Latah County Oral History Collection

Rachel Foxwell: This conversation with Nellie Olson Johannsen took place in the McConnell Mansion in Moscow, Idaho on June 22nd, 1978. The interviewer is Rachel Foxman.

Nellie Johanson: Together. Bar staff on the bar. You know what the inside flower. They dry them and grind flour and mix it with what little flour they have. And potato flour and potato flour. I've never heard of that. This is another thing that you should know. So they fix this meal for potato flour and use the potato flour with this part for bread in Sweden.

In Sweden. So now when Ed and I went out of the farm, we raised potatoes and there was no price for the potatoes. The potatoes are down $0.25 a sack, a hundred. And we had to pay that much for the burlap. Put the sack. We couldn't afford the sound, but they. So we buried them as much as well.

I said, are they gonna make them? Grant and grandpa, I got along this great because we both felt adventurous. Welcome to what grandpa says. I think we can do something about it. What I say, well, you know, in Sweden, when was a poor. We made a potato meal. Who? The potato? Well, yes, if the food made a potato mill is a lot of work too.

And we made it. Graters by and by hand. My mother, he said, were great. These potatoes into water and the starch from the potatoes and the fine grain would settle to the bottom in the water. So they take that off. You probably noticed that the starch in potatoes called. So we take that and put it out of cloth and let it dry.

And then we take a roll, roll it. And it was flour. Oh I said why can't we do that with. Yes, it says so in, you know, it was quite it was quite inventive. Yeah. He invented and invented one of the first heavy duty grease guns for tanks, which we didn't get it good at that time. It was good pride, but not nothing.

So when he said, you know, we got this money. Well, this was easy. Money made so that we're not going to spend it. No. Once I put it aside and said on it. So he went bought a school bond, you know, a 20 year school bond. And it was small interest, you know, for not that school bond. It's due in September and we have drawn that interest up in 12 years.

Then just feel bad that he couldn't be here too. And that was just $5,000, you know. And that's cool. So he made a dividend on that 4% you can say on that school board. But anyway then and come in on this and we made a potato mill up there on the farm.

Rachel Foxwell: In.

Nellie Johanson: Up here up north. He he went down to the mill and took one of the pulleys, Edward Pulley, it was a smaller pulley and put a shaft on it, built the scaffold kind of there that could put this on and took a sink or. Yeah, it was a big sheet and grandpa showed it and found holes in there with the nail, you know.

So it made a greater he put it on the soft on the end of a the stump, you know, where the nail would go down through anything other than that. I thought it was great monument. It wouldn't make any difference. But he says, oh yes, it makes it that easy. A nail goes, do you see it down in the top of the stump, it says, and it does on the state board.

So he made this thing. So then it took this back and wrapped it over this pulley. This they took down from the mill, nailed it onto that real gun and took the old, saw what saw motor know gas motor and put a dome connected on to this pulley and made a hopper so that we could put the potatoes in to get in.

I had to watch him get the eyes on him so they couldn't see. So, I mean, and oh, I left the I just went into hysterics. We put the potatoes in this hopper and when you start building, it's got to start pumping plant all from the hopper because the speed was two batches with the grain. So then it cut the speed down a little bit and we did the hopper and put a lid down when we put the potatoes in there, and then let that run down into tubs of water, the grains underneath the hopper.

And there we started our little potato mill and I was potatoes, flour and sold it down here to the storage to the Kristin took some tomato, got $0.50 a pound for the potato starch. So we average up. We get it $0.75 a sack for the potatoes. But doing all that work, who would do that now? But you can get by with that if you have to say that you were really hard up.

And if you have potatoes or anything, you can utilize it some way. This is all, you know, good education to me to know these things. Just move that and another thing that was I learned from my folks and his mother. I made butter, I chicken, but we had three cows not turnover. So same with the cream. We couldn't afford to use it so I could take it down and trade it for groceries.

But they you know, in the winter the cream got so pale and the butter roll would look so sickening, just like lard. So grandma said it's not so. Oh, she says in three weeks we did some. Did that take a carrot and grind and then string it to a fine cloth or a linen cloth. Put that in the cream and you churn and you better have color.

And I live in the dirt. Then. The instead of, you know, for a while we got this margarine, butter and they couldn't put the coloring and they had put it in a little bubble. Uncle. So what, you had to rework that, put their coloring in the unused, just carried natural food paint.

Rachel Foxwell: Why couldn't they color that margarine originally? Why did they have to give them all of it.

Nellie Johanson: In the law? And I had to go and get him head to the state to get a permit. Not a permit, but have butter papers stamped with the ounces of butter I put on. And I still had them in my scrapbook right over. So much.

Rachel Foxwell: So that you just couldn't take it to the store and to sell it, you had.

Nellie Johanson: To have paper, had to have that on their food control.

Rachel Foxwell: What year.

Nellie Johanson: Was that? That was in 19. that's in 1918, 19, 1718.

Rachel Foxwell: Because they didn't used to make people do that, did they? No.

Nellie Johanson: But that commitment, it was all right. So they knew who had made the butter, knew would come from it, which is fine. To write. But all of that and it's been it's been a benefit to me even, you know, being in Alaska on that because, I had to take Crisco when we started camp because we had a lot of the Crisco and put butter in and not salted, and that we had carrots and great carrot put in Cyprus yellow.

So I called them margarine. Did it work? It worked. Yeah, sure. It just took Crisco with that and that it cool. But it was I called it soft butter. Because it got pretty hard then your coat. But I said this is soft rubber. Get it ready so that those things you know not need it, etc. it's the need that makes inventions and ideas.

But, and and two, after we bought quite a bit of, mayonnaise dressing because that already had the eggs, it was cheaper than to make it the mayonnaise from the eggs up there. Yeah. Well done. You, you had quite a bit but it got cold. And when mayonnaise freezes it separates. The oil grows up and it's so hard to get it back.

with, with no beater, you have to buy it. So I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not going to do I've got to use this or something. So I got tired of making a cake and I tried it and not much. And I mentioned and finally I perfected it and I said, I mean, I got $35 hotter sending that into the, to the mayonnaise company, making it cake.

Other things I see a lot of papers that I sent in.

Rachel Foxwell: What kind of cake would you make?

Nellie Johanson: Chocolate cake. Oh, see, I took one cup of mayonnaise.

Rachel Foxwell: Separated. Or that should be that.

Nellie Johanson: Get it? No, this. Separate up it it up because it has the agent that has the oil and took one cup of sugar and, with the daylights out so the sugar would melt. Get rid of it. If they're not, they should have two cups of, And it's flour with this and with this frozen mayonnaise. That wasn't too sure where the baking powder would do it, but I used both, you know, then a teaspoon of the baking powder in here somewhere into it and mix them together.

And I put this all into the flour mixture and taste it because, I mean, it's already had salt in it. So I had to salted a little bit. But I just did this all together. So then I well know what. Then after three parts of a cup of just warm water and beat it all together and put and melted chocolate and so I got that.

I use cocoa sand, about a half a cup of cocoa and mixed on, which I don't know. So now whatever comes out will be real estate. I'm just like to go with my recipe. I got it and paste it in the pan and. It came on and it was all right, but it wasn't just perfect. So I worked out again.

And I remember now just the whole pan, but I got the measurements out. So, why don't you send that recipe in to a forum to the on my invention papers, you know, so that when Evans neighbors are invented. So does that interest my phone? Cost me, I think, $5 to register this recipe. well, I got $35 out of it, I got this.

I still have my receipt.

Rachel Foxwell: That the recipe that you've sent to the mayonnaise people.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. but I sent it in so I can get recognized and see as being the first one a number. So I send in first and then send that number into them, into the mayonnaise people afterwards. Then I got sent a $35 in the mail. That's. I was pretty clever. I should probably brought that. but, I have it at home and I have scrap.

This is what Dorothy Downer says. Oh, so everything she looked at, she said this up interest. But I don't know, it just all memories by mail.

Rachel Foxwell: It's. But it's so different than how we live now.

Nellie Johanson: It's not you. You get along with what you have and you change things that what you have it like, third card. You got to compromise and something. And like all the boys, I loved pumpkin pie. Well, we were assured of pumpkin pie. I just, you know, couldn't make it, so I don't mind. So I'm going to try something.

So we had carrot. I had a lot of things cooked up, and I didn't get any cut. That's kind of getting old. So I thought, well, I'm going to try. I want to take and strain out some beans and I'm going to use them for the pumpkin. And I was trained them all and I made the same spice.

I do a little bit more and make time for it. All right. But it did have a different taste to remember. So one of the boys says no. So what happened to the pumpkin pie? So don't you find. No, I said, that's the pumpkin. Thought, And it was beans. So. So that's oh, they rolled up some. I have, several articles up there that different ones are written, and so they get a big bang out of this.

So they wrote this up in the paper. I have to kind of say because they're kind of fun. But according to this.

Rachel Foxwell: I think it's so interesting. like, like you said, you had to be clever back then to be able to survive. Yeah.

Nellie Johanson: Now you had to think. I don't know if they know how to make a fire in a wood stove anymore. You know, it. It's kind of sad to me personally. I don't know if I have something, if I have flour in the bin or sugar in the sugar box or, say some butter, lard or something. I can make something out of it in a hurry, you know, just do it.

Or if you have cereal anytime, it's just, of course, being interested in food and cooking and, you know, the value in it in different foods, how you can combine them, that's the secret of it.

Rachel Foxwell: Do you think a lot of it had to do with because you were in remote areas? Yes. Oh great deal.

Nellie Johanson: And started, you know, with the parents in remote like potatoes, the French that you can fix that up in so many different ways that it's amazing. You know, we used to eat out of cowboys and stuff, you know, potatoes, cowboys, mashed potatoes or you take fresh potatoes. If you had, you wouldn't even peel them. Just wash them up real good and grate them on a little coarser.

Not the real pine grated. But then and just great amount. Then you take good bacon, you prime, you bake and you just put them right on top of the bacon spread on the pan, and you have a whole new right in that. Right. So that take bacon, fry the bacon, greater potatoes with the peelings at all. Put it on top of the bacon.

There's a little salt and pepper and it won't take much cooking. You've got to start. You got everything right in that. Turn it over and it makes a good meal when you're hungry, just as it is there. And like I said, you can make the starch. remember that I made all my pudding is up on when I was on the farm for puddings, you know, raspberry juice.

Well, used potato starch, which is finer than corn starch. And you could go down here and buy potato starch. You pay a point in part in that you can just make it yourself by bread in the finer, not too finely grated. But when you get in water, the starch settles. And then you can use the gratings for cooking besides, so you can utilize it in in many, many different ways.

And this has, this was it. My education from my parents and from these older people has been more benefit to me than my book put them reading, you know, the recipes and all this. Of course. I think it's very interesting to see the different combinations they have come up within food, you know, in through experiment, which, you know, you got to experiment to do.

But the old fundamental part in the beginning, when this wasn't available, you had to come up with something.

Rachel Foxwell: Like you saying your father in law used the bark from the trees.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. The inner bark just in the he was driving and grounded in the ground. And with the stones. And, this was interesting when I was in Sweden and I didn't know this either, but my father in law, he had a flour mill. They set a problem. And where they got, you know, so he could, you know, after the famine and all that and a song that they had there.

So he ground. He ground and barley and oats and wheat that they raised. And there they had to go and got these big stones about, and two stones round the flour. And now when I was this week, I went up in here, one of those stones were still laying with them, mill burned, that big stone vessel. That's a large stone.

I told its cousin. Oh, Jesus said, that's just the stone that that they will flour mill that giants metal. And that was very interesting to me too. And then the dam. They had a big dam there too, for a poem, you see, for the flour mill and the sawmill, I so this game is so interesting. You know this.

Oh my. Oh, you said you had to build that two you may grab times. Yeah, they said your husband behind it. That was it. So I went down and I took a and knocked over a piece of the stone of the dam. So I have that about that so that I'm going to give it to job its brother.

But I haven't got that far now, I don't know if it needs because he's 96 years old.

Rachel Foxwell: He's pretty interesting.

Nellie Johanson: It's interesting.

Rachel Foxwell: What brought your father in law over to the United States?

Nellie Johanson: Adventure.

Rachel Foxwell: Not the depression.

Nellie Johanson: No, no, I'm.

Rachel Foxwell: Mean the same.

Nellie Johanson: Time. Well, no. He. After the famine, he got. So he went ahead and he made a little money. He went into logging because there's a lot of timber in Sweden and sawmill like. And he had 600 males working on there. And so he, he was pretty rough to do this. And I didn't know that either. I didn't know nothing about I probably is just a lumberjack out here, you know, on the farm, you're like the rest of.

But no, but he was adventurous and the dentist. But I'm after the after the farmer burned. Then he, a friend of his or relative moved out to Minnesota. So when they rode. But that's what he decided. That left the mill to go to Minnesota. But as I could see, he would have been a wealthy man. If it stay right there, sweet, he would have been just ahead of most of them.

But he was pretty adventuresome to seem like everybody liked him. You know, when you have kids, you don't tend to do things. You know, no one knows. See, I was only 19 years old in. That was just a kid that crossed though the the very younger. And then.

Rachel Foxwell: So it was just the adventure, just the idea of coming out to a new country.

Nellie Johanson: That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Foxwell: What can you remember what year that was that he came out?

Nellie Johanson: No. Okay. But I could find out. It was in the 1800s. It was before the railroad went down to to Lewiston, to Moscow. Here before that. And I think Pullman was the closest railroad at that time. So Moscow wasn't much either.

Rachel Foxwell: Would it be around 1870s? Would you imagine?

Nellie Johanson: There should be a there should be a record of it. The historical record at either at the University or at the courthouse, or when the railroad was put in and at that time I went bomber. Bomber was Troy at that point. But it was changed because bomber was too greedy. That's what sent Sam, you know, the farmers there, they lost their home a lot or a few of them, and that made them see that Troy Bomber should be the name of Troy.

They were changed. That was the reason grandpa said that. But. But he had a sawmill right down the middle of Troy, which is Troy, that he started out printing.

Rachel Foxwell: Who had Vollmer, who?

Nellie Johanson: Who was the way he talked. But it could be somebody else that had the sawmill. That should be a record of. Right. I think from that beginning. Now, what's a Mary Driscoll? Is it Driscoll and Saunders? that she wrote up a little. But she hasn't gotten you everything? No, no. Complete of the beginning, you see, of Troy.

But see, grandpa Troy helps. Who was one of them together, given, and, there was, Westberg was one, I think, that went down on Burnt Ridge. See, who else?

Swan Erickson. He was the blacksmith at the time. So I just can't, There is a book that's written down who you sweat by. Call the tall trees.

Rachel Foxwell: And trees with tall.

Nellie Johanson: Trees of tall.

Rachel Foxwell: By John.

Nellie Johanson: Miller. Yes. Now that's interesting. He's got more of interest in that than that. This other one. That's the Bovill area. Yes, that has more the details. Are there. I knew about that because he used to come down today front of, you know, these old timers used to kind of horse back around I corner it horse around. Well this is the language they use that that's done.

So sometimes you hear this. Yeah. Your horse around. But that's what time is they they host around I think it's approaching. It's kind of funny you know.

Like the that's you know the Benson's they went to a club dance some she managed to hold on. She said Clara Hall I don't know. Well, she's a girl. She's home. And Benson's were close to Dr. Hanson spread across, you know, not all, but mine. So when I got tired of cultivating that prune orchard up there. And Dorothy was a baby, she was about a year old.

So I take her and I take her up at night. But the saddle on one of those old nags that I was using for cultivating and take off, I worked at the neighbor well, on take out, but were to Benson's because, Mrs. Benson such and all the time something of interest to talk about, you know. And he was those boys and they would just flabbergasted here that I was having that baby with me on the saddle.

So when they get in old barns, is that what? You sure horse around?

And later, that guy. So I did a little horsing. Go down spotting horseback.

Creek. Yeah, that was in 1913. But before that, when he come out, he had the homestead there, and, he set up the sawmill. So he, saw lumber there for the neighbors around something there.

Rachel Foxwell: Home. Did he come out by himself? Did he hook up with his friend in Minnesota and come out?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. He had some men with Minnesota first.

Rachel Foxwell: He had a son in the Minnesota.

Nellie Johanson: And you know that. But this is all in this, right up on there instead, you got Troy. You know how he come out. Oh, I thought it. It's all in that. So. But he did what? He start. He did put in this big a prune orchard up there which help a lot of the kids, you know, come over there and pick from trucks.

At the time, they were right. And after he built the dryer up there, you know, then we had to have somebody to help. Then we to get work to Joseon Dynasty.

Rachel Foxwell: He sounds like he was pretty enterprising. He had a prune orchard, prune dryer and a prune.

Nellie Johanson: Was right on the first prune direct dryer and head was done. He built that down in Troy because he thought it would it just help transportation on account of, you know, like horsing around with teams. And wagons to haul them after their drive. And so he drove to prune dryer down there and not just all the prunes down there.

Then it wasn't far to get them out into, you know, commercial into that new store, different stores and to the whole shops because he sold them to the house. well, then later in the later years, he thought, well, he'll just build the dryer up on the first. So then after he did that, he had this program for sale.

Well, then he sold the film dryer to the nursery people for a church. So the nursery in the church is still the prime dry product.

Which was a good, did a good purpose living.

Rachel Foxwell: And where was his farm in, in relation to where that the prune dryer was set up like that.

Nellie Johanson: And now where he had this prune that was right on the farm, right on the orchard. Oh, I see, right at the edge of North. Okay. So we, we just rolled and got the pruned riding and we carry him right into the pro dryer.

Rachel Foxwell: Now did he have the prune. Was he doing the prune business at the same time he was doing the sawmill.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Oh yes I was going with the same mill. Different people did the different trim. No, I know it. When we were up there, when he had the screws him, I took care of the problems and we had, some of the coming girl. So maybe clean, dry and, is just, Oh, God. I can't think of my marriage.

I don't fancy those shows. And and just taking up memory, even though it was good at one time. But honestly, I had good. My short shot from the shoulders up just should get it. No. Oh. When? When she. She was one of the best caricature. Well, after she had just. Oh, I don't know. she just put a 60 pound marks in just a few minutes and ham.

Nice and clean, two point. And then we went down to the prop dryer and put them in the drive car, and we had to take them apart, treat them and then put them out on 25 pound screens. So by that time we had the crop and we had about three tons of dried fruit up direction and the last ones that was I was up on the farm then.

I never seen the last that I took care of. We got $0.03 a pound for the dried, $0.25 a load for the green. That's 60 pounds I just can't get over. And now when you go to the store, buy pound of pros a dollar a pound for just a handful.

Rachel Foxwell: What was $0.03 a pound? Was that a top price at that time?

Nellie Johanson: At that time. But it was awfully low. You couldn't if we had to hire everything, we couldn't make anything on it. But I, I got cheap help. got some my brother and some of the kids around the neighborhood, and then the colored boys were great to help.

Rachel Foxwell: So that after your father in law was through running the prune dryer in the prune business, then you and your husband had it.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. We from the orchard. And then, And work in the excitement and get led up for the factory. Done. Try to break tractor to factory.

Rachel Foxwell: That was. Did he also had the brick factory the same time that he had the sawmill and the prune dryer?

Nellie Johanson: It was all the operation. It was it was all going on. Different people, different workers.

Rachel Foxwell: But all at the same time.

Nellie Johanson: Well, at the same time, it wasn't directed here. You see, this is all the dough. This is what bothers me at now. If we get a lot of people in here, what have we got to offer them for wages to live on? We're. At that time, these people saw something that they could develop to get people work as they, the community was growing out of people had children and growing up.

And this did them work with that going out under to get out of the village or left village at that time, we used up.

I never worked there, but instead of driving the cars on, burning gas. No, no, you. No more bailing around.

Rachel Foxwell: What do you think killed the town of Nora?

Nellie Johanson: Oh. Well, it, it needed to cooperate with Troy and Yuri, and it was better for them just kill people. And these people gone. They had to go to school. The children, they grew up, they went to my school. Which education comes first, then they old people sit there and by themselves, and they can carry on, just like when they have the family all at home.

So it was that land for them to divide between the other towns, like trying to enable them to move when lumber and logs of lumber had gone up. So they turn that back into farming just just as well the entire benefit of it and DuPont benefit. So this program Moscow, Moscow benefit, great.

Rachel Foxwell: Some say Moscow benefited more than any other place.

Nellie Johanson: Yes they do in the cold. which I like to see individual business. not entirely for this big business, this company business coming in. It's, it's competition, but it gives, personal, younger people a little harder. Start it. Do you think that you understand it? A little community store, some that would just make your bread and butter just a little bit.

You can't do it because there's too big a competition. I wouldn't be surprised that, like Troy, do it. As Moscow grows, they bring in several bookkeeping and like a reward, pennies go up. That's why it's up in or now it cuts out the smaller person that tries to make a living. That's really quite benefit to the community to build it up.

It's benefit for the big companies to it. Benefits of one way, but it takes away from another. This, this can be good or it can be serious. It can. And I can come in now with the younger people. It's it's hard for them to start a whole. So you get married and you want to buy a home.

How can you if you haven't got some you can make a living on? You've got to go into an apartment, house or if you haven't got the desire to go put a put it in.

Rachel Foxwell: Whereas when you were growing up in Troy and even when you went to Alaska. Yeah, it seems like you could make your start.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. That's right.

Rachel Foxwell: If you're willing to put in a little work, put in a lot of work.

Nellie Johanson: Yeah. You're so you can make it, you can make it.

Rachel Foxwell: But you can't do it now.

Nellie Johanson: Not the best yet because they come in with these big stores and take the big company operation even in logging. And these big companies have these big trucks and take away some from these smaller people that have equipment and could do the same work. And just, it might turn out a little better than nothing. But yeah, I'm a pessimist.

Rachel Foxwell: So what do you think Troy could ever be like? It was when?

Nellie Johanson: When you think so, I think it could. I can I think there's about a third. There could be made in one way or the other. I'd like to see that the, clay development could be made up a little more stronger. A come in competition with swap there. No, it could divide work. Yeah. Help make more jobs for people.

Put the young folks overseas and, they can, Now they used to be, fruit, a lot of fruit around the country. But I understand one reason that that is the oldest spring that they've done for wheat and other produce. Say, that comes out of the ground, kills pepper trees. So when they're, it won't kill them.

But the fruit. Now, this was told to me down in Roseland that by one of the old fellas that had the knowledge that this spring has cut down the fruit for us.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, I've heard that there was a lot of, fowl in this area. Hungarian partridges. Yes. And different types of birds in in such great quantities.

Nellie Johanson: well, I hope you take these Chinese ventures. you know, I should down to Tennessee. But my sister went on the search. You know, I think these are so interesting birds, but they're not very interesting for the field. The old hen would come out and fly right at the top when the grain was ripe, and just thrashing them little fellows would be down underneath, but you know not.

And they could make streaks right through the fields like that. Now, I don't know if there's enough of those birds. They can thrasher a week before it's ready to take care of yourself. And we asked for this and I thought it was interesting. I thought it was real, you know, but then knew what she's doing. She just fly over from that with throw that dry weave and it's dry and with a little bit of.

Rachel Foxwell: So some of the birds had to be gotten rid of.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. And then when they after seeding and all, they'd be out picking up the seed and that could be a little damaged. But I don't know if that would be too much. I know, we have the the coyote, up the area, up it. And they used to come around. They have bounty on them. Well, they took the bounty out, which I don't think they should, because those coyotes eat all these rodents.

You don't have to go and squirrel poison like we did years ago. And and kill them and work on them because it's food for those animals. Then if these, coyotes, you know, they feed up on this, they don't give the trapper a chance to trap these hounds or coyote for the first. You get them, they get paid for these kinds.

We're getting kind of short on leather, too. So there's another. I didn't see that the other people can go ahead. The trapper take care of the same thing with the beaver. That so eager? No. He's been eager out of my place. He's the best person out there. I think perhaps he's dammed up the. He's got really good ponds there, but he interferes with my driveway.

And I don't appreciate that. If they move away from there, you could take all the rest that you want. But he's interfering with that, letting the water come in and wash up my driveway. So we'll have to see about that. You'll have to move somewhere or somewhere close or someplace. And you don't know everything.

Rachel Foxwell: I think it's so interesting. I, I see those pictures of Troy and it looks so blooming and it looks like there's so many people and living there now, many times go up and down the streets and I try to imagine, what did it look like?

Nellie Johanson: Well, look at the convention to him that, how exciting the people were at that time to get the convention down.

Rachel Foxwell: There in 1908? Yes. And that was a state convention?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. So, you know, we could do that here. I'm not in dire concern about them myself. And but we could do that again. Sure. They could do that again. And there they got the church there. You know, the Lutheran church got up all the time. I don't know if they have a hall in there or not, but the church is very active.

They could put on a big theme for the convention there. And if nothing else, they can put up a big tent and I'm just like, what's his name? There's, Oh, that preaches some orderly room. Yes. So he got. I can find that you if I know, but, I mean, these are things of person corporate. This is what I enjoy.

My energy balance. Come when you bring up something along. Oh, well, if it doesn't, well, we could change that a little bit. We don't say not. That's not good. But let's bring up other ideas and see what we've come up with. So we caught up and we put them all together and then retreats our ideas. And this is how we have worked in Anchorage with with the city and even with our government.

I've been on the forum for the government different times, and it's very interesting to sit and hear the other sound and give your own opinion like this in your citizens. They're, they're, so interested in and they're talking desk a big money you know, panel up to be taxpayer has to sneeze on our own good money to pay for and, not for all of that extra grand because you got to pay for it.

why do it when I don't do the individual any good? That is some of it. You get like that. For instance, up there, we have the old pay, but you got a big red farm. They ran a big building. Pay big price for them. Have a sack for two secretaries to pay them. We buy stuff there for these in years to come in and play with clay and mud and or some others want to sit down, play cards, or just have a couple of chairs and and talk?

Yes, gossip and history. Well, I do a video, but I have more. I've got too much to do to go over there and sit down like that. And to me that money is just waste and that we're paying for this, not to the most of them bottom that go there, they think this is great for them, but that's just a few.

Rachel Foxwell: Not enough benefit.

Nellie Johanson: From it. No. and then we're like, that was here last year. The fun of that benefit took off me. There's no noise that you gotta make a good living. Got the money? You know. So I hope they catch him. And so now that we're going to get another grant, then, But I like everything myself. But I'm just one little part of the year.

But, I'm outspoken to this. I probably. But but there's naturally there's a lot of senior citizens that need help, which, before and there's this, food help. They have the grant for, you know, the, Meals on Wheels, Meals on Wheels and also on. And we have a grant for that. And I think that's necessary because there's so many they're not able to go down and buy the grocery store them or not.

And I think that's great. Whatever goes into that is nutrition. And I think that program is find. And also they have a program now that they can they'll come them all once a week and they can go out, you know, to a different town, go between, like way up there in between Palmer in Anchorage or, to Seward, if they wish.

But they have to pay a little bit for the ride in the truck, a bus, come and pick them up. That's good for them because to get out, it's a it's a different interest is to get them out of the house. I think that's more benefit to them to go in and sit down and play with my outdoors, play cards for themselves.

So that program is all right. So and I'm doing a lot of just volunteer work. And I think if they're able to go down there, they can join me and go out and volunteer. And that's so interesting that, don't they have that here must, you know, kind of a volunteer and they have a bus to don't they said they pick them up.

Well, I think that's good for them. That's one problem so far. But to have this other is not too good. Now, here's one program we have. Yeah, I'm not really happy with the people I have lived up to 30 years. You know, I've worked on low scale wages. You know, their income from Social Security isn't enough to meet up with the, expenses up today.

So we got put in that. We give them a bonus, they get a bonus of $125 a month. I give it. I don't know if I deserve that or not, but, get it to pay the folks because I'm doing volunteer work, so I figured that that's what I'm getting paid $425 a month. But it it's such a help to those people that what's up?

Know there's a lot of the natives to get it on there. All the they they get an extra bonus too. Now they got their oil bonus, you know, and that but they're spending that. So what I like to putting it into big high rise buildings in Anchorage with one of now understand is just burning it. And that's the attorney that has really gotten to spend that money to keep up.

They say, well, what I think about that, that should take that same money and build up that village and help them just like that. They like the people and try to run it there and build it, try and build it up. And the people are coming in, let them help and and cooperate with it to build it up so that they can can support themselves.

Don't go into a place and say, well, no, I'm just going moving in there to live off of that community. That's wrong. That's it. Just like me moving from here up to the Anchorage, like it would be wrong for me to, to just have lived up there and not put in anything to help the community in the same thing.

I'm. I'm touring. I'm under do one best to help the community better my heart. The hot sellers movement.

Rachel Foxwell: I think that's interesting what you said about, the people that had worked had been out there for 30 years and had gotten low Social Security, and now they're getting a bonus. Yeah, because it seems like those are the people that did the original work in the area. And of course, they worked for low wages that because the times who should deserve it more and.

Nellie Johanson: Also now these people that get this bonus don't have to be on welfare and get and get food stamps. They have to use this money for that. And you don't have to feel you feel you earned this money. That's right. Now, the same thing could be done here for the person that's lived here in this in this county so many years.

So the state could get a bonus, get them off of welfare. But everybody don't like to be on waiting. You know what? I don't like that feeling that I'm degraded down, that I didn't have to be on with payment.

Rachel Foxwell: You know, some of the, the people that I've heard talk that were old timers that, like, worked for the big long corporations like Potlatch, it sounded like when they got they'd work so many years and then when they got near the time they were going to have to retire, it seemed like they weren't getting a real fair deal.

They were getting fired real early so they wouldn't get too much of a pension, or they're still getting low pension. And that doesn't seem right.

Nellie Johanson: No, no, there's we're I think our politicians could step in too and do something about our state.

See, I think that, you know, we have some pretty good politicians up there. Tony Diamond, our governor, there, in there, on the days he was real sharp. So, yeah, I've got my, he, you know, he recommended me, for the post office, so of course I did. But he, he was really into that. Wonderful. And Wickersham loves to see and we've had some good governors here also, when I was, in Washington, I was going to come on church, but I just didn't get time to go that far on this.

Rachel Foxwell: your father, your father in law. You know, I'm interested in that. In the brick factory I had known there was, you know.

Nellie Johanson: To me, there's so many things that could be built up, and all it needs is a group to get together, just like we did up there in the early days. just us women, about 20 of us. Like I showed you that picture. We're all over the, let's say old women that we're seeing here that I can call it seniors who are between, oh, say, 1690.

That's the heritage of these women. But we did it again, everybody. And that's something put in there. Suggestion of what to do. Well, with, one thing we did we got was before the centennial, we went to the city, took the mayor and said, we got that old school there, and they got a it couldn't tell us, how about we didn't have to our club and you have the lock down there and we'll have to move down on the lot and fix it up as a, you know, a member of the old school.

And for the teachers that had taught in that school, one of the two of those girls in there. But you taught him that building, and it made it very interesting when they go up and and talk about the schools and also their students they had in that school at that time, which now to, our judges that in that grade.

Yeah. So and by doing this, the city gave us the right to put it on the city lot and we the women fixed that up. So this is why, you know, the rest of them.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, they'll say that, that, that, that say they were to do it and try and they were going to resurrect that brick yard. Now, where was that located?

Nellie Johanson: The brickyard.

Rachel Foxwell: Yeah. Well, I don't I don't know anything about the operation or how they made. What do you mean, where it was located.

Nellie Johanson: The which my point is that that Walgreens happened after you get into trouble. That was the Brickyard. It's been sold several times.

Rachel Foxwell: Is it near? Is it near the city park?

Nellie Johanson: Well, the ballpark before you go under the bridge. Under the railroad bridge? Oh, on the right. And so.

Rachel Foxwell: I see. All right, I understand that.

Nellie Johanson: That that's where it was located.

Rachel Foxwell: Now, that's not a brickyard anymore. Brick brick factory anymore, is it?

Nellie Johanson: Well, they're making some kind of brick house brick, aren't they?

Rachel Foxwell: I know it's called. That's the refractory, isn't it?

Nellie Johanson: Yeah. So they're making some. I want to go over there when I'm down there and see what they do because I'm interested, you know, beings that we worked for and did a lot of work made was a foreman in it early in 1915. And the Erickson boys, you know, working the route for the Hilton Hotel.

Rachel Foxwell: Where did you where did your father not come up with the idea to have a brick factory farm?

Nellie Johanson: Just like I started up with this, but I could hear, you know, and just on the farm and he had this clay, and he tried to make brick, and he couldn't make it, you know, it wouldn't dry out for this farm break. So then a friend of his command, he said, well, you know, you have far clay not to put on a building brick, clay.

So then he got the idea of putting up a pulp mill right there by the sawmill. And burnt brick there, and it proved out. So the pioneers there got brick further chimneys. Barbara. So that was the first start. on that farm. But but burn it was my favorite one horse pulp mill. And the clay that was there was.

Rachel Foxwell: A pug mill.

Nellie Johanson: They call it a pug mill, where you put this clay into this hopper, and then you have to mix it. So, you know, just like you put a horse in America, old fashioned. But that's the way that he. And then they fixed up a burn and, you know, burning whatever. they could burn the clay. So he he experimented that lot there on the farm before they decided to form a company and build this in Troy.

Rachel Foxwell: And what was the name of the company?

Nellie Johanson: Idaho fabric. First, it was the white Crown farming. Well, I have some advertisements you had about the bricks patterns that they had to. And, from the name of Berg, he was a very good brick. And then, you know, he had fireplace made and they made bricks for these mortuary, do you know, for cremation and for the he for the, for engines.

All of these are papers in this paper. I have that I found it in its, collection.

Rachel Foxwell: So it just started because he had that material.

Nellie Johanson: That's right. It just started. No.

Rachel Foxwell: Is that his property from from where the Nazarene church sat all the way over to where that brickyard was?

Nellie Johanson: Oh, no, no, no, the brickyard was, they bought that land and built the brickyard separate after they organized that company. Before it was no company was just, you know, grandpa went to pick up the the farm, but down by the mill where they had the summit.

Rachel Foxwell: And where was the sawmill located?

Nellie Johanson: Up there on the farm that up at north, up and.

Rachel Foxwell: Up at Norris. So he had a sawmill at Nora? Yes. He had the prunes. Yeah. That's where the Nazarene church is now.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Yeah, that was right there. And you had the orchard up there on the farm.

Rachel Foxwell: That was in Nora?

Nellie Johanson: Yes, that was in Normandy home, the French down to the.

Rachel Foxwell: Dryer dryer.

Nellie Johanson: And dried them. They also had the apples that had dried apples at that time, too.

Rachel Foxwell: And then he had the brickyard.

Nellie Johanson: That didn't have one horse deal.

Rachel Foxwell: Right. But he lived in Nora.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. And the farm.

Rachel Foxwell: Now, did he homestead at all? Do they close? Homestead.

Nellie Johanson: So. And then there was the color. You know, Mrs. Killeen was a relative of Ramsey. They become a family and deal there. And there was Aaron Johnson. Mrs.. There. And Johnson, I don't know what she was around. But anyway, he sent money to Sweden to bring her out to help grandma Lord. And that's Elmer down to the motor.

Thompson's motor. That's a drive. And and Walter's up here and much. Well, their mother worked for them, and he sent for her, I guess. I don't know, there was some. They talked. They were some relation that. But I don't know about that because we didn't talk about those things. You know, I didn't know too much about the family till this trip.

I went to Sweden. Then I got to know and then it was kind of a surprise for the cast and, you know, just knowing a history alive. Well, I hadn't we talked about that before. So just like with my family too, mother and dad first mother, I would talk more about her mother and father because he was a minister in Norway.

Yes. One of the minister in the town. And when you were a minister, you were also the teacher there in, you know, education. And that all. And then again, two mother sisters who were missionaries and, but this one went to China, one went to South America. Well, the one that went to South America developed the fever.

And so she died there and stuff like, that was that was that's something that happened. And before my time about 18, it was in 1800.

Rachel Foxwell: But of the 1800s.

Nellie Johanson: Yeah. It was in the mid late was in the 60s of 1800s.

Rachel Foxwell: And that's your grandparents.

Nellie Johanson: That was my, your my mother's sister. They're all gone now, Ethan. And a lot of the second generation has gone. Yeah. Now, when I was back east, this last summer, I went. I went and saw some. There was a couple of my double cousins, mother's sister married and my father's brother. So they come. But they were so glad to see me, you know, and.

Oh, just hug me and kiss me and all this hair. Well, I was getting ready to go on the bus, and there was an old lady sitting on the bus, and she was looking at all this performance. And so when I got into the bus, what she said, leading us, she said, I think you need a chaperon.

Yeah. Those boys did that kind of fresh.

Rachel Foxwell: We're talking about your family. did your parents migrate together from Norway, or did your father come first to the United States?

Nellie Johanson: He come first to Iowa.

Rachel Foxwell: Now, was he married?

Nellie Johanson: No. They got married in Iowa.

Rachel Foxwell: Was your mother from Norway, too? Yes. From the same town? No.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, no. They were quite a distance. See, the father was from the Bergen, not far into Bergen. And mother was what they call Aetna. That's, from, Hughson in Buffalo. Yeah, I've been there twice. it was interesting, but I just wonder why they left that country. Because it's so beautiful. But at the time, it was just like people living try during the depression, there was nothing to live off.

They wanted adventure out to make a living. So they come on to making such great stories. United States. How wonderful that would be to get about them all. But it was so this sounded come up. Well, then when then, had an uncle in Iowa, and that's how he came out. He wanted to help. So he got a job with the railroad.

Just run with the he sent from there. So then they got married.

Rachel Foxwell: Oh, but they didn't know each other in Norway.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, yeah. So, see? Yeah.

Rachel Foxwell: So was it. Your father was it your father that was in the sailing?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. And my grandfather was a captain and also a shipbuilder in, up near Narvik. Norway. It's up north. They they were kind of. Nope. No, no, I can't remember just exactly what the Pope said, but that's what he was.

Rachel Foxwell: And did he have, like, his own shipping?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Oh, that's, father, my dog. But he took him down protecting Monday about.

Rachel Foxwell: Right.

Nellie Johanson: When he was just eight years old. And you know how it is with kids. They don't want to follow up with your parents. So when he got to be older, he wanted to venture out with other ships or go around the world with him in sailing.

Rachel Foxwell: His. His father wasn't going around the world?

Nellie Johanson: No. He was doing more shipping around Norway, Sweden and Denmark and Germany. He was just around. It was all sailboats. There was no big boat at that time.

Rachel Foxwell: They were the wind.

Nellie Johanson: They were the wind owners wind damage. So let get what they call him. I did something on that sailing it called.

Rachel Foxwell: And so then your father sailed.

Nellie Johanson: Yeah. Just I don't know. No. And even when he went with the company as a purser, you know, it's a sailor. that was really generous to let him run around. Cape Horn and South America. They got the ship to copy him back up from South Maine, brought him home in Sweden, and, oh. What else was then?

Trudy's then? Yeah. Then they get these colored boys, you know, to work. Didn't have a good work. And so one time he was telling about that they had two colored boys that went with them to Norway, you know, on the ships.

Rachel Foxwell: From where?

Nellie Johanson: From South America. And, you know, they've never seen the Colored Islands. they were just scared. and so he said, no, they were just sunburned Norwegians. That's the sun. But that kind of he was quite a bit younger to the island, but they stayed there like in most of these colored people stayed. So nothing else. There's some colored people there.

Not very many. I didn't see very many colored people, but there was a few around Bergen. But I was there and they were mostly in the hotel room, were generally the cooks and and work little.

Rachel Foxwell: So your father, when he was, when he, he decided then that he no longer want to say he decided just want to come to America or.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, yes. there was that, you know, stamped he'd call it that, that going to America because you could make money easier there to support, which was very hard. They said you no, no, Denmark at that time.

Rachel Foxwell: Which is about what time.

Nellie Johanson: In the 1800s.

Rachel Foxwell: Late 1800s. was it a famine or was it the same thing that affected your father in law?

Nellie Johanson: Yes, but it was. Well, this was before. And because he was older than my father, Johansen was quite a bit older. So that was before. But it affected Sweden quite badly. And you've heard of that list? They, let's see. They come out on Christmas and all the health. Yeah. that's how that started. Because that's ship from appendix that it was from England coming with Christmas supplies from Poland.

And the a girl come in there with these candles on it, you know, just no lights. And to light, you know, the way home when the ship coming. So since that carried the sun was a lantern. it's a nice one.

Rachel Foxwell: Oh, yeah, I've seen pictures of it.

Nellie Johanson: And, now in Anchorage, we kept this up every year. That was. See, and we select, you know, the the Queen. Nobody would come on the girl to be that looks at them the blond and she's dressed up Juno with her white robe and then the light. This year we didn't use candles. We used disposable flashlights.

You know, that is it, you know, and so it was more safe, you know, after a fire that she didn't have to be go quite so careful. And they looked like, you know, burning cameras. So the change didn't make too much because they like to keep their water. All right. Think tradition was that tradition. there's so many legends like that.

And and just like Denmark and Sweden, you know, this, queen, you know, of the driving rocks and, you know, those things that that if she, a queen of Denmark, could time that piece of ground soil between Sweden and Denmark, Sweden, Denmark, the ground. Well, she didn't know how to do it, but she took her four sons and put them up as auctions, and told the lions of Sweden to give that piece of land to them.

That's fairy tales. that's just about as funny as but, started in, Jerusalem and another, as the Jewish lady of the mountain said, Noah's ark went up. And that's a predatory, oh. That they've got some Jews, you know, that are their own.

you know, that gets to meet up with those funny things. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, I, I think I understand how your your father, your father left, Norway because of hard times. That what brought him to Iowa?

Nellie Johanson: well, he had an uncle there, and he had. And you? Korea. Well, we'll go and see. But he lived quite well. And, of course, my dad was coming on, and she wanted him to quit this sailing. She didn't want to say, be away from home. And so he had decided. So he went back to Norway, you know, that's after this.

And then that's when they decided that he could come back. So he had already got the promise of this job that he could with the railroad. And so then if he'd gotten the job, then she sent for her and got married.

Rachel Foxwell: He seems like that would be hard to to leave your whole family and your whole way of life and come to a new country.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. It wasn't easy. I can just see mother talked about it was. And and, you know, travel was so inconvenient at that time, she said that, coming across the ocean was just that people were sick, and it wasn't the accommodation like it is up today. she said it best, but anyway, she they become. And then her sisters come and spend.

Grandma passed away and and grandpa, you know, so there was no ties left for them in those years that they felt that they had to, had to just stayed, which I could see to it just now. My parents are gone a bit. Right. There's no one living of relatives, you know, there. So just to stay there for my relatives would be my drawing.

But it's because it's the community I like myself. Therefore, I'd like to be there and not give it up. And so it was great they weren't leaving. They had no time. But they liked this better. You know, I was in that was a new country to them, not too old and railroad building and getting work on the railroad.

So this is about the father? of course, he was kind of addressed to, he wanted to be there where he could make a headway. So he started this, you know, on the railroad section foreman. Then he got the contract to, you know, get coal and, delivered to the Indians that it he called it coal bunkers.

And or they had the coal bunker, big building where they come in with the coal. And he had to the buildings and it was a contract on it. So he so then the that he's been out here and that's in here, he'd like to make that change.

Rachel Foxwell: How did he get out here to see this part of the country?

Nellie Johanson: You come to Moscow, then from there you have to hike it up.

Rachel Foxwell: Do you? Did he just. He was living in Iowa.

Nellie Johanson: Yes, but he came out in 1901. And just to see the country.

Rachel Foxwell: With your mother, you.

Nellie Johanson: Know, he left us.

Rachel Foxwell: he just decided. You want to come out, see it? Yes. Had he heard about it?

Nellie Johanson: Oh, yes. Yes.

Rachel Foxwell: I wonder what he'd heard.

Nellie Johanson: Well, then. Oh, the papers went down about the big the warehouses or, you know, the parliament. And they promised their scouts in the North that those people were moving out west and come all the good timber and the sawmills going in and farming. Yes. Homesteads and all this back in the mountains you do get today two months. What it really then turns out to be.

But this turned out pretty good. So he decided to come out on top of that. So then the railroad was being built between Pullman and Troy, or had just about finished that that time. But the way he said they had a Liberal team that they took to go on to try to see the timber outlet where they where they didn't claim they had the liberty that was with this to bison that was here at that time, and he was one of them.

They went some of the and had set up this mill on this plant. And that's where that movie started. And then they called it the Farmers Mill because they saw the lumber for the, for those pioneers so they could rebuild their homes.

Rachel Foxwell: And where was that sawmill in relation to where your home was put your.

Nellie Johanson: Bottom of problem? or where we lived. So really dumb. first from Bertram's then. So there was a farmer, and that was some way from the mill.

Rachel Foxwell: Where it was, and the mill was where.

Nellie Johanson: The camp Creek, they called it. so then as soon as his father got a house built down, we moved Trowbridge down to the place. So we'd be right down there so mother could take care of. She took charge of the house. Then after, you know, we had help at first and then she had to have somebody look after us youngsters.

And that's how come down South Side, you're getting into French and German there and help us with education, because that would come first.

Rachel Foxwell: Well then how old were you when you started school? When, you know, when you put that down to that time.

Nellie Johanson: We had I had to cover that up. Yeah. So and then and right, I should have been the boy and I was always up at dam with the horses and up the lumber. And so he always called me. Now, now, obviously, there was a boy.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, you worked in the sawmill, didn't you?

Nellie Johanson: Yes.

Rachel Foxwell: How old were you when you started that work?

Nellie Johanson: About 12.

Rachel Foxwell: And what were you doing?

Nellie Johanson: taking off from the plain males, you know, the moldings, light lumber. You know, it was easy. He didn't put me on big heavy, but. So that, And be careful. So we didn't let them to break the mold because they were easy to break. And so then we had to pile them up and time and time, of course, he did that because he had just he had a certain way of doing things.

It had to be just so, so that it would break back. And then he'd haul left two months go here and up to the standard lock down the lumber company.

Rachel Foxwell: Did any other women work at the mill? No, just not.

Nellie Johanson: Just me and dad was done. We been done. We grew up and we had the crew. This was in summertime, really, after the main sewing was done and the lumber was dried. When the crew was leave, it just, a seasonal work for most that like the crew you saw there on the picture. So when the sign was done and that the lumber was drying and then after we kids got older, well, then we were the ones that had to be the crew with him because he ran the plant, the sawmill or the plane, the mill and the lightning.

And, one of my relatives asked what he was the engineer. So he stayed. So he was kind of the plant signal at that time.

Rachel Foxwell: You said that there were Indians in this area when you.

Nellie Johanson: Well, that was in the beginning. They'd come down there and they can't. They had their daylight scared. I remember, you know, because. No, we'd been very good to the Indians going to take. Yeah. So one night they were coming up close and I crawled under the bed of the. They'd have to look. I think it's foolish not to scare children.

people. I don't care how bad they are. There were. It's not good for just kind of sticks. It stays with you, you know? And you don't think it to be.

Rachel Foxwell: But can you remember? Did you have much interaction with the Indians?

Nellie Johanson: Quite a bit. Because dad, did, buy or they bought the lumber from dad Chief Joseph so that that's a picture with Chief Joseph and put them down there when they were up dealing with them. And the Indians come up, you know, to Genesee and and my brother that lot was Red lion from the Indians down there.

So they had the engines and drum that down on the river rocks. And so we just got in, you know, contact with the, and they no different than you? No, no, not at all.

Rachel Foxwell: What use did they have for the lumber?

Nellie Johanson: Well, there was that shop. Lumber. They weren't they, they shopped around for shop lumber on that and trading horses too. You know, dad had quite a few horses and he traded that, Joe's mill, you know, they had horses that he bought and got wood.

Rachel Foxwell: They were building houses.

Nellie Johanson: What they were built down around, away in.

Rachel Foxwell: Was the on the reservation of.

Nellie Johanson: The old.

Rachel Foxwell: And Chief Joseph himself did come up here.

Nellie Johanson: And Joseph was up himself up to drawing a family together. And then they were down to him. And that to happen down in Boston. So that's what he and my brother Bob, they all had had their picture taken. Well, I'd like to see if I can get Ahold of one of those that my. I have one. But, that system that my sister got down.

But I think they kind in.

Rachel Foxwell: As I recall. Now he's chief. I know I've seen where Chief Joseph is buried in this piece of in Washington. And I knew he had been separated from his tribe. Yeah, man. There.

Nellie Johanson: but to see he was first buried and and, or enterprise or at the lake. They he that's where he wanted to be in, is still the container that they moved it.

Rachel Foxwell: This is this is young Chief Joseph. This is.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, here, take this is old man.

Rachel Foxwell: I wonder if it's the same for the one that led the the the flight into Canada does. That's the same. That's the same Joseph that I'm talking about, not his father.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, no. This it's, different, but. But they, old Chief Joseph was the one that he was. Reload. You know what? That stuff.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, no, no, not his, not those. Joseph. And then his father was also Joseph. Yeah. And the younger Joseph, as I understand it, was the one that led the Indians in to try to get them into Canada. And he's the one that surrendered. His father was dead by that time. Yeah.

Nellie Johanson: I don't see him. I remember when he died.

Rachel Foxwell: The the oldest Joseph or.

Nellie Johanson: The others that was in back in the sea was 19 1314.

Rachel Foxwell: That's when Chief Joseph, who led the Indians, tried to lead them to Canada, died.

Nellie Johanson: Oh, well, then it could be. It could be. I'm not so clear. I can't remember everything. That stuff. Oh, no, I know that, and father had contact with them.

Rachel Foxwell: I'm sure it's the same that Joseph that we're talking.

Nellie Johanson: It probably is. Just because I just couldn't. But I know that they used to come up with. But the the group was only ones that I can remember come up and count, but, but, Chief Joseph himself, there was horses that did him. But did get to certain about horses. And so was my brother. You know, he was a great trainer.

Rachel Foxwell: Were they easy to deal with?

Nellie Johanson: Do you always read that? They were very, very nice to deal with that we couldn't find any that I didn't think they were neglecting enough. And there was, Cynthia, a girl that was like a native girl. Indian girl. I just loved her. I thought you could just. Beautiful. An animal. That was two girls.

Rachel Foxwell: That that lived.

Nellie Johanson: They lived out near Genesee, close to my, sisters and husband's place. So they were my old girl. I talked to her this morning, you know, because they were going to come up, get. That's a no. I won't be through the day. I think talking, so. Yeah, but this is a little part that was called, Indian Land and Genesee down.

No, not all of that. I guess there's some that, some of that. But I know they rented from the Indians. their, And I think my magic still read some from the Indians down, but you can't see the difference on. Oh, there's a few. Well know it's that night before last I went to the library and, the lowest and, junior bunk credit.

Oh, I love know some one down there. We had grapes, and you could tell he was the coach, but the his difference to little kids.

Rachel Foxwell: It's just that they owned so much land, you know, and part of the country that then was opened up for settlement. But, the immigrants, the white people. I just wondered, how must those the Indians feel seeing that land is taken away from.

Nellie Johanson: Well, I don't know. It has to be developed. There has to be development. And when there's a development, it benefits the other person they like. They it benefited by it. They got their school, they got the hospitals, you know, town of life away. They were benefited indirectly, even though you have to give to receive.

Rachel Foxwell: You don't think that they had but were led a better life before this was opened, a white settlement?

Nellie Johanson: I don't think so, because they opened up to more convenience, a better living. In it, just what they wanted to themselves that they all want to keep on the teepee. So that was there. But they didn't. They wanted a better living. So I think if it comes it. But I don't think a people should fight for everything, you know, to gain.

I think it could be, agreed upon and discussed and then, except one way or the other, just like we get into arguments sometimes that these women that are, you know, okay, but you've got to take the best suggestions out of it. And what's the best benefits for everyone? For everyone considered that. And so it was, I think, in the older days to.

With the, with an Indians, I think it, they might feel that they have been like out through just through time and paperwork, you know, writing in there. I think they could and there are they are no different than we are the some greedy and some, and some willing to give and some or not. And you see all these Indian fighting stories.

I don't think we should even put that out for these younger people, because life is like that for fighting white. Put it out so you learn more about it, like these little thoughts. so to work place and here you live. I gotten a little baby girl and he's putting me here and she surrender. He says I got.

Well, they learn that soon enough, but they shouldn't have it when they're 2 or 3 years. Oh, I don't agree with that. Do you.

Rachel Foxwell: Know? And it all.

Nellie Johanson: Goes to learn.

Rachel Foxwell: How to be violent.

Nellie Johanson: Yeah. You know, have to be violent. You learn that soon enough to when you fight for life.

Rachel Foxwell: Did you say that, where where was the wood that your father was manufacturing in the sawmill going? Timber. Yeah.

Nellie Johanson: Well, I went up here to Moscow and to Spokane for, they call it shop lumber. See? Moldings and door casings, I see. And then he made these curved moldings up in the ceilings. They were from the clearing, but they they call it chop lumber. And so they call this shop material. And this was bundled and sent up here to Moscow and Spokane.

I can recall that we sent it to Merced. And but I think that was in and around trying to the neighbors when they were building.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, where did most of the, the, lumber that people were using to build their homes with in Troy, coming from any one particular sawmill.

Nellie Johanson: They they patronized all of the rails, it seemed like, because they patronized my father's out there, and they patronized a lot to Moscow here because he was interested with the Standard Lumber Company, things that his partner was with them. So that game and dug up play for them so that you would, either haul that up here with the team of horses or shipped from Troy on their cars.

That's what you have, that spur down by the railroad tracks there. The that the sewage plant that's there.

Rachel Foxwell: Was Vollmer in operation when your family came out to Troy?

Or was he gone by then? JP Bowman?

Nellie Johanson: No, he was still there. I think I was a young man, you know, I was going back to him, you know, at that age, you not pay much attention to anything going around. Only your home, around.

Rachel Foxwell: Because I, I'd known that Troy was named Vollmer.

Nellie Johanson: Yeah, but that was named after LP. Yeah. No, because he had I think he's the one who had the first formula there. There was someone else to that had a sawmill, but that was where the sawmill first started. That thing from who had to come up, talk to and from the father. And then of course, he was interested in this timber that was on the ridges around there, which was beautiful timber.

I really in my memories, you know, I missed that timber. You go around perfect. We had that beautiful tall pines that if they were just nice being my beautiful lumber and they were nuts, small that even they were tall. The someone was about three feet across. There is the boards now, up there, the home, the counter. There is just one board.

It's not groomed, it's just one board. I had a one to think the with them. This is why I'm kind of sentimental with it.

Rachel Foxwell: I understand. Well it was, it was Troy called Troy when you lived there when you first got there.

Nellie Johanson: Ma'am.

Rachel Foxwell: And do you remember why they changed the name?

Nellie Johanson: Well, it was something to do with mom, too, you know, he left home. He was a little bit greedy. I understand from the old timers. Course, he was pretty good. You loan these people money, and then when they couldn't pay, you got their places. And that didn't. They didn't approve of this. Exactly. But what else could they do?

So he made himself a pretty good, wealthy man. And then, I don't know if he moved to Lewistown or somewhere. I think that's where he moved most. And then everybody out. It took over, and it's been going on as Troy ever since then. The community, I think, has been wonderful. They've kept it growing and now. So I'm really proud of it.

That's why I don't want to let go down there.

Rachel Foxwell: I'm well, you know, your father became justice of the peace in 19 1818. What did he run for that officer.

Nellie Johanson: Oh I don't remember if you disappointed or if you ran for it. I wasn't paying any attention. I was married, but at that time I was married in 1915.

Rachel Foxwell: We were still living in the area.

Nellie Johanson: Oh I never went out of the area till we went to Alaska.

Rachel Foxwell: Oh, I see.

Nellie Johanson: we lived down on the Johnson farm and did the farming there. And the fruit tree, the fruit Pepsi. That's what's going on about all those fruit from trees and fruit. And then birds come as close again. The neighbors recall from their little picking jobs with the bird picking up birds.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, now, when you and your husband then moved to the Johanson farm, was the brick factory still going? The brick plant still going?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Yeah. And it started in 1913. And, so if we let them try and he worked the factory that the brickyard. But then, his folks want us to move out of the farm so they could be out there. So they were out there with us. And that's what gave me a chance to work up the field.

And so that's what I said when I was cultivating fortune and. And to see if he could make us some money. So he worked in the clay. And then in the fall, of course, you'd have to help with the drying out, the group digging in the potatoes. No, no, we'll get going with that. They, we had quite a few potatoes one year, but there was no price.

So. So they were just about a total loss. Except that between, its father and then they made that potato meal. So we made potato starch and also potato starch and got enough to pay for the potatoes. And at least we didn't have to buy any sacks. You could put the potatoes in because the potatoes were less than the flax cost.

Rachel Foxwell: And and what did you have then that that brick factory until you went to Canada? I mean, to Alaska.

Nellie Johanson: What? That was they sold the, the factory at that at that time? Yes. The company, the Idaho chrome factory in Idaho can't break. I think they called at that time. So that's a few years. But. I haven't been in. But, I want to go up there and see now, because they built the fire kilns to fire the brick, and they stood there for many years.

They can't sell, you know, it's good for a concerned a company to change. It's good for them to, to sell out. And the other people get their money. And then let's let somebody else start over again and see what development they can make for the benefit of the community. It's good that change is good. It's good for her.

It's good to change. so this is what I look at. It's it's good for a community to change. Sometimes you don't change for the good. But anyway, you try and this plant up that has been good for try. It's helped quite a few of the young folks for getting job in that way. I hope that they can continue on.

I hope they can do. I hope they can add something else to that plant to, hire more people. So we have more employees. Each employ means at least $50 a week to the community that is to your town. Good, because they have to spend their money. So may they have a car that can buy gas and oil, got to have something to eat so they can say the least.

They would do spend this around that and this is what the community needs. They need development. They need somebody real excited in planning, which I think Troy, somebody said that otherwise they wouldn't it be just like how there are 90 children and how they were little towns up along the green here must go. And if they can keep, you know, a good chambers of commerce and a good content and good planning, they can still grow up on the back, I fear.

Rachel Foxwell: What was what were the towns of of Joel and how what was their purpose and and existence?

Nellie Johanson: Well, it was for the farmers, the post office and at that time, of course, and burglaries, like some of them said, they were all set to horse around with horses hauling and and so that and that's the same thing back east to where we come from. Now I would you know, they have over 90 counties. They don't need that.

But it was during the all that years back because they were they didn't have the convenience of transportation. So that many counties, some courthouse so that they don't that was jobs created. Of course. Now it's just like Troy in that they send all their popcorn to Alaska in the Army. That's what I told them up there on the tour of it.

That's just maybe some people out here. because these people from Iowa, you know, they've been very good. They send all their popcorn up to Alaska so they don't have hardly any left. I'm fine with that. Yeah, not just that. Quite a few soldiers come up there and colonels. So this is why I had to bring the popcorn.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, you, Joan Hall wouldn't be big enough that you would go there. You know.

Nellie Johanson: We'd stop there with the team of drunk Moscow. And the only way we could go either on the train or driver. And we make several quite a few trips up to Moscow. I know I got very seriously ill when I was 14 years old, and they had to take me to the hospital for an afternoon, and they home.

They didn't have to pick me up in a buggy, which they had to make a bed and put me on the bed. And the doctor was with me taking it to Moscow, and creditors with the hospital in Korea, this hospital. So there's four others operated down. It's just, oh my gosh, I can't even think what year that was.

And I had obstructions of the light and Texas. So they had to operate. But I started in Danbury at Lincoln quite a while. And at that time you went to Syria, but you didn't think too serious about any illness. You just had some a complaint or you had colic. So that's all I had. But it ended up into more than that.

So I had my own when I was a youngster.

Rachel Foxwell: Was it frightening to have to go to a hospital?

Nellie Johanson: I think I was too sick to think about it because with that obstruction, everything, even water, when I drank, that would retrieve. So I, I was too sick to know, wasn't I wasn't thinking about anything. It just all. And I didn't know anything till after this operation. Colonel. Come to. But I was just 14 them, so.

Rachel Foxwell: That wasn't a very big hospital.

Nellie Johanson: No, but it was a nice hospital. It was a it's still a say. It has a dome where they have the operating room.

Rachel Foxwell: Is that where you were operated on?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. And, Doctor Kruger's, doctor week and doctor, all some of the doctors.

Rachel Foxwell: Three doctors and nurses. Two.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. I can't remember the nurses. No, because that's a two years back.

Rachel Foxwell: That was that would that wasn't originally built as a hospital, wasn't it?

Nellie Johanson: Yes, it was a hospital at that time, I say. Yeah, it was a nice little hospital. It has that big porch. And also then when that got so they put me in the wheelchair and they gave me out of. That's not often why I was great to go out there and see those horses and buggies go by. Well, there was a few cars there too at that time.

So that December oh, 1910. So most of them. Took that, you know, we had, they had electricity them. So they were doing away with the, street lights, you know, light blinders and the.

That was something that was interesting to me, you know, these, gas lights that they had to light. And that thing spoke in general. They have those, too. I just bought those now. But the lamplighter, you know, he was always humming, you know, singing. And he'd come and light those lights because we stayed there for about a week in Spokane before we moved down here to Moscow.

And the first place we went was now it was called in the Pleasant Home. It was kind of a rooming house at that time, so we stayed there till father could get us organized to bring us down to a banquet. And but he got sick. She had pneumonia there at that time, so we had to stay. And then my sister was a baby.

So it was up to him to be babysitter and help with the.

Rachel Foxwell: How did you you come out with your family to Idaho? What was your means of transportation.

Nellie Johanson: By train to Moscow?

Rachel Foxwell: Can you remember how long that trip took?

Nellie Johanson: No, none, except it took quite a while because we stopped in Spokane. We had a week there, so we stayed some people there and then come on down to Moscow and stayed here. The pleasant home. And we were there for about a month before we got to try. Then we of us, we got down to try and then we lived up on the hill where this Ted Somerville was.

The later years. There was a new house at that time. So there's where we lived till we could go out to treat that house. And there was a new house right in the timber, and you just wouldn't believe it when you see those beautiful fields that that was beautiful timber at one time, it just nobody, you know, like, you know, you've never seen the timber and that was it.

But with me that grew up there at that, it was just beautiful. I thought at the time. But we were concerned too, because mother wouldn't let us run out because there was, you know, cougars and coyotes always wouldn't bother big bears. And bobcats. And this this was going on at that time, you know, that was natural. Let us go.

Goes with the timber.

Rachel Foxwell: When did they start cutting that timber?

Nellie Johanson: Well, unprofessional. Well, that was probably in the 1900s. Kind of started.

Rachel Foxwell: So by the time you got there, you could see.

Nellie Johanson: No, that wasn't.

Rachel Foxwell: Starting to go.

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Because father, bought a lot of the timber that was on the ridge down for one that went down and a lotta we went for cordwood that the farmers cut the cord with. And so the cord with.

Rachel Foxwell: It looks like such good fields. And I.

Nellie Johanson: With it, it was good soil and it showed on the timber. It was good soil, you know, it was beautiful timber. That's why it was selected timber for lumber. And this is one reason father made it into what he called sharp lumber. Clear interior furnishing, lumber that he had. He got the planer for that. And then this is for the lumber.

Went up here to Moscow and Spokane. And the same thing with the lumber company, the Troy Mills.

Rachel Foxwell: Was he also were these, like your father that had a sawmill and other people, were they also responsible for taking the stumps out of the soil?

Nellie Johanson: You know, each one of the land at the stump.

Rachel Foxwell: So that must have been terrible. Yeah.

Nellie Johanson: Well, I guess it was.

Rachel Foxwell: There were so many trees I have.

Nellie Johanson: I also have a picture of the father with his male crew after he'd logged off on the Burbridge, breaking up the land up there with a team of horses and grabbing shooting stumps. That was it. That was at that time there was some people got killed to buy their shooting of stumps. Our neighbor got killed, down there, close to the mill.

His name was Pitts at that time. That was in the early. Scene in 1945. The Swanson owns that place now. He bought that. So there is field to where it was. Timber. My, he was trying to clear it up after his father had bought the timber from me. But he had.

Rachel Foxwell: What he was shooting stumps. What did that them.

Nellie Johanson: Shooting with it, getting them out of the ground with dynamite. They had dynamite. They put dynamite in and exploded them out or whatever you call. So we just call it shooting stumps.

Rachel Foxwell: They just put it right inside the sound and just like.

Nellie Johanson: Well, me, I was with father sometimes when he would dig around the roots of the stumps. So they go out and they would drill it and put the dynamite in, and they'd break them, you know, apart and then they'd pull out the roots with the horses and clear. That was one of his kids jobs, to go pull the brush out of the clearings, pilot up so they could burn.

Now they do it different. Now they get what they call a, chopper or a harger. Choppers about this. We have that up North Tula that when you clear up a lot, they bring in this chopper to chop up the brush real fine. And then you you plowed red back into the ground because you see that in time, it just turns.

It rots, and it turns into soil, and it's a fertilizer to it come out of the ground. So it might as well go back in there. Okay. And that's a handiest rig. I had some of that done at my place. Not an Anchorage cleared often chopped it. And so that's fertilizer. Well that doesn't put a lot to well at first but eventually see it decays and it works in the ground.

So I took a not to get passed. We had to head this down. And then I didn't see. Did it go in the grass? So now I've got rented out for horse pasture. So they get the benefit of that grass just for six months so they don't, trample down. Now the. Now they're up there now and then the signal gets when the rainy season starts in and gets real wet.

Well, he'll have to take his horses back so they don't trip it up. But then as soon as it dries up in the spring again, what then? He can hit with mud again. But it makes it nice too. It looks green along the spring or in the summer, and then the horses cross he it off to him. Have to cut.

And besides, it doesn't return from pay when you get $5 ahead. But you're not for putting in that on just a small five acre tract. There's always one right way to turn things into a little earnings and a lot of horses. I would just go out there amongst them and be with things. You know, we had horses at home and got used to.

It seemed just kind of homelike to have the animals around.

Rachel Foxwell: Cool horses were your main way of transportation was did.

Nellie Johanson: Was.

Rachel Foxwell: Would you, leave the home place very often to, what would be the farthest you would go? Maybe on on horseback.

Nellie Johanson: Do you mean the down here dry or.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, would you would you come to Moscow to do. Well, I was thinking too important to do business.

Nellie Johanson: Or we'd just ride to Troy. Just horseback. I brought her back to school when I went to school down there. And when it was bad weather and when it wasn't, we walked to school.

Rachel Foxwell: Would there be a lot of students that would would ride their horses to school then?

Nellie Johanson: I can't remember. Yes. They're like big have to travel by team. The horses. But we had a horse that if if I'd turn them loose. If I ride into town, turn them loose. You went right back home.

Rachel Foxwell: And then you'd have to walk home.

Nellie Johanson: And I'd have to work on it.

Rachel Foxwell: Would you, would you would there be times when you tie them up at school?

Nellie Johanson: No, not at school, but I tied them up. We had a little ribbon at that, you know, down there in Troy at that time. So we just took them to the livery barn so you could have some eat. Well, I don't remember what it was. It's cool. And then was it, ten points and you had a barn that.

Well, where the park is now, there was a joint. What we called the Johnson. Everybody. And, some, I don't remember the city bought that or, but that's a park you're right across from. That would tell a but, Cheney was the one he had shot that, too. But we got the tie. The old horse up there and shelter it.

Rachel Foxwell: Would you would you have to leave very early in the morning to get to school on time? If you were going on of respect.

Nellie Johanson: Perhaps we had to believe we have allowed ourself an hour from home to try.

Rachel Foxwell: It was how long? An hour. An hour.

Nellie Johanson: Fill out that something.

Rachel Foxwell: That must have been hard in the winter.

Nellie Johanson: We didn't mind it for. And then when we got had the school up on the ridge, they got that fire. We did the same thing with good weather we bought, and when it was a real bad weather, we'd take the horse or don't get on the back of the horse and turn them loose and then go back home.

So we walked home, then, or we'd go on skis under the snow. That's where I got my ski training, was going to school.

Rachel Foxwell: What were you? Can you remember what your skis were like?

Nellie Johanson: Oh yes. My father made them put in five. At that time. They made the skis. What we make, they weren't, I don't believe there was fur or Tamara, I don't know, we we always had to put them, in the frame kind of kit. You turn it up and, you know, bent to front and put a wire from the top part down to hold the top up till it dried real well.

And so then we let go. But that I never had any button skis here. But days I had a lot of stuff in Anchorage and Alaska. Moose up in the hills and snowshoes them. They become necessary. You know, I'm traveling with snowshoes and skis because the skis, I just were not in a place. You just keep coming and training on this list.

I enjoyed skiing. It's such a nice, sport and outdoors, but snowshoes don't. That isn't very much sport for me, because I'm just interested in that trike that's making my way to. Sometimes I tell you, that's what I wish the thought of that invented. These shoes could walk on in the South for miles, but they were. It was much easier to walk on those snowshoes than to walk in an open trail.

You know, that wasn't. oh. But you got that name. It kept doing it.

Rachel Foxwell: Did you snow? Did you? Snowshoe here in Idaho? No.

Nellie Johanson: I never was on snowshoes till I got to Alaska. So I got introduced to them pretty fast.

Rachel Foxwell: Well, do you know where you were on the ridge? Did you get to be with a lot of people your own age.

Nellie Johanson: In that on Breckenridge? No. Well, there was the Johnsons and West Burgs there, and, Darlene's. But no Mrs. Delaney or Mrs. Swanson. No. Is that that the rest of us should grew up? That's, there's, us and some other. So. And she was about the same age as I am. Little older, up and of course, she had to work, too, like the rest of her.

Oh, she was at work. And to work. Just work and pay income.

Rachel Foxwell: What else? What other work would you do at home besides work when you would go down to work in the mill?

Nellie Johanson: That was good to work them. Oh, in the mess house and scrub. Wash dishes and wash clothes by hand. We didn't have any home machine. Washing machine? There. We had to stomp her and the washboard, just the regular old fashioned way. But find it. Father got a washing machine. One of these things. You had him. I had him back and forth.

Just. And that's taken a lot of work. Only thing it, you had to heat your water and put it in the machine. And the only best thing that was so you could put it down real hot. So you know when you want to be hot, but washing by hand, you had to have it so you can use your hands.

And then at that time, I worked close in that we had to put them in a boiler, put them on the stone, boil them to bubble one, sterilize. You must both get in line, but we want to put the clothes out. You know, in the morning when the sun was and the grass. And then men would bleach them.

Seemed like the sun rays on the green yellow somewhere bleached the clothes, the white clothes, the sheets. so I think they said it's such a lot of work to me. It didn't seem it was just a routine and everybody did it. So it wasn't easy and hassle about it.

Rachel Foxwell: Was every day, different chore. Like, for example, Monday would be wash day and Tuesday, or we.

Nellie Johanson: Have regular wash day on Monday. What an ironing on Tuesday. Scrub the day on Wednesday and Thursday. It was more of a free day. Friday was baking and fixing up for Saturday instead of live, so finally we'd have it already. So Sunday we could go to Sunday school and go to church. But when it was bad weather, of course we couldn't go, but when it was nice weather, we'd go think this was a regular.

It was a regular routine all the way through the old.

Rachel Foxwell: And would summer chores be different than winter chores? Oh yes. In the house?

Nellie Johanson: Not in the house. The summer chores? Exactly. Because we had to get out and try and look after the garden. Complete. Take care of the cattle stock. We kind of forgot the house during the summer. That was, we were more or less at the open then.

Rachel Foxwell: did you do canning? Then later, after.

Nellie Johanson: We all came, you'd have to have at least 100 quarts of fruits or vegetables canned up for the winter. We didn't. And go ahead and buy canned vegetables and fruit like we do now, already canned, and do it all ourselves. And if you didn't have the fruit that you wouldn't bother and canned. It's the same as if you had it because father didn't have an apple tree down there in the kitchen, so we had to buy the fruit, but it still paid off because we had it.

And at the cellar we had a root cellar that we kept, so it'd be kind of cool. There was a refrigerator have no no refrigerators, had an icebox. You had to go out in the sawdust pile and dig up some ice. That to put it in there in the winter. So we didn't have any ourselves. We just used to put down the some poles, which it's all gone now, that's all.

Gone down the creek and fertilized. It's fertilized the ground because at home flat with sawdust, you know, from the. Yeah. And ashes where the burned up house. And that was good fertilizer. So it's a good fertilizer to my daughter.

Rachel Foxwell: So was was that a conscious effort on your family's part to make sure that what you took out of the soil someway got replenished?

Nellie Johanson: That was their way of saying he said you should work to take out. You should put back.

Rachel Foxwell: Did most people feel that way?

Nellie Johanson: I don't know, I think they done, you know, burning of being ashes. That's good for the soil. Now, they wouldn't let them do that. And I don't see and put this fertilizer on. But the ashes is good fertilizer. So they used to burn the fields and the stubble after harvesting until which would burn up the weeds and, the same and also cleared the fields.

So now they just plowed under weeds now and buy weed poisoning and fertilizer. So it's one, it's 6 to 1 and a half a dozen and they're on both sides. It first you fertilize it yourself with sand burning ashes you know and fertilizers. You know the routine is interesting. And what do you do. You think you improve. But it's not so much improvement because you're just doing it different.

The different. And of course, I met that with all the years of working the ground, you need to boost it. See more than I did before because it, it takes the springtime. Just like if we give out the blood transfusions or whatever, you know, it takes a while for that to replenish again when the when you're a donor.

So you you got to be a donor and a giver.

Rachel Foxwell: Do they, do they feel that way about in when they were, cutting the trees to that they needed to replenish the trees?

Nellie Johanson: Yes. Or turn it into a ground to save or plowed up and break it up for fields.

Rachel Foxwell: What was there replanting going on?

Nellie Johanson: No, not so much. No. They just turned into fields. That's why you burn. Treat yourself. You you drink and their little beverage and all the ridges, they they took the timber to get returns for living. If they didn't turn it into lumber and that they'd turned it into cordwood wood because it's all stove wood. With that time. So this is what this was a regular routine that we take out of the farm and then give out of it.

And I think this was it was interesting, you know, to grow up with those times because it just taught to something that things aren't as much different today as it was then, only now. The difference is now you've got to buy the stuff to put back in into the ground, instead of giving it a giving out of the same.

So now you have to fertilize because you're taking in, but you're not putting anything back. In this is interesting to work in, or you have to like to grow a wrist a year. The summer follows. We used to call it the I don't know this summer fall and that to. I think I don't pay too much attention on that.

I know that didn't summer fall. If it did, we put another crop and if it had, we probably put beans or peas them the next year to change, to grow. But it both takes the strength out the soil when the one put in potatoes the same thing.

Rachel Foxwell: How many acres did did he have the other? Yeah.

Nellie Johanson: Well, he had this number two is, was 50 acres, which was mostly in the although most of that was still in fail because he broke it up and down with that I have. No it's just about 60 acres. And there. Is timber in the pasture and some wasteland down there. So it didn't have to crop that.

Rachel Foxwell: Do you need some water?

Nellie Johanson: No, thanks. I'm. Thanks.