Farm Collector – March 2019

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1. W.P Adams, founder of Fairview Farm.


2. Hay and livestock barn.
   3.Fairview Farm near Odebolt, Iowa. The W.P. Adam’s Ranch and residence:
   4. Plowing with mules on Fairview Farm.
   5. Bringing in wagons of corn.
   6.Fairview Farm. Bedrooms were upstairs. Mess hall and sleeping quarters at
   Note corn wagons in foreground.

supervisor there. Ross started work-

ing at the ranch when W.P. Adams was still alive. “Every mule had a name and

I think my dad knew at least 199 of

them,” Roger says. “I recall him telling me that he couldn’t put Betty to work

with Suzie because they didn’t work well

together, and when they were out in the field being handled by a driver, you had

to have mules that were compatible

with each other.”In a small office in the mule barn, a

glass plate hung on one wall. Behind it was listed the stall number and name of

every mule in the barn. “You could walk

up and check to see that the number 12 stall held Suzie,” Roger says, “and that

Henry was in number 19.”

Handling teams

When it was time to break a new

team, the “green” team was hitched to a wagon in the mule barn with a broke

team hitched in front of them. Two

drivers drove the wagon. One held the lines and the other held a whip. After

the mules were driven around a section, the new team was considered “broke.”

Most of the mules were turned out on

the harvested fields during the winter to graze. When 200 mules were rounded

up and herded to the mule barn to be

readied for spring planting, it was a sure sign of spring.

In that era, mules and horses were

commonly neglected after they were retired. Some farmers left the retired

animals outside in all weather, while working animals were sheltered. On oc-

casion, some were allowed to starve to

death. Late in his life, Adams nearly sold a

few retired mules to a slaughterhouse.

Terms of the agreement called for a ranch foreman to accompany the mules

to the facility, to ensure they were killed

humanely. “Every one of those mules is a friend of mine,” Adams is reported to

have said. “They helped me get where I am now.” After that, Adams had his re-

tired mules euthanized on the farm to

ensure they wouldn’t be abused.

Plowing with 18 gangplows

and 220 feet long, and had enough The mule barn measured 90 feet wide

space to house at least 200 mules. Stor-

age space for hay and machinery was on the second floor, reached by a ramp at

the back of the building. Adams bought

his mules in Missouri, many from the

Kansas City stockyards. At first Adams traveled to Kansas City to buy them,

but later bought them from buyers who

shipped them to the ranch.Plowing was done with 18 gangplows

and 17 single plows. Mules pulling 140

sections of 4-foot harrows moving to-gether could cover 62 acres. One vintage

photo shows nine binders cutting oats

with each binder pulled by four mules. Corn was picked by hand until the

late 1920’s or early 30’s, at which time McCormick-Deering tractors and

single-row corn pickers came into use.

However, the tractors were only used to pick corn and were stored with the

pickers the rest of the year. An old ranch

photo shows 15 tractors in a row with 15 pickers.

Adams raised sheep from 1900 to

1925. A 1906 photograph shows a herd of thousands. Local residents remember
      seeing a herd of sheep as wide as the street and two blocks long being herded
      to stockyards at the railroad in Odebolt
      to be shipped to market.The fields were farmed, for the most
      part, in mile-square sections. Rows of
      corn were a mile long, and oats were grown in an entire section. In 1943,
      The Des Moines Register reported that the
      ranch had 2,850 acres planted in corn, 1,800 acres to oats, 310 acres to flax, 220
      acres to timothy, 800 acres to red clover
      and 300 acres to permanent pasture. Ad-ams planted an acre of soybeans on an
      experimental basis. Henry Ford report-edly wanted Adams to grow soybeans
      commercially, but that never happened.
      Managing a staff of 150
      A ranch manager ran daily opera-
      tions; 10-12 foremen on horseback su-pervised laborers. Adams met daily with
      the manager, foremen and bookkeeper
      to discuss the day’s progress and give in-structions for the following day’s work.
      The men worked six days a week, Mon-
      day through Saturday.Hiring and managing a workforce of
      approximately 150 men from spring through fall and 45 during the winter
      was a fascinating enterprise. An agent
      in Chicago hired men and sent them by train to Odebolt. Hoboes who hitched
      a train to Odebolt provided another
      source of labor.Food for the men was bought whole-
      sale, and two steers were slaughtered on