Measuring Land

April 22, 1933  I measured some land and watered the garden.  Mama and Mary baked and prepared to go to Dodge.

Cornelius and his wife Margaret owned 320 acres of farmland.  Of this, a part was the farmyard and a pasture for livestock.  The bulk of it was planted to wheat, but Cornelius also planted other crops such as maize, kafir corn, feed, and other things.  He would want to plant a certain acreage to a certain crop, so he had to measure the land.  He had a homemade V-shaped device that he could use to measure off a certain rectangle by “walking” it down the edge of the field that would give him the acreage he wanted to plant. 

To prepare to go to Dodge, Margaret and Mary needed to make food for the next day because they would not eat in a café or restaurant – there were not very many and they were expensive.  They would fry chicken and pack bread and other food in a basket to take along for a picnic lunch.  It was too early for garden vegetables, but later in the year, they would also tie up bunches of onions, parsley, dill, etc. and butcher fryers to take along and sell to restaurants or to families who lived in mobile homes and had no gardens of their own.  Margaret tried to sell at least as much produce and chicken in Dodge City as the cost of the things that she bought.