Borrowing Against Life Insurance to Save the Farm

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This is the fifth story from Ruth Zwald, written by her father, Robert Zwald, and submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear. She compiled her father’s stories in his own words, and they are posted in eight parts. Read the other parts: 1900s Farming in Washington County Minnesota; Growing Up on a Farm; Catching Frogs for Money; One Room School House; Changes in Agriculture;Courtship and Marriage and The Wisconsin Farm.

Lake Elmo
About this time (the late 1920s), things got bad on our farm, though things were never very good. There was no money. The depression was on in full swing. Banks were closing, farms were lost, and we had no money. Dad filed bankruptcy, so we rented a farm on Highway 12 (which is now I-94). We paid rent of $2.50/acre – so that was $300/year for rent of 120 acres. In 1935, we seeded 100 bushels of oats. It hailed, and we threshed out 86 bushels. That year, we couldn’t pay the last $100 rent, so we had to move. That is when we found a place in Lake Elmo with 160 acres. It was 1936. The guy wanted $600/year for rent. Dad said, “We couldn’t pay $300 – how can we pay $600?” So the bachelor there said he would leave some cows, and we took it.

We fixed up an old house where chickens and rats had been, but it was a house. It did have electricity – what a thrill – just lights, though. We paid $3.00/month for electricity. We had an open well, which we used as a refrigerator. Using a rope, we lowered food down into the well, where it was always cool. Later on, we got a refrigerator and a radio. We even got a telephone, which we were without for 12 years. I used to walk about a mile and a quarter across the field to use a phone when we lived on the Hudson Road.

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