I spoke too soon. A few hours after writing that we had “explored all that we can at this time related to Peter D and Sarah’s farms,” I happened upon another historical document that relates directly to that farm. The document dates from 1880 and is a supplement to the main census from that year. Its official title is Schedule 2: Productions of Agriculture.
The full page is too large to post here, so I have uploaded it to Flickr. I suggest that you download the image to your device, then open and increase the display size as much as you need. This post will include only relevant snippets that document life on the Buller farm.
The date on which the agricultural schedule is important to note: 9 June 1880. If you recall, Peter D and Sarah and family arrived in the Henderson area late in June 1879. Within a week, according to the Buller Family Record, Peter D had purchased an 80-acre parcel a mile west of Henderson (see further here). How did the family fare in their new home? The agricultural schedule taken a little less than a year later gives us an answer.
Each page of the schedule includes four sections; each section records data for the same ten farms. We see Peter D Buller (spelled Bullar on the form) listed on row 7 of section 1 and thus know that row 7 in the other three sections will also record information for him.
After listing the name of the household head, section 1 records whether this person owned or rented his farm; the column of slashes (/) after the names indicates that everyone on this sheet owned his property. The next group of four columns records the acres of land in the farm: two columns for improved land (tilled fields and permanent meadows) and two columns for unimproved land (woodland and other unimproved land). Note that the first four listed had by far the largest farms, with total acreages of 320, 375, 399, and 240; two of these farms also included 50-acre woodland areas. By contrast, the last six, including Peter D, each had 80 acres each. Presumably those with large farms were the old-timers, relatively speaking, of the area. Of Peter’s 80 acres, 70 were tilled and 10 were unimproved.
The next group of three columns records the value of (1) the farm, including land, fences, and buildings; (2) farming implements and machinery; and (3) livestock. As expected, given their larger farms, the first four farmers show significantly higher value ($3,031; $9,900; $7,650; $3,756) than the last six, whose average was $805. Peter D fell within the center of the group of six, with a total farm value of $835. Interestingly, the value of Peter’s land is recorded as $500, which is $400 less than he had paid for it a year earlier. Below I will suggest an explanation for this apparent decrease in value.
We can skip over the next columns, which record hired laborers and grass lands, and move to the final two columns in this section, which record the number of horses and mules the farm had on 1 June 1880. Like most of the farmers in the group of six, Peter had two horses.
Section 2 continues the livestock record by listing relevant statistics for cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Cattle are divided into three groups: working oxen, milch cows, other. Peter D had one dairy cow whose milk led to the production of 150 pounds of butter in 1879 (i.e., the last half of that year). This was in line with the other farmers in his group of six. Peter owned no sheep but kept six pigs, which was slightly above the average of his closest neighbors. Finally, Peter kept twenty-five chickens (average for the group of six) who produced fifty dozen (six hundred) eggs during 1879; for some unknown reason, Peter’s egg production was well below the average of his neighbors.
Section 3 turns from livestock to crops, recording six types of cereals (barley, buckwheat, Indian corn, oats, rye, wheat), pulse (Canada peas, dry beans), fiber (flax, hemp), sugar (sorghum, maple), and broom corn. Not unexpectedly, crops in Farmers Valley precinct were primarily in the cereals category.
We see in row 7, which records Peter D’s agricultural activity, that his crops for 1879 included corn*, oats, and wheat. Each crop section contains two columns: the first records the acreage given to that crop, the second the bushels produced in 1879. The Buller farm’s entries are as follows:
- Corn: 1.5 acres producing 60 bushels
- Oats: 5 acres producing 160 bushels
- Wheat: 51 acres producing 518 bushels
As noted earlier, Peter D purchased the farm in late June 1879, at which time all the crops would have been planted. Why is this important? First, the distribution of land to the three crops—with nearly 90 percent of the tilled acres devoted to wheat—was the previous owner’s decision, not Peter’s. Whether or not Peter continued this crop distribution will become evident in later reports, such as the 1885 Nebraska census, which will we consider in a subsequent post.
Second, since the purchase was made after the crops were in the ground, the purchase price presumably reflected the value of the land itself plus the crops that Peter would harvest in several months. This likely explains why Peter paid more for the 80 acres than the value reported on this form. In fact, based on the market prices reported for late 1879 and early 1880, we can calculate the value of the crops that Peter harvested:
- corn: 60 bushels @ 39¢/bushel = $23.40
- oats: 160 bushels @ 25¢/bushel = $40.00
- wheat: 518 bushels @ 70¢/bushel = $362.60
The total value of the crops harvested was $426, which was slightly more than the difference between Peter’s purchase price and the stated value of the land in 1880. In short, we can reasonably conclude that Peter purchased the land plus the crops already planted at a price that was fair to both seller and buyer.
There is more to glean from this agricultural schedule, as well as from the 1885 Nebraska agricultural census and from a comparison between the two. All that to come in subsequent posts about Peter D and Sarah’s farm.
*The schedule’s reference to Indian corn does not have in view the multicolored ears of corn known by that name today (see here) but rather what we refer to as field corn. In the 1880s, the term Indian corn referred to the broad category of maize (Zea mays), which included many varieties. See further the full report of the 1880 agricultural census on Indian corn here.
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