An Ozark Homemaker

by Mrs. A.J. Wilder

Editor Home Department, Mansfield, Mo.

Mrs. Durnell Reclaimed a Farm, Built a House in the Wilderness and Learned the Secret of Contentment

Women have always been the home makers, but it is not usually expected of them that they should also be the home builders from the ground up. Nevertheless they sometimes are and their success in this double capacity shows what women can do when they try. Among the women who have done both is Mrs. C. A. Durnell of Mansfield, Mo. She has not only made a home but she has put a farm in condition to support it.

Mansfield is on the very crest of the Ozarks and the land is rough and hilly, covered with timber, where it has not been cleared. Although one of the most beautiful places in the world to live, with a soil still repaying bountifully the care given it, still it is no easy thing to make a farm out of a piece of the rough land. Imagine then the task for a woman, especially one with no previous experience of farming.

Mrs. Durnell was a city woman and for twenty years after her marriage, lived in St. Louis where her husband worked in the railroad terminal yards. Here she raised her three children until the eldest, a son, was through college and established in his profession.

None of the children were strong and about this time the second, a daughter, was taken sick with consumption, while the youngest, also a daughter, was threatened with the same disease. Hoping to restore their health, Mrs. Durnell brought them into the Ozarks, but too late to save the sick daughter.

As the other daughter showed signs of improvement, Mrs. Durnell decided to stay and the thought came to her to go on a little farm and make a home for her own and her husband's old age.

Sickness and the expense of living had used up the most of Mr. Durnell's wages as they went along and all they had to show for their twenty years of work was a house with a mortgage on it. Mrs. Durnell saw what so many do not realize until too late, that when Mr. Durnell became too old to hold his position any longer they would have no business of their own and quite likely no home either. A small farm, if she could get one running in good shape, would be a business of their own and a home where they could be independent and need not fear the age limit.

Mr. Durnell stayed with his job in St. Louis, to be able to send what money he could spare to help in making the start.

They secured a farm of 23 acres a quarter of a mile from town. Ten acres was in an old, wornout field that to use a local expression had been "corned to death"; 5 acres was in an old orchard, unkempt, neglected and grown up to wild blackberries. In the Ozark hills, neglected ground will grow up to wild blackberry briars, loaded with fruit in season. As the shiftless farmer said, "anyone can raise blackberries if he ain't too durned lazy." Aside from this old orchard and the wornout field, the place was covered with oak thicket where the land had been cleared and then allowed to go back. This second growth oak was about six feet high and as large around as a man's wrist. The fences were mostly down and such as were standing were the old worm, rail fence. The house was a log shack.

Mrs. Durnell and her daughter moved into the log house and went to work. They bought a cow to furnish them milk and butter, but the cow would not stay inside the tumble-down fences, so repairing the fence was the first job. Some of it they built higher with their own hands and some they hired rebuilt, but there was only a little money to go on, so the work moved slowly. When the fences were in order and the cow kept at home they felt that a great deal had been gained.

The property in St. Louis was sold and after paying the mortgage, there was enough left to build a five room house, which Mr. Durnell planned and the construction of which she superintended. It was a happy day for them when they moved from the log cabin into the comfortable new house, although it stood in a thick patch of the oak thicket that made them feel terribly alone in the wilderness.

The crop the first year was 154 gallons of wild blackberries which grew in the orchard. There were no apples.

In the spring, Mrs. Durnell hired the 10 acre field broken; then she and the daughter planted it to corn. When the corn was large enough to be cultivated, a  neighbor boy was hired to plow it and when he said the job was done she paid him for plowing the 10 acres. What was her surprise, some time later, when walking across the field, to find that only ten rows on the outside of the field had been plowed and the rest was standing waist high in weeds. Since then she has personally overseen the work on the place.

Mrs. Durnell was learning by experience, also she was studying farming with the help of good farm papers and the state university and experiment stations. By the second spring she had learned better than to continue planting corn on the old field, so that spring she sowed it to oats and in the fall put in wheat with a generous allowance of fertilizer. With the wheat was sowed 8 pounds of timothy seed to the acre and the next February 6 pounds of clover seed to the acre was sown over the field. When the wheat was cut the next summer there was a good stand of clover and timothy. the field was so rocky and brushy however that no one would cut the hay so the grass was wasted. This naturally suggested the next thing to be done, and the brush was sprouted out and the stones picked up, so that the grass could be cut; and the crop of hay secured.

A good many men have failed to raise alfalfa, in the hills, but Mrs. Durnell has succeeded. She says that care in preparing a good seedbed and plenty of fertilizer does the trick. The ground must be rich and the weeds must be worked out of it before alfalfa seed is sown, she says. One piece was sown in April and another was sown in September; both are a success.

The whole place is now cleared and seeded to grass, except in a little draw, where the timber is left to shade and protect the spring; and where the garden and berries grow.

Mrs. Durnell and her daughter cleared away some of the oak thicket and set out blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and grapes for home use. The wild blackberries have been cleaned out of the orchard, the apple trees have been trimmed, the ground cultivated and seeded to grass. Now there are plenty of apples and good grass for hay instead of wild blackberries and briars.

Gardening has been carefully studied; and the garden is always planned to raise the greatest variety and amount possible on the ground, and with the least labor. It is planted in long rows so that it can be plowed and leave very little to hand work. A furrow is plowed the length of the garden to plant the Irish potatoes in. These are dropped and lightly covered. This leaves them a little lower than the rest of the ground. As they are cultivated the dirt is thrown toward them and when they are cultivated for the last time they are hilled up, and the weeds have been kept down, all without any hand work. At the last cultivation, kafir and milo are planted between the rows of potatoes and early garden stuff and there is plenty of time for it to mature and make fine large heads of grain for chicken feed.

Of all on her farm Mrs. Durnell is most interested in her flock of beautiful Rhode Island Reds. "I love them because they are so bright," she says, and they certainly seem to appreciate her kindness, as though they all look alike to a stranger, she now knows every one by sight and calls them pet names as they feed from her hand. She knows which pullets lay the earliest and saves their eggs for hatching, for she has made a study of poultry as well as the other branches of farming, and knows that in this way she improves the laying qualities of the flock. "When starting my flock," said Mrs. Durnell, "I determined to have the best and I still get the best stock obtainable." She selects her breeders very carefully both for their early laying qualities and for their color and so has a flock of which any fancier might be proud as well as one that returns a good profit.

Everything is very carefully looked after on the little farm, nothing is wasted. The cleanings from the poultry house are spread over the garden because there are no grass or weed seeds mixed with them to become a nuisance. The cleanings from the cow barn are scattered over the meadows and if there is grass seed among them so much the better for the meadow.

Nor has the inside of the house been neglected because of the rush of work outside. Although this homemaker has learned to husband her strength and not do unnecessary things, still she has done the job thoroughly in the house also. Here are rare bits of old furniture brought from the old home, hand made, some of it, and hand carved. There is a fireplace, made according to Mrs. Durnell's own plan, with a chimney that draws even though she had to stand by the mason as he was building it and insist that he build it as she directed. There are pictures and bits of china and there are books and papers everywhere, the daily paper and the latest novel mingling in pleasant companionship with farm papers and bulletins.

Mrs. Durnell says she never has a dull moment, because farming is so interesting. And one can understand the reason why, after being with her in the house and going around with her over the farm.

The whole place is carefully planned for beauty, as well as profit. The house is set on a rise of ground which adds much to its appearance and at the same time will allow of the whole place being overlooked as it can all be seen from the front porch and windows. Just south of the house is the old spring, where marching heads of soldiers used to drink in war time.

Not far away is the sink hole, a place where the rock shell of the hills is crushed in, making a cap shaped hollow in the ground, which gathers the water from the surrounding hills when it rains. This water pours down through a crack in the rock, sometimes as large around as a barrel in volume, to flow through the crevices and caverns of the hills, emerging later, when partied by its journey: and flowing away to springs and creeks to join the waters of the Gasconade.

Mrs. Durnell has made a beautiful home out of a rough, wild piece of land and a wornout field and she now feels that it is established on a permanent paying basis. The fruits and garden with the corn and chickens more than furnish the living. The farm is growing in value every day, without any more very strenuous efforts on her part; and the home that she and Mr. Durnell planned for their old age is theirs, because of her determination and great good sense.

It has taken a great deal of hard work to accomplish this desired end, but it has been done without any worry. Mrs. Durnell early decided that the burden was heavy enough without adding to it a load of worry and so she chose as a motto for her life and work: "Just do your best and leave the rest"-- and this she has lived up to through it all.

Her only regret is that she did not come to the farm when her children were small, for she says: "There is no place like a farm for raising children, where they can have in such abundance the fresh air and sunshine, with pure living water, good wholesome food and a happy outdoor life."

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. Editor, Home Department, Mansfield, Mo. "A Homemaker of the Ozarks." Missouri Ruralist, June 20, 1914, pages 1, 8. A number of photographs accompany this article. Most interesting is the uncaptioned photograph which has been identified as Laura Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane standing at a spring. Another is of an unidentified woman swinging an old-fashioned cradle (farm implement). Three photographs are of the Durnell farm: the original cabin, Mrs. Durnell and her poultry, and the farmhouse "a woman built" on the land.

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