill it. The calves also got skim milk. The calf pens were on either side of the separator area. Nettie, Bessie and the hired man milked the cows by hand at 5 A.M. in the morning and again at night. The cream was brought to the Brandon creamery twice a week in five gallon cream cans.

In the late ‘30s, a milk house was built on the northeast corner of the barn. A 5” well was drilled by Haakin Peterson and it took all winter. An opening was made through the stone foundation into the barn. The milk house was on the same level as the barn floor and had an easy stairway to the ground level. The room above became feed storage. A deep well Red Jacket pump was installed with a pressure tank. Water was dug to the icehouse for summer use, but not to the house. A barrel was installed and elevated above the door of the ice house and a pipe was run to a shower in the front part of the ice house. The barrel was on the south and the sun warmed the water sufficiently to make the showering comfortable.

A granary stood to the south. It had upstairs bins for feed grains. Before gasoline driven elevators, the grain was sacked at the threshing machine and carried up a ladder and dumped into bins. The south and west sides had a lean-to that housed the horse- drawn machinery.

Harvest time always meant hard work. The grain was cut with a ground driven binder that tied the grain in bundles with twine. The bundles were stood on butt end against each other in a shock, about 8 bundles to a shock. These shocks were picked up with a three tined fork and loaded on hay racks. The grain on the farm was usually put in a stack head to toe. There were piled sloping down so the water would drain. After many bundle loads in the base, smaller bundle circles were made until the top was a point. An 8’ stack pole – smooth and round – was pushed down into the stack. The stacks were in groups of four, called a setting. All four stacks were threshed with the same setting on the threshing machine.

Silo filling came later in the fall and we stayed home from school to “tramp the silo”. Corn was cut with a corn binder and hauled to the ensilage cutter on hay racks. The corn bundles were unloaded from the hay racks onto a short moving conveyer that fed the bundle into revolving knives and blower paddles which blew the chopped silage through 8” galvanized pipes. The cutter was powered by a 15-30 McCormick Deering tractor using a 100’ endless bolt. I was in the silo when the conveyer broke and went into the the knives and blower, much of the debris blown into the silo. It was fortunate that the silo was nearly full and the distributor pipes near the surface of the corn so the metal didn’t’ turn into shrapnel. Cliff Augdahl was up the silo in record time to check on me.

No buildings remain. The log cabin house has been demolished. The barn has been demolished and the debris buried.  There is not even evidence of the road that passed between the house and barn.  

However, the perforated horse weather vane was salvaged by Uncle Bud. 

Copyright © 2016 Dave Hoplin