The fall of 1906 saw the beginning of the real hard winter of 1906-07. It followed a dry summer. Winter began about the middle of November that year and snow piled up all during that winter, pausing only for a brief Chinook which thawed the snow just enough to allow it to crust good and hard. It remained very cold and cows would hungrily eat any buck-brush tops or small willows that showed up above the snow. Their legs became raw and bloody from breaking crusted snow and also their noses got sore. We had only about 300 to 400 tons of hay for about 9,000 cattle and so it is a great wonder that any of them pulled through.
In February of 1907 the winter broke, and the break came just in time to save a complete loss. At this time mange was prevalent all over the country and it is my thought that the wet, sweaty mange was a greater factor in the winter death loss than was the cold, severe winter. During the summer of 1906 we had sold 1,000 head of cows and calves to the Knight Sugar Company at $25.00 per head for the cows with the calves thrown in. This seemed like a poor price at the time of sale. After the winter was over it turned out to be a good sale for us and a very poor buy for the Knight Sugar Company.
During the year 1909, still remembering the hard winter of 1906-07, my father took active steps to raise more feed and consequently contracted for the breaking of about 4,000 acres across the north end of his ranch. This land was rented to various farmers on a crop-share basis, retaining for the ranch all straw and stubble pasture. In 1911 approximately 120,000 bushels of wheat were threshed from this land and also some oats were stacked for feed that we never threshed. Ever since then, grain farming has gone hand in hand with cattle raising. 1910-11 was another hard winter and our grain farming operation helped us pull through this one.
(To Be Continued)
Friday, August 22, 1947
In the year 1911 Mr. John Kenny who had been our foreman from the year 1903, left our employ to work for Mr. Preston Nutter, running his cattle outfit in north-western Arizona. Mr. Thomas Stephenson, or Tom as he has always been known, took charge of the ranch as foreman and remained with us until his retirement due to ill-health in 1944. He gave us 33 years of loyal and faithful service and took as much interest in the ranch as if it had been his own. He was a real hero, and is now taking it easy, residing in Lethbridge with his wife, and occasionally visits his married daughters; one, Mrs. Blair, lives on a farm at Granum, and a younger one, Mrs. Jessop, resides on their farm southeast of Raymond. Tom originally came from Holden, Utah, as so many of our early-time ranch people did. My brother and I came to think of him as a family member and he had a fine influence over us.
Until the year 1914 cattle did not have access to the United States market without being charged and ad valorem customs duty based on the value. Some ranchers, such as J. H. Wallace & Company, had been paying the duty and had shipped their steers and cows to Chicago apparently finding it profitable to do so. Also, speculators had begun buying Alberta cattle for shipment to Chicago and this market was gaining more and more prominence. At the beginning of the first World War, cattle were entered into the United States free of duty, and because of this fact, and also because of being short of range due to the cancellation of our Government grazing lease in what is now the Del Bonita country, we place some 1,500 head of steers and dry cows on the east end of the Blackfoot Indian reservation in Montana, hoping to ship them to the Chicago market in the fall of that year.
These cattle were too homesick the first year to get fat on the good grass of the reservation and consequently we wintered them there on the reservation during the winter of 1914-15. In the fall of the year 1915, they were really fat and so we shipped them all off in four train loads to the Chicago market. Steers brought us about $8.50 per cwt. In Chicago and the cows about $6.50 per cwt. This was considered a very good price at that time. By the time the year 1918 had arrived, fat grass steers sold in Chicago at $18.00 per cwt. One bunch belonging to the late Senator Patrick Burns brought that price in Chicago during that year.
