A Homesteader’s Story: NO MORE SPUDS AND A 2-STOREY SOD HOUSE

An article by J.E. Hess printed in the history book “Many Trails Crossed Here” records the story of his father homesteading in Oyen in July, 1910. The land was located one and a half miles west of the present town of Oyen. Here is his story …

At that time there were no roads, no fences, no phone or power lines, no railroad. Most of the trails followed the buffalo trails, which had a general direction of northwest and southeast. In August, 1910, my mother, Alberta F. Hess, brought me, James Edmond, and my two sisters, Ellen and Virginia, from St. Louis, Missouri, to join my father on the homestead. I was six, Ellen eight and Virginia one and a half years old.

Bill and Mrs. William Hess inside their two-storey sod house with a cellar on their homestead one and a half miles west of the present town of Oyen. Photo: Many Trails Crossed Here

About three weeks later my grandfather, James A. Sickley, arrived at Kindersley with some household furniture, a few chickens and three pigs. The mode of travel was by train to Kindersley, then by covered wagon and horses from Kindersley to our homestead, a distance of 70 miles. In those 70 miles we passed two homestead shacks about eight feet square.

We lived in a tent at first. This tent was saved from burning by my father as he returned from filing his homestead application. He had to do this at Brooks. He came back just as the 1910 fire roared through that area. He was alone and riding a tough little saddle horse. He was able to backfire enough to save about 10 acres of grass on our land which saved our horses. The soil was quite rich and this is what caused the burnouts where the humus burned down as deep as 12 to 16 inches in some places. The ropes of the tent were on fire when he got there. I remember seeing the burnt rope after we arrived.

There was little to do but sleep and work. We slept in the tent. Dad and his brother Thurman built a small sod cottage 16 feet square, half on our part of section 6 and half on the part that Grandfather Sickley homesteaded. This enabled both homesteaders to live in the same house. We went on to build a large sod house for Thurman Hess who had four children at that time and later another home for our family.

The sod house had a living room and one bedroom on the main floor and two attic bedrooms upstairs. The walls were 30 inches thick and eight feet high, with a frame ceiling and roof. The roof was covered with tar paper and sod for the first three years, then it was shingled. A cellar under the floor kept vegetables in the winter and provided a cool place for milk, etc. in the summer.

We broke up ten acres and seeded it to oats for the stock. Our first large crop was three acres of potatoes and that produced 1200 bushels of excellent spuds. My father had dug a cellar in the hill behind the house. It had two rooms and there was about eight feet of dirt overhead. He bored an eight inch auger hole down from the outside and put in a galvanized iron casing. This provided ventilation. There we stored the spuds. The following spring my dad and I took two wagons with a team each, loaded with 60 bushels of potatoes and drove to Empress. I was eight years old at the time.

From Empress we drove west along the CPR right-of-way for 60 miles. The railway was being built at the time and we stopped at each railway construction camp and left all the potatoes they would accept. At the last camp our loads were emptied.

We were more than 120 miles from home and hadn’t received a penny of money. A cheque for $64 came to dad the following September from the CPR purchasing agent.

That 120 bushels of potatoes was all we sold. The balance spoiled and had to be shovelled out. We raised no more spuds.