Questions about the Lushton farm

Research for several more “substantive” posts continues, but already several questions about our family history have come to mind. I invite anyone who can provide information to use the email address at the top right of the page (or the phone) to share it with the rest of us.

The central topic of interest is the farm economy through which our family lived in the 1920s and 1930 (and maybe beyond). For U.S. agricuture as a whole, the first four decades of the twentieth century were a remarkable time marked by both highs and lows, feast and famine, bounty and bare cupboards. We can document those trends in a variety of ways, but they really do not interest all that much unless we can particularize them to our own family.

In order to flesh out the Buller family history from before World War I through, I hope, the end of the Great Depression, we need collectively to remember as much as we can about the Lushton farm on which Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda raised their eight kids. Specifically, the questions that I would like answered to some degree are the following.

1. What crops do you recall being raised on the Lushton farm:

• corn?
• wheat?
• oats?
• barley?
• alfalfa/hay?
• rye?
• grain sorghum/milo?
• other (maybe potatoes)? 

2. We know that Grandpa and Grandma owned 80 acres and rented 80 acres from Grandpa’s brother and sister. Roughly how many acres were taken up by the house, barn, and other buildings? To ask the question differently, how many acres were available for agricultural purposes?

3. Of the remaining acres, how much acreage was devoted to:

• crop land?
• pasture?
• other?

4. Of the crop land, approximately how much was devoted to each of the crops raised?

5. What large livestock did the Buller farm typically raise:

• dairy cattle?
• beef cattle?
• hogs?
• horses?
• mules?
• sheep?

6. Not including dogs and cats, what small animals were raised:

• chickens?
• rabbits?
• turkeys?

It may well be that the Lushton farm did not have a typical distribution of crops and livestock, that the agricultural profile of the farm varied from decade to decade or even year to year. If so, that will in and of itself be an interesting discovery and helpful perspective.

Once we have a sense of the answers to these general questions, additional ones will focus in on as many specific topics as possible (e.g., farm products consumed versus those that were sold). Through it all, we should be able to fill in a few more details about our shared family history.