The piles of rocks were what grabbed my attention. They had to be old piles; the stones had live bushes sticking out of them and were habitat for a healthy colony of lichens. I turned to Jim Baker, the owner of said rocks, and the land under them. “What’s the story on those piles, Jim? When were they put there?”
Jim knew the answer. “I figure it had to be somewhere a little after 1908 or 10, around my grandad’s time. He might have been one of those “pilers.” The kids had to pile all them rocks so the men could plant and harvest grain on this hillside. They tilled the ground with teams of horses.” He smiled at the thought. “I think that pretty much cured those kids from any ideas about going in to agriculture they might have had.”
The piles were pretty large. I imagined kids of every age in the prairie sun gathering the rocks from up to 100 feet away to place them in piles about 3 feet deep and about 10 feet wide. At least it was an incredibly scenic place to work. The rolling hills rose up to the distant snow-capped jagged skyline of Montana’s Mission Range. Even on this late June day 110 years later, the peaks still packed high altitude snow and ice.
“A lot of those kids were adopted. Sure, they worked, but at least they had plenty to eat and a roof over their heads.”
It was pretty common in that day. Often, one or both parents had died in the ravages of frontier life, and orphanages were full of kids needing homes. Some foster parents took and loved them as their own; others simply strengthened their work force. Certainly, that was abuse–but orphanage conditions were often worse.
There was a storm of such marginal land “sod-busting” on the entirety of the high prairies of the West between 1915 and 1918. Land speculators and brokers eagerly marketed their wares with outlandish fairy tales about how “rain would follow the plow.” To compound matters even more, demand for wheat skyrocketed during The Great War in 1916, and banks were eager to loan money to beginning farmers all over the semi desert grassland country.
There was a rush on anything that had even a remote possibility of yielding to the plow and planter, and the fate of the land was sealed perfectly by the weather.
For several years, it rained. A lot.
But with the end of the war, the boom soon found bust, and with it went favorable rains. Wheat sold for only pennies compared to the dollars it had brought; bankers showed up to collect on their notes.
Few farmers were able to pay. Bankruptcy was rampant; farmers simply left cabin, soddy, plow and grain drill to be covered by rust and dust. Oil-cloth windows dried and tore; doors swung on their hinges. Settlers took whatever they could carry. The only testament to their names was on the grave markers they left behind.
And their homestead would slowly fade away.
The day I stood on that hill was yesterday. With me there were some 40 people who came to swap ideas, and hear lessons that the land could tell us. Many were farmers and ranchers, descended from the land rushers who were too stubborn to leave.
Context was provided by Jim, Jayden and Emily Baker who were still on that same land after 3 going on 4 generations removed from those hard times.
Interestingly, the land remembered that time well. I could still clearly see the line where the plowman reined in his team because of the thicker rocks in the soil. It appeared as though there was a line, even in a booming market, where even the high price of 1917 wheat wouldn’t make a positive return on the investment of planting on a rock pile.
The vegetation was completely different. Uphill, in the rocky and un-plowed beyond, the ground was almost completely covered with a diverse stand of grasses and forbs. It was hard to see any exposed soil or even rock for that matter.
Emily produced a soil test she had received just last week. The rocky well-covered land tested 11.2 soil organic matter, a surprisingly high number. It was clear the intact native bunchgrasses and forbs that covered those soils had indeed protected the integrity of the living organisms in it. The cattle that regularly grazed that hill changed little, and most likely had improved soil life from their inputs of manure, and even saliva that had inoculated the soil with a consistent flow of it’s very own microbial biodiversity.
But the ground tilled 110 years ago had lots of open soil. Plant diversity was about half. Soil organic matter tested almost exactly half. One or two passes by a shallow horse drawn plow had taken its toll on a network of roots and fungal hyphae that had crept across and built a matrix over this landscape over thousands of years.
And it was only that: quite certainly a few thousand years. For prior to that a giant lake 800 feet deep full of glacial melt waters had filled the valley we stood in. Today, the well known prehistoric lake is called Lake Missoula after today’s Montana city that it would have hopelessly drowned. The parallel marks of ancient perched beaches stood as clear evidence, like bathtub rings all around the valley. They were easy to spot from miles away.
The land and plants had recovered from that complete inundation. They also would survive and recover the boom and bust of a land rush just 100 years ago.
Yes, it would heal. But the etching of agents on the land could last hundreds, or even thousands of years.
Let’s try to leave good marks.
Happy Trails
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