Farmland

I got the impression from my grandfather’s papers that he must have been a rather astute businessman. The letters that survived showed him to have dealings with landowners beyond the simple purchase of the land he bought. There is also a scrap of paper indicating that at one time he was sued in a Justice of the Peace court in the small neighboring town of Callender. He made one mistake. When he bought the south forty he could have had (as I understand it) the whole quarter section for the same price. It was low ground so much of it was of little potential value until tiling came in. Perhaps he just didn’t want to pay taxes on land that he couldn’t use.

Also included in the papers was his holographic will. It stipulated that the farm not be sold as long as my grandmother was alive. The family adhered to this stipulation and it was not until 1960 that the estate was finally divided. My uncle Carl handled the sale of the farm which was bought by neighboring farmers. The “home” 80 acres were for $450 per acre, an almost unheard of price for the time, the rest for lesser amounts. I would have liked to buy it but I didn’t have the funds for it. I later found out in a discussion with my department head at Shell that I might have been able to tap into my savings in the Provident Fund (which was supposed to be a no-no). Instead we bought the old Joe Johnson place near my father’s farm.

Later on I received part of my father’s farm when his estate was settled after the death of my mother and we bought more so that we had an additional 75 acres to go with the 125 acres of the Johnson farm. The east forty acres of the Peterson farm was bought by the neighboring brothers Vernon and Martin Telleen. Vernon told me later on that my uncle Carl wanted them to purchase the whole 200 acres but they were afraid to incur that much debt. He added that they should have gone ahead and bought the whole thing the way the future developed.