Mules Brick, Cracker and I have arrived in Anselmo and the end of farming in this part of central Nebraska.
Anselmo as seen from space: the dividing line between green (farm land) and brown (ranch land)Anselmo as seen from where I’m writing you. The building on the right is the old Peoples State Bank built in 1915. Now abandoned.
By “the end of farming”, no, I don’t mean they’re canceling the Husker corn crop this year. Rather, the mules and I are traveling from arable farm country to land too dry to farm. Anselmo sits square on the line that divides farm land from ranch land. We’re going from corn and soybeans to wind, grass, cows and windmills.
View of Anselmo from above. The dotted blue line is our route. The green circles between Anselmo and Broken Bow are sections of irrigated land. To the north and west, the land is browner. This is ranch land. We spent last night in Broken Bow. (Google maps)
It feels like we’re oh so close to entering the America west (which starts, for me at least, in Wyoming).
A Photos of the Day
Mike Welles. Mike delivers feed to hog farms. (Outside Merna, Nebraska)Cracker and Brick taking a break outside Anselmo.Behind them sign listing the names and distance to nearby farms and ranches1915. Carving on the old Peoples State Bank (Anselmo, Nebraska)Sod house. (Anselmo, Nebraska)Inside a “soddie” as they’re called here in the Sand Hills. Living roof on soddie. The roof is built of boards and tar paper topped with sod. Plastic sheeting and roofing screws are concessions to modern times the early sod busters would have gladly incorporated in to their often leaky dwellings.The Anselmo park where we’re camped tonight.A well deserved feed of grain.
Tomorrow the mules and I set off for Dunning, 21 miles away from Anselmo. At long last we walk in to the Sand Hills proper.
I much enjoy your postings of the towns you visit. Where I grew up we were five miles from the nearest town, and in the 50s there were only about fifty people there. Our local grocer kept all his cash under his cooler, wrapped carefully in blue laundry paper and tied up with string. I am sure most people knew that. As I read your posts and see your photos I am taken back there. Of course things are different now. Most of the farms have been purchased by Hollywood people and rock stars. And that grocery store is now an attorneys office. Change is constant que no?
I much enjoy your postings of the towns you visit. Where I grew up we were five miles from the nearest town, and in the 50s there were only about fifty people there. Our local grocer kept all his cash under his cooler, wrapped carefully in blue laundry paper and tied up with string. I am sure most people knew that. As I read your posts and see your photos I am taken back there. Of course things are different now. Most of the farms have been purchased by Hollywood people and rock stars. And that grocery store is now an attorneys office. Change is constant que no?