History by the bushel

POMEROY, Garfield County — There were a lot of older guys in their 70s and 80s at the dedication of the Eastern Washington Agricultural Museum.

They were a remarkably healthy-looking group, the men with the kind of strong handshake one gets from years of manual labor.

To them, a restored 1932 Harris combine — in which the driver sat 12 feet up, the better to see the 27 horses pulling it — was history worth lingering over.

The museum, which was dedicated this past weekend, was a big undertaking in one of the smallest, poorest and least-populated counties in the state.

But it mattered to the old farmers that their history, and, in some cases, that of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, be remembered.

One of them is Dick Ledgerwood, 82, who in the mornings usually has a breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash browns — and he uses real butter.

One of his friends is a little younger. He is Dave Ruark 69, another wheat farmer.

He said about guys like Ledgerwood, "They didn't have cholesterol problems. It was all that hard work. They worked long days — 16 to 18 hours was not uncommon."

Ledgerwood has lived all his life in this southeast part of the state, a region with the proverbial rolling hills and long stretches of highway.

He had four brothers and one sister, said Ledgerwood.

Getting up at 5:30 in the morning, the boys milked the family's 12 cows, fed the horses and harnessed them to work the fields.

We live in a high-tech age, but it wasn't that long ago — in the early 1940s — that horses were still being used in Eastern Washington to harvest wheat. It demanded a lot of the animals, and of the men.

He still has the sales receipt for the $4,100 his dad, Fred, paid for a horse-pulled combine in 1940.

Such equipment has always been expensive. That $4,100 is about $62,000 in 2008 dollars.

These days, a combine lists for $250,000, but these modern rigs do come with air-conditioned cabs, and GPS so they can be driven in a straight line on those hills.

At the dedication, held at the Garfield County Fairgrounds where the museum is located, about 50 draft horses and mules were brought in by hobbyists.

The animals were hooked up to plows and discs, and 13 acres at the fairgrounds were tilled. The land will be seeded with barley to be sold as hay for horses, bringing in around $1,000 for the museum.

Don Nagle, 76, a retired logger from Potlatch, Idaho, had brought six huge Belgian draft horses to the event.

Each horse, he said, weighs 1,800 to 1,900 pounds. After an hour or so of pulling a plow, they had worked up a good sweat, their hair matted against their skin.

Nagle said that if his horses had to do the work that draft horses did a century ago, it'd kill them.

He said that back then, draft horses were smaller and, he presumed, could withstand the rigors better. They also were treated a bit differently. On a combine back then, the driver sitting up high had a box of rocks beside him. Laggard horses got a rock thrown at their rear ends.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has compiled how many labor hours it took to produce 100 bushels of corn over the years.

In 1850, it was 75-90 hours. In 1930, it was 15-20 hours. In 1965, it was 5 hours. In 1987, it was 1-½ to 2 hours.

Men, implements of iron

The museum has collected at least 1,000 items, some big — like the combine — some smaller, like a little riveter used to bind leather.

So that visitors can experience farm life hands-on, the museum has a hand-cranked water pump, an ear corn sheller, a grain grinder and a forge blower that heats up coals for blacksmith work.

What most of the implements have in common is that they're made of iron, and that there isn't anything delicate about them. They give you callused fingers.

All the items in the museum have been donated or loaned, and some obviously have been well-used.

Dick Durham, 81, also a former logger, was at the museum, showing off a refurbished horse-drawn wagon that once delivered stove oil and kerosene. He said he spent 2,200 hours on that project.

Another of the older men visiting the museum was Ells Bartlow, 84, who had stories to tell about that 1932 Harris combine on display.

His dad, Oscar, used to be the Harris dealer in town, and also went to the wheat fields to work the combines.

Bartlow told of one of his dad's routines when driving a combine:

The combines had iron wheels about 4-½ feet in diameter, with thick iron spokes that tapered to a width of about 3 inches at the center.

The wheels needed to be greased twice a day by unscrewing a grease cup in the middle.

To do the greasing, Bartlow said, his dad would not stop the horses. The harvesting had to continue.

His dad would jump off the driver's seat, get under the combine, hang onto a truss rod and let himself be dragged on the ground.

He'd time it so he could stick his hand in through the opening between the turning spokes, and shove in the grease.

"Sure, it was dangerous," said Bartlow. But, he said, his dad was never injured.

"Now we have OSHA [Occupational Safety & Health Administration] that assumes people are stupid," he said. The old-timers don't seem to care much for government regulation.

Preserving history

The museum exists because in October 2004, eight locals got together to do something to preserve the region's agricultural history, and to show city visitors what farming was like.

"A lot people think we get our food at Safeway or Albertsons or wherever," said Ruark, the wheat farmer, and one of the initial organizers.

He said that on "the West side," meaning places like Seattle, "most kids over there don't know what a wheat plant looks like, or how it's grown or what you make from it."

The museum group managed to raise $200,000 in grant money and contributions. The result was an 8,600-square-foot pole building, with metal siding painted red and white.

Ruark said he was pleased with the dedication weekend, which had a turnout of 700 to 800 people. That's not bad in a county which in 2000 had a population of 2,300.

Over a lunch at the community hall ($6 for a ham slice, hot beans, potato salad, fruit salad, rolls, lemonade or other drink and cookies), he talked about his granddaughter, Savannah Ruark, 11.

She had expressed an interest in wheat farming, said Ruark.

"It's way too early," he said about hoping she'd follow the tradition, "but she would be the seventh generation in our family to be a wheat farmer."

The museum has no regular hours. Those wishing to visit can e-mail another of the organizers, Jay Franks, at pvpercherons@msn.com to set up a tour. (Percherons are draft horses.)

Franks will line up one of the old-timers as a guide.

To visitors, the museum might seem to be just a collection of old farm equipment.

How wrong they would be.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com