Discovering the world around me.
On a cold and windy January day, Bryan and I and my Seeing Eye dog put on our boots and trudge through the snow in the field across the road. The snow is knee-deep, and the crust that had formed on it can’t hold our weight. Each step punches through the crust to land knee-deep […]
Continue reading The Newton and Northwestern Railroad
We’ve decided to build a new building to serve as a shop. But before we can do that, we have to clear the space where the shop will stand. In that space are trees that must be taken down, including two particularly tricky ones, a hackberry tree and an American elm. Along with the trees […]
Continue reading A bit of Sleuthing: Milk House
The barn was one of the aspects of Owl Acres that drew me to the place. It’s old, proudly flaunting its birthdate—1915—in big white numbers on its red front. The brothers who farmed the land around Owl Acres in 1915 probably used local timber to build the barn. They had a sawmill powered by a […]
Continue reading Paean to the Past: Barn
The air is full of that sweet, fresh scent of ripening corn. You can almost hear it growing. It’s been a staple on and around Owl Acres for 170 years. Today the fields across the fence are lush, with ten-foot-tall stalks in neat rows. Broad green leaves ripple in the breeze, sending waves undulating across […]
Continue reading Magnificent Monoculture: Corn
Records indicate that Jesse Reeves bought the quarter section of land that today contains Owl Acres. He bought it from the Government for $1.25 per acre. How Jesse and his family fared over the next 15 or 20 years is uncertain, but records do exist of a Jesse Reeves of Elkhorn, Douglas County, Nebraska who […]
Continue reading Settlement Part 4: The Reeves Family
In the 1850s, a massive campaign to recruit settlers to the prairies was underway. Land speculators bought up land to resell at a profit. Soldiers from the Mexican-American war were granted land warrants for 160 acres of land, which many sold for cash. Thousands of farmers and their families from Pennsylvania, Ohio and other eastern […]
Continue reading Settlement Part 3: Jesse Plows the Prairie
In today’s world, every piece of land is owned by somebody. In order to draw the lines and make the plat maps that define the land, a framework has to be in place so that the land can be described precisely and mapped accurately. In the Midwest, where the land is generally rolling prairie laced […]
Continue reading Settlement Part 2: Townships and Land Purchases
Although the United States had purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, Iowa was still considered Indian Territory. Land-hungry settlers moved inexorably across the woodlands of Ohio and Indiana into the Illinois prairies up to the Mississippi River. The river was a hard boundary, remaining in the nominal possession of the Sauk and Fox […]
Continue reading Settlement Part 1: Land Rush
The Meskwaki and Sauk people were driven from their ancestral home in northeastern Canada, through Massachusetts, to the Great Lakes, and eventually into Iowa by 1735. Until 1803, Iowa remained part of the territory claimed first by the French (1699-1762), then the Spanish (1762-1800), and then again, the French (1800-1803). In spite of what the […]
Continue reading Meskwaki Part 3: Removal and Return
The Meskwaki and Sauk tribes lived in Iowa during a period from about 1735 to 1845. They established villages on the Iowa and Des Moines rivers and hunted across Iowa. The eight acres that comprise Owl Acres today would have been a tiny part of the millions of acres they claimed as their hunting grounds […]
Continue reading Meskwaki Part 2: Woodland Culture