Winter - Spring 1912 - Mortgage, frozen wheat crop

1912 - I thought I would take a mortgage on my farm and with the money I would get some cows and I would start dairying. I thought I would soon be able to pay back the mortgage what I could make from the cows, chickens and garden would keep us and the wheat would pay off the mortgage. I owed Massey Harrison Company $90.00 for mowing machine and disk harrow, all other implements I had paid them cash for them. I could not pay anything on these two machines. Every other mail there would be dunning letters asking me for the money and what sort of man was I, had I any principals or conscience, etc. anything but calling me a thief.

I was very sensitive, I had not owed anybody any money before. It was the agent at Radisson that put the idea in my head to mortgage my place then I could pay for the two machines out of it and the rest I could spend on cattle. This sounded logical so I took out a mortgage of $600.00 with the Great West Life Assurance Co, Winnipeg. I paid the Massey Harris what I owed them then I bought three cows which was due to calve within a month. This gave me five with what I already had. I also bought a shorthorn pure bread bull and Sharples Tubular Cream Separator.

I was not well fit up for business. I started in that spring full of hopes that I was going to win out, all my cows calved all right gave me 4 heifer calves and one bull out of the five. I put in my seed again as before, garden, wheat, etc. built a log barn 40 feet long 25 feet wide. I now had 8 head of cattle besides their calves.

I broke the bull into a harness and worked him with the oxen. Everybody surprised that I could break him in, especially the man I bought him from because he was afraid of him because sometimes he would show signs of being haughty.

Harvest time again. Crop looking fine, standing 3 feet high and as level as a table top but was late in ripening. It was just beginning to ripen when one night frost came and froze it for me. Well of all the lick a man ever had I said this beats all. I had it threshed but it was only fit for feed. I could not sell it and I had nothing that I could feed it to. I had no pigs, the elevators did not want it, in fact the elevators could not take good wheat, they was full up, they could not get wheat away. Well I had only the money I got for my garden truck, butter and eggs to live upon. I had to pay the thresher man 50 dollars for 8 hours work, he would not thresh by the bushel

The snow was down and there was only three of us to thresh when the snow came. He stopped threshing the other two neighbors begging him to thresh them and they give him 50 dollars a day and find pitchers and water tank man themselves so there as nothing else for me to do but do likewise or be the only one left but I wished I had been left.

I should have been better off by 10 dollars for my frozen wheat was not worth the price. I could not pay the threshing bill in cash so he demanded a cow in place of cash. He took the only cow I had giving milk and she only had been calved three weeks.

What about your loan or mortgage? Oh wait I am just going to tell you about that, the worst was to come. I wrote to the Loan Company telling them what had happened and asked them to carry me over this year and I could not meet my payment on the load. They wrote me demanding the payment. I wrote them again I could not do it without selling a cow and I did not wish to do that as it would make me that much more poorer the next year.  They wrote me again asking me if I could not borrow it from someone to pay them with, some neighbor or the bank. Well I had never done any business with the Bank, in fact I had never borrowed money in my life before. I had always paid for my way as I went along, anyway the banks had closed down on farmers that fall and winter. Farmers with good wheat in their granaries could not get money, it was a regular hold up all round.

I wrote them again I could not do what they had asked me to do, they wrote me again could I not pay the interest. I did not answer this letter, I was about sick of everything. My wife did some work for the neighbor and they paid her with a sow pig. She was in pigs they thought but was not sure but she turned out she was in pig and she gave a litter of seven nice little pigs and I fed the frozen wheat to them and they did exceedingly well.

Spring was here again, I put less wheat in this time and more garden, I could be my own thresherman in this job and be more independent of others. After putting in my crop I had two loads of potatoes I could not sell in Radisson or Langham. I had supplied them all they needed till new ones came again. I had heard potatoes was making good prices in Saskatoon so I tried Saskatoon. I sold very quickly and everybody was asking me if I had got any other vegetables. "Not now, I have not but I will have later on." "I never saw a town like this, we cannot get vegetables at any price." I told my wife when I got home. "Saskatoon is starving for want of garden stuff and I have been fooling around the small towns and getting next to nothing for them, I was going to Saskatoon with my next lot you bet I will, it's a long way to go with oxen but I have done it before and I can do it again".