The first year we were here my father boke sod and planted corn with an old axle. That year we didn't raise anything because we had a drought, but here were thousands of buffaloes, deer, antelope, and elks roaming the plains and we made our living from their meat. Every cabin from the mouth of Wood River to Jim Boyd's ranch, which was the last house on the north side of the Platte, was decorated with buffalo and antelope meat drying for future needs. We also had a barrel of corned buffalo meat.

In 1861, the next year, father went at the farming operations again. He marked his ground off with a yoke of oxen. Father had done some blacksmith work so he made a cultivator out of two old spades which he got hold of up at Fort Kearny. I held the plow, my youngest sister drove the ox, one sister whipped him up. We put a mule collar on the ox, father had made a crude shovel plow out of old broken spades, and by giving the shovels just the right twist it could be used, and thus we got along in such a way as to get a crop in and get it cultivated.