Oral History Program Stella Puffer Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 2 July 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Stella Puffer Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 2 July 1972 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Puffer, Stella, an oral history by Bruce Dalley, 2 July 1972, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Stella Puffer. The interview was conducted on July 2, 1972, by Bruce Dalley, in Beaver, Utah. Puffer discusses her life and experiences living on a farm. She speaks about the farm and the government a bit as well. Fred Puffer Participates briefly as the end of the interview. BD: I'd like you to give me some background information, if you would, Mrs., Puffer, about yourself and your family and how you came to settle in this part of Utah. SP: Well, my grandmother Burt was the first white child born in Beaver, and she was the daughter of William Gates Snowers and she had, Grandmother Burt had eight, nine, ten, eleven children. And she had, they were bothered with Indians a lot and she had, when she was a girl, she used to walk from her place to the school house with gunny sacks over her feet. BD: What years would this involve would you say? SP: Eighteen something. Then my grandfather came from Filmore to the Murdock Academy and he met my mother, Margaret Powell, Margaret Burt Powell, and then they were married in St. George Temple. And they had six children. I'm the second of their children. My mother was the first one born to William Burt and Nancy Nyers Burt. And then I went to school at Belnap School, they made it a sub high school. Then I went to two years at Murdock Academy when they built the new school building, the Beaver High. Now there's where I graduated from Seminary and the Beaver High School. Then I went to the BYU for one year and met my husband and got married. And I had two children then, a son and a daughter. And my daughter’s name Marie Dalley, and my son is Fred, Jr. and I have four grandchildren. Three grandsons and a granddaughter, and my oldest grandson is Bruce Dalley. BD: Now I want to ask you a little bit about the conditions and that after you got married. You lived here at your home. That was across the creek… 1 SP: Yes, and we only and two rooms, no electricity, and the time went by, and we had to develop the land. I had to ride the plow and drove the team to do this. And when my children were little, I used to get on the harrow with both of them and harrow the ground while my man throws up the grain and broadcasts it. BD: How long did you use a team before you got a tractor? SP: We got our first tractor before the war. BD: This was World War II. SP: Yeah. BD: Did you have a car all this time? SP: We had an old jalopy we used to be able to go to town and back in. BD: Town was how many miles? SP: Eight miles, and when we would get to town, we used to have to jack up the wheels because it was an old timer to get it started. And when we would get back home, we used to have to fight snow, no county equipment never did come up until my children started to school. BD: You didn't have electricity, then, in your home? SP: No, we got that electricity in 1950, and since it has been wonderful. BD: How about the sanitation facilities and running water and this type of thing? SP: We never got that until we had electricity. BD: You used wood to heat your home, then, I take it. SP: Yes, and we built even a pond to water our garden. We had a good orchard, we would raise our vegetables. I've milked cows, herded sheep, I've done everything on a farm. BD: You now irrigate with water? How is this determined how much water you use in home use? SP: Well, some years we have a lot of water, some years we don't. It all depends upon the depth of the snow. 2 BD: I mean, when you want to water, do you just go down to the creek here and a dam in and let it run out on your field. SP: No, you bet you don't. You just take, have to have turns along with the rest of the farmers. BD: Now, this length of the turn, how is it controlled? SP: This depends on the three shares of water, there is A, B, and C. and you got to have that. If you have so much water, then you have so much water to a share and that is the amount of water you get, and we have bought lots of water to use on our farm and we have one hundred thirty-five acres here. We have two hundred and something down there. BD: Now all total you have close to four hundred acres of land. SP: This farm up here has quite a bit of brush land in it. What we use for the winter times for the range cattle to graze on. BD: Now have you ever received much help from any of the governmental agencies here on your farm? SP: Absolutely not. BD: Have you found them hindrance more than help? SP: Yes. BD: My original purpose of this was to find out about the new deal about whether the plans imposed have been helpful to the small farmer in rural Utah and whether or not there has been anything beneficial. And I'd like to kind of lead into that if I may and ask you about the depression, SP: The depression was terrible along with the drought and we had to take our cattle out upon the hillsides and let than graze, chop down cottonwood trees and let them feed because they couldn't, you couldn't buy hay at fifty dollars a ton. BD: How much is hay now a ton? SP: About forty dollars. 3 BD: So it was quite a bit at that time. SP: Yes, you never got anything for your travel either. BD: You didn't have trouble with the bank trying to take your land or anything like that during that time? SP: No. BD: Did you ever hear about the new farm loans or this stuff to get a better deal for your cattle. SP: That farm alone was a debt from the, that farm alone what we got from the Federal Land Bank. Now that is the thing that helped us out because it was low rate and we barrowed from that time and time again, but you cannot barrow a whole lot of money unless you have good security. BD: Then you did use the farm loan program. SP: Yes. BD: A kind of skip up a few years and ask you now if you think that with the disaster area being declared here in Utah, and the opening up of the farm loans again, do you think it will help the conditions out at all? SP: It depends upon the person. Some people couldn't make it if they made a dozen farm loans. They are not sticky enough. BD: Do you think the government has been rather ineffective though with the dealing with the farmer on a personal level? SP: No, I don't. BD: Now, by that what do you mean? SP: The government is for the government, the hired people and the ones that own all the land. And there getting so that now they take from the little farmers and give to the big ones. BD: Have you noticed in the last few years, with President Nixon’s price freezes, whether they have helped or hindered you in your selling of your crops or cattle. SP: I don't think Nixon has helped us in the least. 4 BD: During the war what kind of conditions existed on the farm? SP: Well, we could sell what we had, we never made anything, just by the time you got your taxes paid and you tried to eat. BD: Do you think that the Utah farmer now are on subsistence level of income rather than one where he was able to make money? SP: Yes. BD: What do you think could be done to allow the Utah farmer to make more money? SP: Let the prices come up for these little farmers. BD: By letting the prices come up, would you explain that a little. SP: Yes, let them give us a little more money for our products and our cattle. BD: Where would the money come from? Would that be reflected from the consumer’s prices or are you advocating that the middle man be cut down a little. SP: I don't want the top one to have it. The top ones are the ones that is getting all this aid and that. I could give you an example of one fellow, who had all these two hundred head of sheep, or two thousand head and they leave them and when the wool price is on what we do, we got it all. That is just the way they were with the potato growers, that is the way they were with their grain. Let them plow it under, why don't they put a price on and let the poor people or farmers that haven't got any buy it. BD: Now, Mrs. Puffer, you mentioned that you had an orchard, and I was wondering if you could maybe tell what type of farm you owned and what you do and if you raise a garden and if you sell any vegetables or anything like this. SP: No, I don't sell any vegetables, only bottle them and put them down the cellar for the winter, and I bottle all my fruit, and I pick as high as two hundred forty five quarts of raspberries at one season and so I've had plenty of 5 food for my family. We've milked a few cows but we only got a C. We never got much of a price out of it. We never had any facilities to work in building an A grade bam so that is what we done with it. BD: Now you said a C grade barn rather than an A grade barn. Is this a government standard? SP: No, a C grade barn is not a standard, it’s just a milking place with a cement floor. The A grade barn is one that you… BD: Who determines whether it is an A or a B or a C or a D or what? SP: The government men. BD: Now by the government men, do you mean the Farm Agriculture people. SP: The agriculture people have their people come around and inspect your cows every year and give them shots to see if they got these diseases like TB and all. BD: Do you have to pay for them to come around, or do they do this free of charge. SP: They are supposed to do that free of charge. And for, and we water our garden, we used to with the little spring we made with the team put a dam across, and I’ll tell you it's been hard work. BD: Now what do you raise besides your garden on your farm? SP: We raised some grain, but not much and we raised lots of alfalfa. BD: What do you do with the alfalfa? SP: We feed it to the range cattle in the winter. We don't sell any hay. BD: Now by range cows, these are the ones that you-- SP: Put up on the forest or on the, out on the BLM for the summer. Then we have to pay a permit to get them up on there. BD: Are you limited to the number of cows you can put up there? SP: Yes, on the DIM and up on the forest too. BD: How is this determined? 6 SP: Back in Washington. BD: Do you think it’s unfair? SP: Of course I do, a person who owns a bigger farm ought to have bigger inch right cause you can't raise any more cattle, you just can't do nothing with it. BD: How many cattle do you have out on the range? SP: Well we have about 28 head upon the mountains up in the forest and we got about fifty or sixty out on the BLM. We have only got place to have seven head all summer range on there too. BD: Now with these cows, do you sell the cows to gain your income. SP: We sell the calves, BD: You sell their calves. SP: Yes, but we, that’s why we feed the hay to them. BD: By selling the calves do you sell them to a meat packing plant or what? SP: We sell them to the auction. BD: Now, where is the auction? SP: Over in Richfield. BD: And they don't offer a price or anything, its just what somebody will pay at the time. SP: Yes. BD: Like today, what would be a good price for a calf that you were selling? SP: Well, right now it depends upon how fat they are and how they are and all about them. BD: What would be maybe the most money you could expect from one calf? SP: Well it would be about two hundred or two twenty five or thirty dollars. BD: Well then, there is quite a large investment on your part for each calf then. 7 SP: Yes, and the BLM this year has been so dry that the cattle have come back home here poor and we have had to take our range cows and put them on the mountain and it’s been so dry we've… BD: Now with this dry weather, does that affect your alfalfa crop too? SP: It sure does, and all the springs and everything else that water up in the mountains. As far as they let us put in a big dam in up in the swamp or up in the South Fork or North Creek we could have plenty of water, the spring run-off. BD: Who owns or allows you to do this dam? SP: I don't know who exactly, who that is. BD: It’s again part of the government subsidy? SP: Yes, we would have to get money off of them to help build it, and we don't get it. BD: Was this dam thought feasible say, or thought of say in the 1930's or 1940's? SP: Well let’s see, yes it was. We thought about and waited for the dam and the farmers that had so much back without any. No money or that, the drought and low prices we don't get anything. BD: So even if you were given the permission to build this dam, to use the water, the farmer couldn’t get enough money together to build it. SP: No, that’s why we need some money from the government. Help build it. BD: Now, in what I've read, it says that during the depression that the government gave a lot of these public works projects like building dams and such, they didn't do any of this with you around here did they? SP: No. BD: Is there any public works projects or anything like this that will help you that are in effect that you know of. SP: No, there is not. BD: Would you say that the only thing that the government has done for you in the last thirty years is to take your tax money? 8 SP: Yes, that's right, and double it at that. BD: Get back to government a little more, which president do you think has been the most effective for helping you farmers? SP: I like the democrats. BD: How about Franklin Roosevelt then? SP: Well he's wonderful. We did get a little something out of him. He did try to help the farmers. BD: Was this during his new deal during the depression? SP: Through the depression too. BD: Now... SP: And you know that they supplied grain, and that you could buy it at a lower cost, than what they ever did. Some farmers argue that they like old Nixon, but I don't. BD: Now, about this grain being supplied to you, was it just given to you or did you have to-- SP: We had to pay for it so much. BD: You mentioned that it was in 1949 or 1950 that you got electricity put into your house. What did you use for lights before that? SP: We used gas and coal oil. And then we had a gas washer and well, our radio was battery. BD: You didn't, didn't have a telephone? SP: No we didn't have a telephone at that time. But since we got our electricity and everything we....we got a telephone and we have had six people on our line so we could all use and have access to it. BD: Why do you have to have six people, is the phone company unwilling to supply lines for everyone? SP: Yes, they want such huge prices to put in a private line it’s just can't afford it. BD: When the phone was put in, did you have to supply part of the money to have them put the line in or? SP: No, we just paid I think $7.50 for a hook up on the line. 9 BD: About the electricity, is it just a hook up too? SP: That was all. BD: Why was it so long getting power to you, do you have any ideas? SP: It wasn't if you got one. It was to have power, but with the board ones they used it for some other way to go around us so when the REA came in they measured it again and we got power here. BD: Now what's REA? SP: That is rural electrician. BD: Now that was part of the government this REA wasn't it? SP: Yes. BD: That has been a little beneficial to you. Do you think that was about twenty years too late in coming? SP: It was. If we had had a little more of that right at the first, we would have been a little better off. BD: What do you think the government could have done for you? Could they give you--? SP: Well they could have supported some of these programs and give us a little money for them like planting our grains and that privileges. They didn't do it. BD: Now, with this you mean paying money to plant your crops rather than subsidies you for not planting your crops? SP: Yes. BD: Now, have you ever received any moneys for not planting your crops. SP: No. BD: Would you ever consider taking any federal moneys for not planting your corps? SP: No. BD: Now could I ask your personal reasons why you wouldn't take any money, do you think or kind of feel this is being dishonest or? 10 SP: Why sure, it would be dishonest, taking money from the government when you don't deserve it. BD: Do you think they should do away with the farm subsidy for not producing all that you could produce. SP: Yes, I do and let a farmer make what he can. BD: During the depression again, was there any talk about relocating the Utah farmers or anything like this? Giving them special packs privileges? SP: Nothing like that. If they did they would put a loom all along to you. Since we bought our farm up here, the taxes have raised and raised, and raised. It's raised on everything. BD: How did you go about getting your land here, was it homesteaded here or did you inherit it, or was it bought, or just how did you go about getting the land, SP: Well my husband’s father and his brother homesteaded it and then after so many years they proved upon them some more ground and the other brother had taken up one part of it and my husband’s father kept the other part. Then they sold it and moved away from here and some more people bought it. And up to now we are the only ones that have a clean title to this land. BD: Now, you were saying also about shares of water. Now did you buy the shares when you bought the land or did this come later? SP: We bought some shares with the land and then we bought land and water and we have taken the water and had it transferred up here and turned the land back to the people that we bought it from. BD: So you actually bought land just to get water? SP: Yes, and for our forest, that is the way we done it to get our permit, got up on the forest. BD: Getting your permit up on the forest, is there any money that changes hands here? When you go to take your cattle up on the range? SP: Every spring they send out a notice in March, you have to pay to get your cattle up on the reserve. BD: Now have you been active in like politics, or any community affairs or clubs or anything? 11 SP: Yes, I've taught 4-H for four years and I have got one of the girls that I was teaching a scholarship to the Youth CA. BD: Now who supplied the funds for this 4-H? SP: The government. BD: Did the U. S. Government with contributions? SP: No. BD: Have you done anything else? SP: I have been a Sunday school and Primary, I taught for twelve years. BD: You're LDS. Are the majority of the people in the community LDS? SP: They are supposed to be. BD: Now this was originally a Mormon settlement, here wasn't it. SP: Yes, now one of my grandmother’s aunts was the first school teacher in Beaver and they had a little log cabin down by the Beaver River. BD: Now this would have been something like 1863? SP: Yeah. BD: Now, you said that your husband’s father homesteaded this land, do you have any idea to the contrary of that. FP: No I don't. I think it was about 1820 or 1830 or something like that, about 1830. BD: I would like to thank you very much for your time. SP: You're very welcome. 12