Wayne & Henry Rogler Interview Matfield Green 1964

In April of 2025 Clenton Owensby was cleaning out his office and he found among other things a 1964 interview of Henry W. Rogler with Wayne Rogler done by the Kansas-Oklahoma Section of the Society for Range Management. Clinton Owensby was the K-State Range Management top professor and researcher years back.

This is a computer generated transcript and will contain occasional errors and misspelling.
Transcript

[0:02] This is a recording of history, furnished by the Kansas, Oklahoma section of the American Society of Range Management. It is an interview of Henry W. Rogler with the help of his son, Wayne Rogler. Both men are ranchers just north of Matfield Green, Kansas in the range land area known as the Bluestem Hills or as the Flint Hills. My name is Glenn Snell. Today is June 19, 1964. Henry Rogler’s father, Charles Rogler, homesteaded this land in 1859. Henry was born March 12, 1877, and has always lived on this ranch. His clear recollections start about 1887. He also has a good memory of items before that time told to him by earlier settlers in his early youth, Henry Rogler graduated from Kansas State College in 1898 He has always been a keen observer of the rangeland and has taken good care of his ranch And now Wayne will interview his father, Henry W. Rogler.

[1:25] Dad, I suspect you started remembering things pretty good when you were about 10 years old, or about 1888 or 1890. Can you remember the pastures as having as many shrubs and trees on there as they do today? I think there’s more shrubs and brush on the hillsides and along the creeks, on these small creeks especially, than there was years ago.

[2:18] Well I don’t know how long you want to make at that well now the reason that they, My understanding is that probably the prairie fires kept down the growth along these little creeks. That’s probably. It wasn’t pastured as close in these little pastures, especially as it is now, you know. What do you think the prairie fires had to do with controlling brush along the… I think the growth kept it from spreading and kept it from getting big enough so it would shade.

[3:03] And it would gradually spread out. That way, the shading kind of would tend to kill out the grass and seed and keep it. Well, probably the vigor of the grasses had a good deal to do, too. Oh, yes.

[3:25] Was spreading your brush. I expect it did. And I presume the erosion was probably less than before 1900. There were not so many places where there was leak and all. Well, that’s true.

[3:43] But as far as you can remember.

[3:48] While they have probably burned a good deal, I mean, they burned most of the—these grasses were practically all burned for, oh, starting when, say? Oh, as long as I can remember back, it was just routine. Every spring, the pastures were all burned off. I can’t remember any pastures that wasn’t burned in the early days at all for a good many years and burned earlier. Well, even before they started using this for commercial grazing, when it was used, and even before it was used much, was it burned then? I rather think it was. Lightning and sweet. Pastures, you see, there was no crossroads and no trails, and the grass, well, there’s no way to guard against it, and it swept. A great little father would sweep here for five or six, seven miles very frequently. Every spring, we were just always worried about the extent of how the grasses.

[5:14] Yeah, that’s just— Now—, Dad, do you think, then, the vigor of the grasses were a good deal of grasses were a good deal of strong? Well, I rather think the blue-stemmed grass were probably a little more vigorous and dominating grass over much of the range, too. I believe the bluestem grass, the big and little bluestem, were a bigger percent of the grass than they are today. We have more annual grasses today.

[6:05] I like the switchgrass. Well, then your stocking rate probably was, probably they stocked a little heavier then than they do now. No, well, I think perhaps they gave them a lot of figured on a few more acres in their own pasture, but there’s usually some vacant grass that wasn’t used. It wasn’t all used in the early day.

[6:39] And that, I think that was, they didn’t figure as close on acres. But actually, well, later they didn’t give them as many acres as we do now. You mean when they started fencing? Yeah, after they started fencing, they figured three and a half to four acres. Like my neighbor here for Crockers for years they didn’t give them but four acres that was standard from 1900 to 1915 20 four acres and they were big heavy cattle too and they came in earlier of course you may get to that a little earlier in the year too you mean they came in before the 15th of April they’d come in before that even and the cattle were longer age, there’s three and sometimes four-year-olds.

[7:41] I thin there was more Brahma cattle and there is coming up here than there is now. That is a tip horn cattle. The cattle wasn’t dehorned all of them as much as they are now. Now, do you remember about when they really started putting the fence up, what was the first fence that you can remember? The first fence that I can remember was from the stockyards.

[8:16] North of Matt Field to Crocker Creek, about a mile.

[8:21] I can remember when the fence was built along the foot of the hill, three wires, where there were posts about, putting it 100 feet apart and with stays in between. They’d have a big heavy wire stay, one with loops on and the other with a straight wire that they’d push down through to space the wires.

[8:46] The wagon, they used about three wires. There’s lots of the fences in that time, too, were just two wires. Some of the first fences was only about two wires. But when would that be that they put those first fences in? Well, I couldn’t say the exact here, But there was long between, it must have been about 85 to 87, sometime right along there. I remember when they put the first barbed wire off. It was black wire, mostly. They didn’t have much, any galvanized. Well, now, Dad, you told me that they really started fencing these bigger pastures, when, about the 90s, 1890? Yes, probably by 95, they began to—.

[9:54] I would say, yeah, between 1990 and 1995. I expect by 1890 to begin to fence them. Just by no one, I was just a boy. I can remember I was all open country west of Matfield Green for five miles. You could go anywhere. It was the same way east. It was all clear to the birdie gris. It wasn’t fenced. Do you remember as a kid of seeing any antelope or deer? No, no, there wasn’t any buffalo. They were gone before my time. What about the other smaller furbrough animals? Chickens, prairie chickens, were abundant. I can remember when the prairie chickens in just about daylight up on the big hill west here, You could hear them booming or drumming and long sunup. Here they’d come, thousands of them. They’d fly down far as the creek and lighten the trees. The trees are just weak with prairie chickens. And then they’d fly on over in the field where the corn generally cut corn shocks in the fall. And those shocks would just be covered with prairie chickens.

[11:20] I can remember that pretty well. Will the same thing be true of quail? Yeah, I don’t remember much about the quail. I never did a lot of hunters. I think there was more quail, though. I know more bunches, more bunches of quail. I believe there was. What about fur-bearing animals like your news? There was lots of squirrels and rabbits. Of course, right now there is no rabbits, but there was many times as many squirrels. We could go out in an hour or two and get a pretty good mess of squirrels along the timber. Do you remember seeing many coyotes when you was a boy? No.

[12:04] No, I don’t believe it was. They were sort of rare. I never got out enough maybe then to see, but no, I heard them tell about them, but I don’t, I’ve never seen them very much. I doubt whether there’s a lot more of them than there is now. May have been.

[12:30] Were there ever wild turkey here? Did you ever hear them talk about it? Yeah, I’ve heard other old-timers say that the Indians stood on the top of this big hill here and shot at wild turkeys down here in the field with a bow and arrow. I heard my uncles tell them about doing that. They’d shoot and there’d be bunches of wild turkeys down here in the field. They’d stand up there on the hill, and they’d shoot down there for near a quarter of a mile, you know. Then there were good many wild turkeys here at that time. No, I don’t think there was any, not later. They were gone pretty early. I never did see any. I never did see any wild turkeys. No. I see. No, I don’t think there was any in my time. Well, now, Dad, when did they first start using this area for raising purposes on cattle from Texas in the southwest?

[13:41] Well, the first time I remember seeing, it must have been long in the 90s. And Lincoln had those, H.S. Lincoln had cattle in the Lincoln pasture there west of Matfield.

[14:02] And I can kind of remember them. They were kind of a poor-quality kind of cattle. They wasn’t as good. But most of the cattle that come in or were raised here were all mixtures. A good many come from them old drives. If they had further back, some of them would get lame or lose them or something. And they brought them from the east, too, brought milk cows, the movers, coming in, you know, that way. Well, now, Dad, I wonder, the movement of these cattle from the south probably started about with the railroad when it came into, say, Bazaar, Kansas. I mean, is that what started the railroad? Yeah, that’s about as early as any. There was no drives up through here very much.

[15:19] They began to come faster as soon as we got the railroad. That was in 1888 at Bazaar. And at that time, they were bigger strings of cattle. Oh, yeah. They began to come pretty free then. And they’re big. The pastors were probably much bigger at that time than they are now. Yeah. Well, the pastors were larger. I don’t know. Yeah. How they filled them, really.

[15:56] The herds, the droves that came in under one ownership would probably be, instead of 300 or 400 cattle, probably as many as 1,000 or 1,500. They came in, I think they were bigger operators and fewer local operators than they is now. The first cattle would probably come from West Texas, panhandle area? Pretty well down. I think they did. Crocker’s, they got all theirs. They come from the panhandle country and way on down far as Lovington.

[16:36] That’s southeastern New Mexico. And those accounts way down in there, there’s a lot early days. They came from, some of them, quite a ways down. But all around that Pan Amarillo country there. Well, now, what did they do? Just rely on the water that was already in the pastures? Oh, yes, all together. They had to. If they run out of water, there were just two things they could do. They could move their cattle over to maybe another unused pasture or have them to ship.

[17:23] But they took care of their—they dug out lots of little sheep. It got along pretty well. And, of course, our country here is pretty well watered anyway. And you mean from the springs yeah springs and these little creeks and maybe little pools along that would hold out pretty good but they dry time they had quite a lot of difficulty but we I never remember any of them really a hauling water to any very big bunch of cattle and like to a few milk cows with the, but they wouldn’t uh well uh uh probably actual construction of ponds or the drilling of wells didn’t start say till about 1915 or 18 then uh the first ponds that they built all the first, Must have been along that time, first, I can remember, first ponds.

[18:39] Then I suppose it was quite a little bit of competition for the ownership of better water holes. Well, the early settlers tended to settle pretty close to good water. And they got to that’s where they took the home that they got to some of the the best springs, unless they were clear out where they couldn’t farm at all or what i was thinking about was in particular in relationship of water for these bigger pastures after the land was taken up along the creeks for farming, then the springs out in these pastures, was it quite a little bit of, quite a little competition to own those water holes or control? Well, I don’t, of course, that land was more, a little more valuable, all right, but I don’t I believe that they had very serious trouble on any water, very many just occasionally in just the worst droughts. There weren’t any feuds, really. There really never were any feuds or fights. Yeah, 1913.

[20:06] That whole Scribner range out there that you have leased, 4,000 acres there, they didn’t have a bit of water on it. I let them go down through my pasture, took my cattle out, and they went into South Fork down in here, the Crowfoots. Well, I would think prior to that time, the ownership of water holes like the Big Spring and the Lincoln and the Jack Spring.

[20:39] They were owned, some of that land was owned, and they tended to keep herders when they used to keep herders out on the region, little old cook shacks out there to kind of look after them, uh getting from grazing too far away then uh then the man that owned the water they’d tend to keep them around pretty well on the heads of the creeks you know and that’s usually where the best grass was too far as that was concerned but i didn’t have had all the territory they’d want them, but they’d just keep me in a kind of a certain area. Well, then the ownership of Waterhole did have something to do with control of the adjoining land then, didn’t it? I say the ownership of Waterhole did have. That’s where they begin to buy first, where does that whistle, you know, Mother wants something? now I’m.

[21:57] The type of operation, so far as the cattle were concerned, before the coming of fences was practically the ownership of small herds of cattle by farmers who put them out on free range, really, wasn’t it? Oh, yes, it was. It was free range. Oh, yes, it was practically. There was no fences yet. We kept going, I remember pretty well, when we had our little herder shack out here west of Matfield, about four miles. He’d stay out there and keep them together, just kind of keep them within a certain area. And.

[22:57] What did you do in the winter time I mean with those cattle how did you how were they handled during the winter months oh they, grazed they usually they grazed a good deal on this old grass well they usually had ample they put up pretty big supplies of, rough feed Millet planted, used to plant lots of millet, had lots of prairie hay, I think they left them out later in the fall and brought them in maybe a little later or turned them out earlier in the spring. And they had lots of territory.

[23:46] Actually, the cattle were really brought in along the creeks. They were brought in closer to— Oh, yeah, they were in where they could look around, and they didn’t have much except cow herds and native herds. They were pretty easy controlled, and the native herds, as I first remember, were mostly shorthorn breeding, but they run cows and yearling steers and twos and maybe threes, and the bulls with them all together just as one herd. They didn’t have them classified like we do now. They just had one herd, and they had a herd. They’d keep them rounded up and keep them within a few sections, and cattle got kind of located that way. And then when we’d go out to, well, every weekend, they’d take a little, a few pies or a batch of biscuits out to the.

[25:00] A herder out there and they’d take salt, take salt in a spring wagon and there’s all loose rock salt and they’d drive the wagon, they’d drive it along in a big circle and those children or kids we’d sit behind with a big basket full of salt and we’d just take double hands full and dump it about every 15 feet, driving a big circle, and after they got kind of quieted down, then they could count them. That’s kind of the way they usually got a pretty good count on their cattle is whenever they’d bring them in the salt about every week or 10 days. Cattle get kind of used to looking for that too, And they’d gather them in somewhere close a few days or a day or two before. And I remember that real well.

[26:06] That was long. That must have been a long, that was in the early 90s anyway. I was only 12, I know, 10, 12 years old, maybe 12 or 14. The cattle preference for grass then was bluestem as it is today. I rather believe there was more bluestem grass than there is now, a bigger percent. Now in areas like this flatland west of Matfield there where there’s so much buffalo now, was that ever in bluestem? I think more so. More so than it is now. You think there’s a little more buffalo? Yes, I think so. Than there was at that time. I rather believe there was. As I remember, we never used to think very much of having the buffalo grass. We never noticed it anyhow like we do now. Well, then, in your opinion, we really become grass conscious, probably more grass conscious, a little more cautious in the use of the grass.

[27:20] Oh, yeah. No question about that.

[27:25] That fact has changed more in the last five years than it did in putting their 20 before. Don’t you think the drought, the big drought in the 30s probably brought that to our attention more than anything? Well, I suppose it did. They knew what could happen. Previous to 1930, why acreage wasn’t given the consideration that it has since, I would say. No, they’re more particular than they used to be. Actually, the construction of ponds and wells in these patches didn’t start until about 1930 under the Agricultural Conservation Program. No, there were just a few where it was convenient to make them in the ore or kind of an assistive before. There wasn’t hardly any done, so they got this conservation program on that. And now there’s, I don’t know what the number of ponds are per section here, but I expect we’d average two or three ponds per section of grass. I would think so. Most of them built since in the last 25 years. Yeah, there is.

[28:54] Well, that’s kind of the way I would think. I was talking with somebody the other day. He said they had 40, well, I believe it was Mr. Eastman, I think, said they had about 40 ponds on the grass that he leases.

[29:09] I heard you say you had that many one time. Probably a good many more than that now. I imagine probably a hundred. Yeah. Well, now, in regard to the breaking out, there’s lots of this land that had been broken out that has now been reseeded or gone back to native grasses. About what time did they start breaking out, these uplands?

[29:38] About the time that the population began to increase, there was quite an immigration, you know, into the country here in the 80s. The population of the county probably doubled in seven, eight years there in the 80s.

[30:03] And then they began in course in a small way this the main bottom the good valley land was all broke here as long as i can remember except your field over there by that tile silo i can remember that’s right in the bottom there good as this i can remember when that was broke that five horses. They were kind of small ponies. They’d just put out a hedge down across the field. It was about two years old, just starting. I can remember chasing rabbits when I was about 12 years old around over there when that was broke, that old south field over there. It’s about 40 acres the bottom were the yields on this on that new broke land even where the land was what we would call poor now were the yields pretty satisfactory for a few years oh yes that was good it in the first year it was inside you know it took took a little while to get it weathered down.

[31:17] After a few years well then uh then they start abandoning wanted they really this abandon of these homesteads and these upland farms what i mean are these on these smaller creeks when did the abandonment of those places really.

[31:36] Seriously, I mean. Oh, I don’t know. I remember this, but along in the 80s, about 85.

[31:50] The man that came with my father to the country and homesteaded, walked down from Iowa. way. He had so much real estate business with these little homesteads and tracts like that that he bought two desks. And this desk here, he bought two desks in 1885, about 85, just exactly like. And he got my father to help him with the clerical work. And this is one of them, and Wayne’s got my father’s, and this is a man. Well, now, when did they give those places up? 1900 or 1908? Oh, they did. That sprung along most of them. There’s a good lot of them were closed out in the 90s, the latter part of the 90s, especially. Some of those hard years, they had to borrow money on them, and they couldn’t pay the taxes or the interest. And they just let them, they got real estate men to sell them.

[33:04] If they came in the 80s and they abandoned them in the 90s, then they were really rather sorry. That land up to the last of the 90s, 97, 96 or 97, we bought quite a little land at $4 an acre.

[33:27] Two i bought well we bought probably as much as nearly as much as three sections two or three sections all together well now most of this land the pasture lands have always been owned by non-residents is that oh yeah a very large part of it and uh another thing there was a good many that came out here, you know. It came from Illinois and Iowa and further east. And it looked easy, you know. They could break it out a lot easier up on this high, flat land than they could. Maybe they couldn’t grub or clear it easily. and it looked like big fields. And they settled there because part of Iowa, the upland, may be actually better than the bottomland, too, as far as that is concerned. It’s too wet in places, lots of their low ground. And so they settled. Some of them thought this was better land, and went to these high hills rather than get down here on the bottom right to Stark, because that’s the way it was back where they came from.

[34:56] The productivity of that land must have played out in about 10 years because they— Oh, yes. Yeah, it did. Well, they found out they could get other—got better land, you know, and cheaper and found out the trouble with that. Highland is, Dry, the poor soil and crop failures. Well, then much of this big acreages of land of the prairie lands proper or the pasture lands now were always non-residents owned. Is that true? Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, I think so. Oh, yes. I knew where there used to be 15 families out right east of town when I was trustee in the early 90s. and they’re all gone now. Yes, but the patches as such. Yeah, the patches, they did. A good deal of that was bought by quite an Easterner, you know. It looked cheap, and they kept it a while. If they come out here, lots of them starved out.

[36:16] I want to refer particularly to the pastures that we know as the bigger pastures now that were never broken uh those were never many of them owned by the local people were they, no like your lincoln pasture and your farrington pasture and your lewis pasture and uh williams pasture scrivener pasture they’ve always been owned by non-residents have they all pretty large.

[36:45] They were people that wasn’t located here. They were just like the Emporia, these three or four men up there that owned them, just like Jones had got six sections. Well, that’s later. But they had this land. Some of these pastures were men that owned them, just used them for revenue, you know, rented them, leased them out, and they had other businesses or didn’t live here. Well, now, Dad, on these pasture cattle that started coming, say, in the 90s era by rail, I remember they used to talk about rather fabulous gains. It was 300 pounds and so on and so forth. Oh, yeah. Were those actual gains or were they just fills? Oh, I don’t know. Was the grass ever any… Well, I think there really was a little more gains. I think there were more aged cattle. Another thing, they came in thin, awful thin, and… That would probably have got more gain on that account.

[38:08] Well, actually, your own native cattle that you had here, your calves were not any heavier than they are now, were they? Not very much. And your Yellen steers didn’t gain any more than they do today? No, I don’t think they—I don’t believe they did. Probably, in other words, the grasses are still as productive from a standpoint of age. They just kept them, you know. They kept them longer.

[38:34] Uh-huh. They just kept them until they got about matured. Before they sold, they didn’t sell any calves hardly. They sold them as two- or three-year-olds.

[38:52] Can you remember when, say, in 1900, when you first came home from school, 1898, 1900, the type of crops that they raised on your farm here, on the farmland here, what kind of crops did they raise here? Oh, it was pretty largely corn. There wasn’t no alfalfa. We had the first alfalfa. I sent the seed down from the university up there here to my brother. I was seeded here on this field, and that was one of the first fields in the county. That was along about 97, 96 or 97 maybe. Did they raise much? There was no alfalfa. They raised a lot of millet and a lot of corn, and they used the corn fodder, shucked the corn out, and then fed the fodder. There was quite a lot of orange cane they used, too, for—they’d sow that and unshock it in big shocks. And Kaffir, I remember when we got the first Kaffir in the 90s.

[40:15] That was along about 95 or 96. They got it from Africa. That was a green sorghum. Yeah, that was a green, a white, the old white Kaffir. You raised that, the world of that. Well, now, how about wheat? Have they always raised a good deal of wheat there? They had quite a bit of wheat all the years. Back there, more, I think more than they do now, a little bigger acreage. Well, the wheat, you don’t remember back to the times when they used a sickle to cut their wheat with a size, do you? No. You had a binder? No, I can remember about the first old grain binders that we had. My father had the first grain binder in this county or in this township. I know that. And we cut little oats. They used to raise lots of goats, too. We cut oats. What year did you have that grain binder about your father? Let’s see. Your father buy that. Fifteen years about.

[41:40] About I was about fourteen or fifteen because I used to have to ride the leading horse. We’d work five horses, and I’d ride one of the leading horses. Uh-huh. Well, then you plowed with walking plows, mostly. All together. I didn’t have a riding plow, or I didn’t have a riding cultivator. I didn’t have listers.

[42:08] I had planters, but they plowed the ground and check-rode the corn with eel. How were your yields, say, on wheat and corn and alfalfa as compared with now? I don’t believe it was as good. It didn’t have as good of varieties. I didn’t know how to take care of it. I believe it’s larger now than it was. Now, the first alfalfa that you say you sent down here about 97, did it get bigger? Bigger. It yielded in there. Oh, yes. It’d get up high as a mowing machine wheel. Just, I can remember that really well. Your first alfalfa was better than it is now. Like that, just up to your end. Your yields were greater then, but your wheat and your corn, the yields were lower than they are now. Well, the corn was pretty good many years. Did you plow deeper then than you do now?

[43:11] Well, I believe they do. There wasn’t much attention paid to the top of the gap. In your opinion, have we lost a good deal of topsoil off of these bottomland fields? Yes, in two ways. Not only in what the crop takes off, but the slopes where the land isn’t level, or there’s bios or banks, all those banks, they’re clay back farther than they were. They’ve kind of washed off. They’re wider. That is, on the poor soil, it’s wider than it used to be, I think, years ago. And we’ve lost quite a bit of the top soil in the last 75 years. It keeps washing down quite a little bit further back.

[44:09] Uh now dad have uh what do you think today’s system of livestock is the better for the bluestem area what’s what type of cattle operation do you think is the best here now cow and calf operation or a feeder operation or these full-fed operations or what? It’s partly a local matter how a man is maybe locally situated to handle. And it’s a little more exacting to handle a cow herd. It takes a little better management. However, I think that it’s a little safer, A man that has a cowherd, he can come nearer tidying over in really a hard time than you can with steers. I know they put me over the hill there in the 30s. You think that grass still has an important part in a cattle operation that we that our grass.

[45:37] Probably still plays an important part in any operation you should have in the flint hills then oh yes I don’t I don’t believe the local herd small I don’t think I believe the cows is the best they can handle them better a small operator can’t hardly handle a very big bunch of steers they don’t have the equipment or horses and they don’t we’ve seen a big number of these small feed yards.

[46:12] As well as the bigger feed yards coming in the last 10 years do you think those things are permanent or will we see a decrease I hate to put stick my neck out, but I would say this much that a farmer that’s a reasonably good manager that has his own cow herd and can deal in a number that he can handle in good shape, He’s really financially, I believe, he can weather through better than maybe the big operator in the long run. That’s the question I’m asking you. I’m asking you if these little feed yards where they operate entirely without grass, are those things here to stay, you think, in your opinion? I believe they are, but instead of running maybe 25,000 or more like Anderson up there or Crowfoot.

[47:24] That may get back down to 10. I think they’re over, I believe. Just possibly it’s overextended. I don’t i don’t think they can do it any cheaper after you get to a certain place you can’t handle them any cheaper than you could before well now there’s any other way this this small farmer here doesn’t feed near as many cattle as they did uh 10 or 40 years ago no no, One other question that I forgot to ask you, Dad, on these native pastures, I’m talking about the sizable pastures like your Crispin pasture or pastures of 1,000 to 2,000 acres.

[48:10] How about the weeds? Are there more weeds than there were when you were a boy, if you remember it? I think there is. I never remember seeing broomweed until way years later, that is, until maybe the last 25 years. And I think the other common weeds, I believe there is more and more weeds than they used to lose. One is pure. Why is that? Why?

[48:54] Why are there more weeds than there used to be? Well, it’s probably overgrassing and overgrazing, but it’s more largely in concentrating your cattle too long in one area. You get more paths and you get tramped out places and feed places. You tend to keep the cattle out there and feed them.

[49:26] Most of them just kind of where it’s convenient feed rings or something like that although those places get to be weed pretty much weed patches dad probably this year is the first year that you haven’t burned the pressure we’re going to run your own cattle only following a drought of course when the grass is short but uh don’t you think you saw less burning of pressures this year than you’ve ever seen? I believe it’s the least I’ve seen for a good many years. Can’t hardly remember, just except a few little pastures or local or something that they left out for some particular reason. Well, do you think that is here to stay? You think we’ll now discontinue the brining of our place? I think, I believe it will. I believe maybe not altogether if these Texas men ranches don’t require it.

[50:28] Why, I believe there will be, if they can prevent it. It’s, have to, it takes, we have to protect it, you know. Well, now let me ask you, have you seen a decided change in the last 10 years in regard to the method of transportation of cattle into this area over what it was? Oh, it’s changed, of course, to the trucking.

[51:03] Altogether, that’s a new thing practically even here now. And they used to be all come in on the trains, take long delays, and cattle were thin. There were more dead cattle on the train when they’d get them in there they’d have one or two in every car and the cattle were thinner old cows they were thin when they came up in the spring and, there’s some big law some big losses you think uh with the coming of the concentrated feeds like your cottonseed cake and soybean pellets and so on, that they make more use of these patches in the wintertime than they did 25, 30 years ago? Oh, I think that’ll look like that, or that’ll be the tendency.

[52:06] Well, isn’t it already the tendency? Aren’t a lot more cattle wintered on a pasture than there were 40 years ago? Oh, I think so. a good deal more of a general practice. There ain’t no, no, not any question about that. Do you think that means a trend more toward cow herds and away from summer grazing of steers? Do you think it’s away from summer grazing? Yes, sir. Do you think that? No. No, I don’t believe so. I believe that there’s such a big area to the south of us that Pertnere have to take them out and have to get what kind of business they have and the way it’s conducted. That they’ve probably got to have some place to go with them.

[53:05] And I think they’re going to have to graze them to get them fat enough for the market, too. I sometimes kind of think that this lean meat, is just maybe a little overdone. I think they’ll find out in time that a little fat on that beef is going to help it, and they’ll want the better meat. I don’t think. Do you think there’s any change in the ratio of summer grazing operations to year-round livestock operations?

[53:48] Well, are there more year-round livestock operations now than there were, or do you think there’s still— Oh, I see what you mean. Locally, I would say yes. I thought there was really more farmers that had a little pasture or a little feed that have gone into the cow business. There’s quite a lot more local herds here in cows than there was, I believe. Of course, that’s maybe what’s caused the increase in two parsley. One more question, Mr. Rogler. On the summer grazing operations of steers do they leave them in the pastures now as long as they used to in the earlier years when they started grazing uh steers in the summer.

[54:53] I don’t know i don’t hardly believe they do i think that uh the cattle of course the bulk the cattle here, they make their contracts, expire on about the middle of October 15th, and there tends to be quite a bit of pressure to get them gone within. And so there isn’t many cattle after middle of October here. Nothing. But some of these local hordes sometimes, they’ll run them out on some of these bigger pastures.

[55:33] Well, Dad, isn’t it true that on those three- and four-year-old cattle, they started taking them off of the pastures to market much earlier than they had? Oh, yes. Oh, they used to go to shipping. I remember them shipping a good many along the last of July. Generally, those bremas that eat on those weeds down in Texas and Fillory, and the weeds, they’d come up here the fourth part of April and shed off. They’re slick, and they get fat. They’ll get fat enough for beef along by the first part of August. We don’t have as many of them, I don’t think, as we used to. Then it would be true that they lightened up on the pastures much earlier than they do now, right? I think they did. When they didn’t have so many, and it was dependent mostly on the local herds, They didn’t have many cattle in here except just little local herds that they always wintered. Now, I’m talking about 20 years ago. They did begin to lighten, or 30 or 40 years ago, they took these cattle off earlier. Therefore, they lightened up on the rest years. I think that’s true. I think they did. I think there was a heavier shipment early. I kind of believe there was.

[57:01] Well, it was because they didn’t depend much on corned beef.

[57:07] Grassed beef was a little, I think, in demand. Well, isn’t there a tendency then now, in your estimation, for these younger cattle that we’re stocking with to stay the full season much more than they did when we were running the older cattle? I’d rather think they do, or they used to.

[57:34] I can remember usually the men that had cattle in here just filled their pastures just as quick as there was one or two car loads. Well, they just want to ship them, you know. The market justified it at all.

[57:55] They’d want to start shipping on them earlier. Then under those contracts, those cattle couldn’t be replaced. When you took the cattle out, they had to stay out. No, without extra pay. Yeah, and Tennessee was— They have to pay for the extra time, whatever you agree on, of course. And they make those contracts a little earlier, don’t they, than they used to. I thought, oh, I’m at the five days, but April 15th is kind of the standard. Well, then, of course, the nature of the contracts are that they can’t reef. If they take out a carload or two or a hundred, those cattle cannot be replaced with other cattle. Therefore the pasture gets that advantage that you don’t get under the livestock system yes they don’t they don’t allow any refill now very often uh therefore probably uh the actual grazing season uh 20 years ago probably was a month or the average grazing season for all the cattle would probably be a month or two shorter than it is now, actually, by the fact that they shipped earlier. That might be.

[59:24] I wonder, Dad, this…

[59:30] Actually, the burning of the rain started, I presume, from early-day fires set out by the settlers accidentally and otherwise. Well, lightning, you know. Lightning used to start a good many fires. And, oh, they didn’t think the importance. Well, they thought that was the thing to do. and that’s what the Texas cattlemen required. They required that they wouldn’t fill your pasture unless you graze. And according to their experiments, they do gain a little more, but the first two weeks grazing in April probably cut your grass down as much as if you’d let them go in another week or longer, why, you’d have maybe two or three weeks more grass. You won’t get the quantity of grass if you have them in the first week or two. And overgraze it as you would if you just kept them off.

[1:00:57] You’d have bigger, more tonnage. In other words, you’d have more tonnage if you put your cattle on the 1st of May than you would if you put them on the 15th of May. Yeah, I think you would. Well, I’m sure that would be true. You spoke about this abandonment of this cropland, by these first settlers, especially this upland on top of these hills that you spoke about and plowing up the native grass and planting it and then abandoning it after 10 or 12 years. When do you remember that they first started reseeding some of that go-back land? What was the first year that you ever reseeded any native bluestem on this place here? First I put it in, it was up there on steak bake.

[1:01:52] I didn’t use the thrice stuff. I cut it in the fall, bound it, it was big enough so that I could use a binder right out on the hills. Well, that was 1938. That’s 38. Well, I think that was the first year. I sowed them little patches up there, two or three acres in a spot. And I fed it, I said I sewed it, I kept it through the winter, fed it to cattle right in the bundle in the spring and just scattered it around on them patches. And I got just perfect stand. They tramped it in, you know, right on the field. It was a little corn field or cane. And I just fed them out there. I’d give them some of that baled bluestem.

[1:02:50] I never thrashed it or not anything. Well, then the first harvesting of bluestem seed that you can remember by anybody was in about 1938. Is that right? That was about the first I remember. The next year, well, John Sobel, my brother-in-law, he had that, baled some, that same web, and he run it through a manure, cut it, through a cutter and then run it through a manure spreader and spread the grass, and he didn’t thrash it. He just cut it and spread the grass and all of it on the whole 20 acres, and he got a nice stand, too. It really wasn’t veiled. I thought it was cut with a wheat binder into bundles. Yeah, it was up there. Oh, I don’t know whether we’ve got any pictures. Oh, yes. Yeah, it was just like wheat shops. It wasn’t a sick father apart. We shocked it big enough. Thank you very much, Mr. Rogler.