Cleaning up after the Storm

April 12, 1935  A very nice day.  John and Henry Warkentin took cattle to F. M. Clay.  Jake and I worked on the yard.

Finally after three days of unending wind, dust, and days that were as dark as night, the storm did end, and it was a beautiful day.  Cornelius and Jake worked on the yard – very likely they were digging out from the dust storm.  They would have cleared out the fences and drifts of dust around the buildings and shoveled dirt out of the barn, the chicken houses, and the granary. 

John helped Henry Warkentin take cattle to F. M. Clay.  Probably they were taking Mr. Warkentin’s cattle to pasture at the Clays.  Perhaps the Clays had some grass or wheat that could be pastured.  The Siemens boys must have had a reputation as good workers because they were often doing work for neighbors.  There would have been a lot of competition for these jobs because lots of men, not just young, single men but family men also, were looking for odd jobs to supplement their income.  But Cornelius often records that his sons worked out for someone. 

Probably the boys gave part or all of their wages to Cornelius.  Today that seems unjust, but at the time the family was a single economic unit.  Everyone worked together to make the farm a success.  Either a son was working on the family farm or he was working somewhere else.  Everything that a family member earned went into the common pot.  And Cornelius was responsible to provide whatever his family members needed, so he bought their food, their clothes, and everything else and gave them spending money.  Only when a child married and left home would he set up his own economic unit.  And at that point Cornelius would start to pay his sons for the work that they did on his farm.  In fact, in his ledgers he meticulously recorded the hours that his married sons worked and the amounts that he owed them.