Grandchildren own Kochs farm started in 1906

A 100-acre farm purchased in 1906 by Rudolph and Sophia Auer Kochs was recently honored as a Century Farm at a ceremony held Nov. 14 at the Saline County Courthouse. From left are Saline County Presiding Commissioner Becky Plattner, Saline County Commissioner Dick Hassler, Linda Eddy, Louis Eddy, Laurel Wade and Harold Eddy. The farm is now owned by the Kochs' five grandchildren. (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

"At that time there was just a trestle over the Missouri River, and he was stowed away in a box car," said his grandson Harold Eddy. "He looked out of the boxcar and there was nothing under him. He said if this thing ever stopped, he was getting off."

The train stopped in Slater to take on water and Koch did indeed get off.

Rudolph Koch and Sophia Auer Koch bought their farm in 1906. Their great-grandchildren, Harold Eddy, Louis Eddy, Wallace Eddy, Kenneth Eddy and Laurel Wade, now own the farm. This picture was taken July 1929. (Contributed photo) [Click to enlarge]

"So he started looking for a job in Slater and they said, 'Tom Baker's in town and he always hires a lot of people,'" explained Eddy. Baker took the 15-year-old to the Orearville area, near where Eddy now lives and gave him a job paying $12 a month, plus room and board.

"He said they'd get up at four o'clock and go out and do their chores and everything and then harness their horses and then they'd eat breakfast and go to the field," explained Eddy. "At dark they'd come back in and take the harness off the horses and take care of them and feed the cattle and so forth and then they'd eat supper. So that's where he started, right down the road here."

Then, in a few years, Koch got a chance to rent a farm "about two miles further southeast."

This is the home of Rudolph Koch and Sophia Auer Koch, which was located on their farm near Orearville when they purchased the 100-acre farm in 1906. It was recently honored as a Century Farm, for being in the same family for 100 years or more. This photograph was taken in 1930. (Contributed photo) [Click to enlarge]

In the meantime he'd married Sophia Auer, who lived nearby. The couple had four children; only two, Grace and Chester, survived.

On March 15, 1906, Koch purchased a 100-acre farm near Orearville from Joseph Marksbury. That farm was honored as a Century Farm on Nov. 14 at the Saline County Courthouse, for being in the same family for 100 years or more.

It is now owned by Grace's five children: Harold Eddy; his brothers, Louis of Orearville, Kenneth of Springfield and Wallace of Marshall; and a sister, Laurel Wade of Marshall.

Eddy remembers a lot about the farm and his grandparents, as he lived nearby most of his life.

"I was born right across the road. Of course we were over at Grandma and Granddad's a lot," he said. Later they moved to a nearby farm, but still spent a lot of time at their grandparents'.

"We spent a lot of time over there," he said. "Granddad liked to put up with us, I guess."

When the Kochs first bought the farm, it had a house and an older two-story barn that had a hay rail in it.

The rail was used to take hay up into the second story of the barn. The hay was lifted off the wagon with a fork or spear and a horse would pull the rope, raising the hay until it rolled down the track.

"They had a rope hanging down that they could trip it where they wanted it and then fork it out to the sides," explained Eddy, who collects old-time farm implements and has studied a lot about old-time farming methods.

Koch then started running a thresh machine for someone else and later bought his own.

"He bought the Red River, I was with him when he threshed with it," said Eddy, who found a receipt in his grandmother's things for $42, the cost of shipping the thresh machine from Kansas City to Slater.

To store the large machine, Koch built a "clear-span" building, the first in the area, according to Eddy. The small machinery was stored on either side of the building, but in the center, where it was at least 15 feet tall, he put the thresh machine.

"He'd gone to the World's Fair and seen this (clear-span building), and he'd purchased these long bolts with the turnbuckles in them," said Eddy, who explained it was like a "kit."

"He went to the sawmill and got the lumber and built that. It's gone down now, but lasted for probably 75 years.

"If it ever swagged, it had these turnbuckles, and you could tighten those and shove the center up," explained Eddy.

They also had two big hen houses, a smokehouse, a shop, outdoor bathroom and two or three brooder houses, explained Eddy. He said his grandfather also used an all-wood boxcar to store grain and feed.

On the farm, which now includes another 14 acres they purchased later, half was in grass for livestock and the rest of it was in crops, which they farmed with teams of horses.

However, they also had a tractor in the late 1920s or 1930s, which they used for pulling the thresh machine. At first, they had an International 8-16 and it wasn't big enough to pull it, so they got an International McCormick-Deering W30 tractor, said Eddy.

With the Red River thresher, they threshed wheat and oats and on occasion, rye and barley.

The oats were a big crop back then, according to Eddy.

"Grandmother had a bunch of chickens and it took a bunch just to feed the chickens," he said, adding they also fed oats to the hogs.

His grandmother had a large orchard and a large garden and canned about 400 quarts of fruits and vegetables each year. She would let her chickens run in the orchard, but would go and pick up any useable fruit off the ground before letting them loose each morning.

"I remember going out as a kid and helping her and that was the first thing she did before she let the chickens out is pick up anything she could get."

They also had beef cattle and horses, and kept some nurse cows that they used to nurse calves they purchased from a neighbor who had a large dairy.

Like farmers of the time, they were self-sufficient.

"They had milk cows, got milk from those, eggs from the chickens, their own meat and butchered chickens. She had everything you could think of in her garden," he said.

His grandmother was also "known for her flowers" and usually had four feet of flowers around the house. She was a member of the Clay Center Club, and she'd exhibit flowers at the "street fair and county fair."

Eddy remembers helping his grandfather on the farm and said that the method of planting corn was quite different than today.

"They would go out and plow the ground with a tractor and he still used his horses some for plowing," he said. "Then you would harrow it right after you plowed it, while it was easy to work down. So you'd harrow it twice and then usually you could plant it then. "

Eddy also remembers helping with planting oats, which they did in March. They would seed the ground and then go back and disk the seeds in.

"I used to ride in the wagon and while he would drive a team, I would take a bucket and pour the oats and keep the bin full in the seeder," he said, adding he wasn't very old when he started helping, although he doesn't remember his age.

"I remember some cold days doing that," he said.

There are several stories that Eddy remembers, a few about the desperate times in the Depression.

"In the Depression, they were about to lose the farm," he said, but Louis Buck, a private individual and fellow church member who had the farm loan, told them he had no use for the farm. "He told them they'd always paid their bill and said, 'I know you'll take care of it, you're someone I can trust.' So he just left them there and they got it all taken care of after the Depression was over."

Another story was from his Uncle Chester, who farmed with Koch.

The two were taking the thresher to Norton, where many "bums" would jump off the train, and when crossing the railroad, the "cupping pole" that held the axles together broke on the tracks.

"Granddad crawled around under it, and they were trying to put chains in between it and get it raised up where it didn't catch on the rail and they'd try to drag it off," he said. It was about 100 degrees and hot, he said, and they were having troubles getting it to work. His grandfather came out from under the thresher and said, "I've got to have a drink of water, even if they do hit it."

So, dirty and hot, they walked up to a nearby house, where a woman answered. "She said she 'wasn't feeding any bums' and threw the door shut in his face. So there was another place there and they got a drink and got the thresher off the track before the train hit it."

His granddad, since he had been a stowaway himself when he came to town, would often give the Depression era travelers a job for a few days.

"He'd go to town and come back with them and give them a job for a day or two," said Eddy. "Mom said that there'd been a many of them that spent the night in that old shop."

Koch was one of the first in the area to use a chainsaw, around 1950.

He had gotten a dozer to push out hedge trees between his farm and a neighbor's farm. He and Chester would cut out the posts of the hedge trees and then cut up the other parts of the trees to burn. After the trees were down for a while, they got quite hard and tough to cut with a cross saw.

"Granddad saw this power chainsaw. It powered off the power takeoff of the tractor, and it had hydraulic hoses that ran to this chainsaw," he explained. It was probably five feet long, he said, and was very heavy. His grandfather, who was in his 70s at the time, could handle the easy end, while his uncle would handle the other end.

As they cut the posts out with the chainsaw, a lot of people came out to watch because it was the first one they had ever seen.

"That was a pretty early chainsaw," said Eddy.

His grandfather died at age 76, in 1951, when he was pulling some of the larger logs from the downed fencerow back to the house to use for firewood.

"He turned the tractor over backwards and it killed him," said Eddy, who was the one to find him.

His grandmother, however, lived until she was 104, passing away in 1974.

"She was 96 years old and still raising hatching eggs for Gordon Hatchery," said Eddy's wife, Norma.