The Ely Farm

The Ely Farm:  Maps and Photos

Here are some very interesting old maps of Nemaha County and the farm.  The large map was photographed at the Nemaha Valley Museum on August 5, 2011 by Karen with Bill Ely pointing out the family farm.  Enlarge it to see the town of Sheridan (yes, this is BEFORE Auburn existed) just above the words "Douglass" and find the farm 2 miles north and 2.5 miles east of Auburn.  You'll also recognize the wandering Nemaha River!

1870s Map of Nemaha County.  See Missouri River on Right and Town of Sheridan Middle Left.

 James F. Ely started with 80 acres in 1868.  He acquired more land when possible and by 1890 had 490 acres.  The map was written in the early 1870s because records show that J.F. Ely bought the H. Seymour land that was foreclosed for $761.65 on April 17, 1873!  See link below and read other things from it too!

Ely Farm is on both side of the road in Douglass Precinct neighboring London

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/newspapers/NSHS/NTEP/neptc042.htm



The above link is very interesting as it contains extractions from the Territorial Newspaper and comments about business and especially about the wagons traveling westward with emigrants.

The original house built by J.F. Ely for his family in the 1870s.  In 1909, Ed and Laura Ely moved into it.

More photos of the house on a future post. Do note the outhouse on the far left!

Ariel View of the farm 100 years after establishment.  Photo April 1967

If you'd like jpgs of these photos so you can enlarge them even more, let me know.  Aren't they great?  Karen

Being Cool with a Mule

Note from Karen: I'm hoping that others can remember more about Grandpa's Ear.   


Being Cool With a Mule

A farm accident that occurred in June 1931 could have been far worse than it was.  Now it is a part of our history.  Grandpa Gene was 16 years old and had just completed 10th Grade at St. Joseph's School.  The family lived in Auburn and the boys went to the farm every day to work.  Although the Elys and most other farmers had tractors, they still used horses and mules for some tasks. I faintly remember seeing some plows for horses in the back shed at the farm with those far-from-comfy metal seats.  However,  I'm really not sure what type of equipment they actually had in 1931.  Can anyone fill in any more details on this???

For a 5th Grade school assignment on Dec 11, 1953,  I interviewed my dad about his ear.  This yellowed paper was tucked into my baby book (which hadn't been updated since I was 8 months old).  I'm guessing this was a rough draft because there are some spelling errors that Mother would certainly have made me correct and also there isn't a grade on it.  I do remember copying and recopying assignments often!  Nevertheless, most of the facts are included.  I note that he told me the story in a funny, rather than scary, way!  How typical!

       A Big Bite

When my Dad was working in a field, he had a big suprize.  He was working some mules to pull a hay mower.  He was hitching the mules to the mower and was pulling the yoke up and one mule bit off his right ear.  He decided to go down to the  house and get a doctor.  The lady that was there thought she would drive him to town.  She wore out a battery in the car so Dad got out and cranked the car to get it started.  The lady had forgotten to turn the key.  They went into town and Dad was operated on.  They graffed some skin off his shoulder so they they could cover the ear.  When he came out of the operating room, he felt so bad because he didn't get the hay mowed.  I have a Dad with 1 1/2 ears.

Nemaha County Herald June 8, 1931

When Grandpa was coaching High School in Michigan City, IN one day his football players asked him about the ear.  He had a good story ready, perhaps one he and ND friends had jointly authored on one of those long train rides!  The story was that during the ND-Army game in New York, 1937, the Army mule got loose and bit off his ear!  Great story!  So the mule and the ear part were correct, but the rest of the scenario was only slightly altered.  The story eventually made it to the HS newspaper and the coach had to offer a "small correction."

Throughout the years, Grandma tried to make sure Grandpa was always photographed from his left side and the ear doesn't appear in many photos.

Gene Ely, 1952, in Auburn

But here's one, actually the best photo I've run across, and the incredible shirt is just a bonus from the 1950s.  As you can see, the "bite" was just a diagonal off the top back of his ear.  It healed completely and would hardly be called a disfigured ear.  He joked that he'd never be able to wear glasses, but when the time came, that wasn't a problem either.

Ely Family October 1953.  Joe (1 week old)

When Joe was born in Nebraska City in 1953, the attending doctor (probably Dr. Fenstermacher , who had lived in Auburn for several years) came in with a report to the mother.  He said  "I'm glad to tell you the baby has two normal ears."  Mom laughed and said "What?"  He replied, "Your son has not inherited Gene's ear."  She quickly told him that the ear was from a mule accident.  He had known us for quite a few years and had always assumed the ear was a birth defect.

Gene Ely in the Tack Room, 1985.

The only other "ear discussion" I can remember came from our long-time family physician and friend, Dr. Paul Scott, who had assumed that it was a frost-bitten ear, very common in those days, as "real men" didn't cover their ears in winter.   Dr. Scott thought it was just a consequence of the Ely toughness!

Gene Ely's 94th Birthday

On January 8 we all will be thinking of Daddy/Dad/Grandpa/GreatGrandpa on his 94th birthday. I found these photos that will bring a smile for sure. Perhaps some of the more recent family members haven't seen them.

Dad with Otis
The colt is Otis, son of Jackie (I think) taken on a rather cold day. Daddy usually didn't wear a coat unless it was really cold. Of course, his OshKosh 'B Gosh bibbies hold a precursor to the Blackberry! This was probably taken in the early 1980s.

Dad with Seco

The horse he is riding is Seco. I believe this photo is from the 1970s but I'm not totally sure. As I dig deeper into the family photo archives, I'll be able to put more accurate dates on these.

The Happy Couple
This is from the tack room, taken in May 1993.

Over the holidays, we played a very cute group game called "Whoonuit?" in which you have cards with phrases and a the group members select things that the person who is "it" has to rank according to personal preference. The cards have sports, foods, activities etc.

For example, Makenna made a list with Blowing Bubbles #1, watching cartoons #2, etc
Quinn made a list with T-Shirts #1, jelly doughnuts #2, …. It is a lot of fun to find things that someone else would like!

So, to celebrate January 8, let's make a list of things Grandpa REALLY liked:

horses, pumpkin pie, Notre Dame, Rotary, Bonanza, …. (add some more!)

ed. note: This post written by Karen Eichstadt with technical assistance from Joe Ely, both honor students of Kenny Hutton :-)

Visit to Auburn, June 28-29, 2008

Last weekend, I spent a quick 2 days in Auburn. If a photo is worth 10,000 words, then I have a long essay here. Click on any of them to get a bigger view.

Here's the big green barn at the farm. It had some wind damage four weeks ago and you can see the new roof metal on the east end here. Good as new...actually better.

In place of the cattle and hogs Dad used to have south of the barn, our renter, Joe Moody, now uses it for storing his extensive grain handling equipment.

On the north side of the road, we sold the house and two pastures to Andy Beherends and his wife last fall (and now their 7 month-old son). He is renting the two pastures out for crops. Here's the view of the house from the top of the hill, looking east. You can see the beans planted where we used to have pasture.

The house and yard look fantastic! The Beherends have really cleaned up the place. It is very neat, clean and crisp. I met Andy and he told me of more plans he had for tree trimming, painting and making it more their own. I went in the house and, boy, does it look good. I'm thrilled to have a family living on the farm. They are thrilled to have their own place. They get along well with Joe Moody...the whole thing works.

Remember the green shop on the north side of the road?? Andy has cleaned it up well too. He added brown paint to match the house, put on a new garage door and cleaned out a lot of junk.

Speaking of houses, here's the house many of you remember well from Auburn. Anne and I grew up here. I could hardly get a good photo of the house as the trees in front of it are so big and healthy. The place looked good. And, as I look at the photo, I see the TV antenna endures, even in this world of cable and satellite!!

And, in quintessential Auburn fashion, the mailbox is no longer on G Street, but on 16th Street, even though the address remains the familiar 1607 G!!!!!

And for all you fans of erosion control, here's the photo from the top of a big waterway we built about a mile north of the house. We put this about 10 years ago...with time, the grass has matured, the terraces are now draining into the waterway and it is simply handling all sorts of storms with no sign of soil erosion. Hard to grasp this from the photo...but to walk it slowly on a summer day was a thing of utter joy to me.

Here's the same waterway from the bottom, across the road.

The farm is doing well. Joe Moody has done a terrific job as a steward of the land. It is highly productive and adapting to the very different agricultural climate we have now.

Hope you enjoyed the photos here.

Nebraska Farm Sale

All of us feel a strong connection to the Ely family farm, so we wanted to update you on some important developments.

After Mom died in 2001, Marge, Karen, Anne and I had a series of extended, honest conversations about what we wanted to do with our farmland in Auburn. These conversations extended over several years. During our talks, we tried to balance our deep feelings for that property with the practical understandings of the farm economy, managing and owning land at a distance and the interests of our kids and their growing families.

During 2006, the four of us came to the decision to sell the land. Central to this decision was the fact that neither the four of us nor any of our children had an aptitude for or an interest in farming as a business. And, as Dad always modeled, farming was a business, one in which he excelled. Succeeding in farming is getting more and more difficult and it just didn’t seem to make sense to keep owning the land, despite the emotional tugs that land has on all of us.

Having made that decision, we set out to figure a way to accomplish this. We own 400 acres of land there. Most of it is now crop ground, which we rent to Joe Moody. We are currently in the middle of a 5 year rental agreement with Joe and we intend to honor that agreement. Indeed, our land is central to Joe’s farming operation of over 1,500 acres.

For those of you who don't know of Joe Moody, he's a guy who I went to school with all through the Auburn school system. Joe's father, Harold Moody, was a lifelong friend of Dad's. In the mid 80s, Dad decided to rent out the crop ground to Harold who, by then, had begun farming in partnership with his son Joe. The business relationship between Dad and the Moodys was based on a handshake, as all men were honorable and knowledgeable. As Joe took over more and more of Harold's work, this all transferred to Dad working with Joe. Since Dad died, we've been working with Joe and he has taken very good care of our land. Thus, we have a long-term relationship with Joe and will honor our agreements with him, just as we have for decades. On a humorous note, Joe's Social Security and mine are only two digits apart. Why?? We both applied for them on the same day in Jim Klien's 7th grade history class. Yeah, Auburn really is a small town.

The crop ground needed to stay with Joe for the time being. But what to do with the noncrop ground? We had a bit of an epiphany last year when we realized we could partition it and look to sell it separately. And so we did.

There are about 27 acres of land on the north side of the road which include the house, the shop and several out buildings, the famous “riding ring” where Dad put all of his grandkids on horseback, and small pastures to the north and west of the house. We currently rent the house to a fellow who has been there since 1991 and rent a couple of the buildings to nearby farmers for implement storage. From a business point of view, these 27 acres were not very productive as the rents really did not offset repairs to the house, taxes and hassles.

Therefore, we had these 27 acres surveyed and legally separated from the rest of the land. During the summer, we listed this parcel with a local realtor. To our surprise, we had a number of people express interest. We received a serious offer, worked through price and terms via our Realtor and agreed. So, on Thursday night, August 30, 2007, we had an agreement to sell the 27 acres. With Marge as our able spokesperson, the four of us agreed fully with the arrangement and it was done.

The buyers are a 29 year-old couple who are from the area, growing up near Peru. They are thrilled to have a house of their own on some acerage. They want to settle down and live there and remain part of the community. This really captures the spirit of the place, in ways we couldn’t have really planned out.

Right now we are working out when the closing will take place. We expect it to happen around the first of October.

Our plan is to sell the rest of the ground at the conclusion of our current contract with Joe Moody. We are not selling this big green barn now. It is on the south side of the road. Along with the land that was formerly the big feedlot, this barn is part of the farm land which we will sell as a unit in the future.

The farm means a lot and those memories will never fade. Marge, Karen, Anne and I have had a wonderful appreciation for the principles of integrity and community that we learned from Mom and Dad. We sense they would be quite pleased with the rationale and manner in which we’ve handled it. Those principles are priceless. And we’re pleased to pass this to the next generation as well.