The Homestead

This small structure was the family home in the 1870s. During these years the first children were born, the tallgrass prairie torn into cropland. During these years the grasshoppers came; for two consecutive summers they swarmed in, darkening the sky, devouring crops, gardens, lace curtains, even the wooden handles of the tools. Winters were long and dark and severe, but worse was yet to come...

This structure survives because after they built the larger home it was used as housing for the hired men and their families. Later still it became a granary, reinforced with long steel rods running wall to wall through the interior. Aunt Nancy cleaned it up and painted it a few years ago. She and my mother remember the stories they heard from their Grandmother Clara, who gave birth to three children here. Sometimes the Indians came up to the house and peered in the windows as she nursed and cared for the children. They shared what they had; the Swedish and Lakota swirling like immiscible liquids, the infant sounds providing something universal, clearing away a space for sympathy...we tell these stories with Chloë nursing at Bess' brest, singing her little infant songs, pulling away wide-eyed to stare around the room before going back to her meal.