Taming Wild Horse

Since there were no trees on the tree claim to use for lumber the family set about to construct a sod house. Sod buildings were constructed by using sod for bricks. When the pond dried up in the summer, Adam and his sons used a plow to turn up strips of sod eight to ten inches wide and about three inches deep. Around the pond grasses would form a sod, so at the right time of the year blocks could be cut from it.

For the sod houses the family cut strips about 14 to 18 inches long and laid them like bricks, with no mortar or anything else needed. There weren't that many sod houses, but the Hochstetler's was one of the larger ones around.

Ours was one of the few sod houses. It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer. We even had a cellar under it, and a second story. I always wanted to go back to see it.

When all the children were grown, during World War II, Lucille was living in Wichita. She wanted to go to western Kansas to visit some friends. She wanted a man to go with them. I took the opportunity to go back to Colorado.

I got off the bus in Kit Carson and located one of our neighbors. I also learned that a son of a rancher I knew in Kansas lived across the street from the lady.

I went to talk to him and he wanted to take me out to the ranch. When we got there there were not any buildings left, not even a pile of sod. No timber, just one stick.

When we moved to Colorado we had a separator for the cream. The bowl of that cream separator was setting there, with one stick and a snake (not left from when we lived there) that had moved in.  

They also built a foursquare barn out of the sod. [Foursquare refers to the four large rooms set inside the large square perimeter. They were often very large and used primarily in cold climates where a great deal of fodder for livestock needed to be stored for the severe winters.] The barn had to be built large enough to house not only the milk cows but the calves and horses as well.

Adam had rented a little house about three miles from the claim to live in until they were able to build their sod house. When he had purchased the land the previous fall Adam and contracted with a man who had machinery and could put out a small crop of wheat.

In the spring, when the ground was rich and fertile the crop looked good as it came up. Adam anticipated a good crop of wheat the first summer.

But when summer arrived there was not even enough grain to plant another crop. The lack of rain had taken its toll, so Adam took some of the savings and purchased enough new grain to plan a full crop.

Eastern Colorado turned out to be a difficult place to earn a living. Sometimes the crop would be ruined when a rancher would cut the wire fence down and let the range cattle eat the plants to the ground. Even the feed crops were not immune from difficulties. Russian thistles and tumbleweed would get in the crops and were impossible to remove and made the hay worthless. It became incredibly difficult to make a living as the years passed and the savings dwindled.