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Thread: The harvestores on the left is the original 1/4 that great great grandpa Leonard got the patent on in 1899. He also bought the 1/4 east of it, the 1/4 west of it (the harvestores on the right), and the one grandpa is windrowing on. Each of Leonards son's got a 1/4.
Each of those four quarters has stayed in the family, and each of those families have added alot of land in the area since then.
Also in 1899 Charles Cleveland got the patent on this 1/4. In 1913 He sold this 1/4 to Leonard on contract, and two years later it was paid off. His son John moved here at some point around that time.
John's girlfriend lived about 20 miles away, he would take a horse and wagon to go see her. When he left her house he would lay down in the wagon and wake up in the morning in front of the barn.
In 1916 John bought a new model T. Dad's cousin has it now, it runs and drives and he took it for a cruise a few weeks ago, the day it rolled off the line 104 years ago. The box isn't original but it's how everyone in the family remembered it.
John had 6 sons and 2 daughters, my grandpa Myron moved home with grandma after his time in the service in the Korean war. John moved to town. It was after his parents passed that he found out there was a 9th sibling, a daughter that died at birth.
When dad got out of highschool he moved in to the house across the road, it was built by Leonards cousin and had 13 kids living in it. When grandpa retired and moved to town, my brother moved back across the road into his house. His kids are the 5th gen in a row to live there.
Grandpa raised cattle and hogs mostly, feeding the grain he grew. '12 was the last year of feeding cattle. One thing hasn't changed all this time, feed the grain to livestock to make food, the livestock manure goes back to the field to make more grain to feed the livestock.
This system has sustained itself for well over 100 years and going on 6 generations now. If we're not #sustainable, then someone needs a new dictionary.
