FARM HISTORY
By Delores Miller
Digging deeper in the
family archives, found receipts and vouchers from automobile and truck
purchases and repairs. Paraphernalia. Equipment. Tax papers
from 1952, with farm expenses and income. Property tax statements going
back to 1880 Michael Zillmer owner. $4.19. By 1893 it
was $7.30 plus a 31 cent collection fee. At one time five
parcels of land at 40 acres apiece. 1934 was $134.00.
Harvey and Mary Luschow Feed
Mill vouchers, cow, heifer, pig and chicken feed. Trekked to town
almost every day. (Harvey belonged to St. John Lutheran Church, Mary to
the Catholic church. For fund raising, Mary, each Saturday morning made
kolaches and sold for a dollar a dozen. Oh, how good they were, my favorite was
a prune filling, topped with strudel.) I often rode along to town
when they went feed grinding, two thin dimes clutched in my grubby paw, enough
to buy a cherry, chocolate or butterscotch malted milk at Mees Drug Store, with
Glenn Draeger as the soda jerk. A February 1953 written slip showed
expenses for the month at $143.57 and income of milk $237.89, calves
$272.70, (how many calves was that?) and hogs sold of
$310.20. A profit of $677.22. They were rich and able to pay off
the farm mortgages, liens and other loans. And get an indoor toilet, to
replace that outhouse.
Delores Miller
lives with husband Russell in Hortonville, Wisconsin. In the summer
of 2007 they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a party
hosted by their five children and ten grandchildren. It’s been a long
road. Dairy farming until retirement in 1993, they continued to 'work'
the land, making a subdivision of 39 new homes on their former hay
fields.
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