Saline County Century Farm: Unusual commuter marriage for Lemmons, but stepson still learned a few things about farming

Steve Tackett-Nelson of Oregon went to school in California, but after classes would dismiss for the year, he and his mother and brother would load up and head to Saline County and the farm of their stepfather, George Lemmon.

"They had a commuter marriage long before it was done," explained Steve, who was 8 years old when his mother, Roxie, married George.

His mother had grown up in the area near Lemmon farm, but married and moved to California. After the death of her husband, when she was back in Saline County visiting, a relative told her George Lemmon had never married. Lemmon had apparently "taken a shine" to Roxie when she was much younger.

After George and Roxie were married, Steve said his mother, a high school vice principal, could never quite settle on being a farm wife, so she stayed at her job in California during the school year.

They would travel back during the summer and live three months of the year on the farm west of Elmwood.

In the winters after harvest, George would leave the farm in the care of one of his hired men and travel, often by train, to live with the family in California until spring planting.

"The farm came into the Lemmon family, when A.K. Lemmon came to Saline County from Six-Mile Prairie in southern Illinois over 100 years ago," explained Steve, who said his great-grandfather left that "low and swampy ground," which was thick with mosquitoes.

He settled on 280 acres a mile west of Elmwood. That farm, now owned by Steve and his wife, Regina Tackett-Nelson, was recently named a Century Farm for being in the same family for 100 years or more.

After A.K., the farm was owned by Willie Lemmon and his wife, Ida Mueller. After Willie had a stroke in his early 50s, his son, George, took over.

"George took over doing the farming at a young age," said Steve.

He lived in the farm home with his mother, Ida, who was over 100 years old when she died in the early 1980s. She was a "character," according to Steve.

"She kept going and going. She lived on the farm her whole life," he said, except for a short time when she fell down on the back steps of the home at age 95 and broke both her wrists.

"It took her a year to get her strength back," he said, adding that after recuperating she took a top cooking prize at the Blackburn Festival.

Steve, who is now a doctor in Salem, Ore., remembers helping on the farm, doing "summer stuff" including bucking bales, cutting pigs and working in the garden.

"I got to cultivate a little bit," he added.

Because George already had two hired men, Steve said what he most remembered was working on old equipment.

"I learned to weld. I was welding plows all the time," he said. He said his brother, who has since died, was more particular and wanted to build the equipment so it wouldn't break again.

George was a farmer who could make do with what he had.

"He was a master of baling wire and duct tape," he said, adding that he also never threw anything away. "He got things done -- in time -- spending no money."

"He would keep driving tractors until they were totally decrepit and then go to an auction sale and buy another one and see if it had a little life left in it," said Steve. "He was a real master of getting by making do with what he had. He was just happy to be on the land and farming."

In fact, Steve said Lemmon was a "green" farmer before his time.

"He was not very big on herbicides or pesticides, even back in the day," said Steve. "He was a master of low capital outlay."

He said George also still used a "four-bottom plow in the 70s."

"He didn't care if he got it done faster. It worked for him."

Steve said his wife now has the cider press that George would use each fall to make apple cider.

"He would go get a pickup full of apples," he said, adding that he would make 20 or more gallons of cider each fall.

George wasn't very interested in using modern conveniences. Steve remembers going to the basement on rainy days to help him wash clothes using homemade lye soap and an old wood boiler.

"We would put the clothes in there and punch them down with a wooden paddle," he said. Then they would crank the clothes through the ringer, although eventually George bought an electric crank.

"He would put his pants on pant stretchers to dry. That way he didn't have to waste any time ironing," said Steve, who said he never knew anyone else his whole life who used pant stretchers.

"He kind of carried on like an original bachelor farmer. It was really pretty interesting -- as long as they still worked, he still used them," explained Steve.

When Steve's mother moved back to the farm in 1974 after retiring, however, "things got modernized."

Although he doesn't get back to the farm as much as he used to, Steve said he and his wife, a former Iowa farm girl, are very attached to it. They have three children.

Chester Nolte now farms the land for the family.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at marshallag@socket.net