The Nevada Sale Barn

Still in use, thanks to LMA

The sale barn in Nevada*, Missouri, sits on nine acres on the east side of town, just a block off Highway 54. I took this picture of it when I was traveling with my sister last month.

I was curious about this little sale barn, so I searched online and found photos and a description of the property in the archives of a real estate company. It appeared to be vacant at the time the photos were taken. The floor plan of the barn is exactly what I would have guessed it to be. Every sale barn I've ever visited in the American Midwest has a similar layout. 

There's a small sale arena enclosed by a high fence. The arena is surrounded on three sides by stadium-style seats for buyers and onlookers. On the opposite side of the arena, facing the seats, there are two gates: one to bring livestock into the arena, and the other to take livestock out. Between the two gates, the auctioneers face the audience from a raised box.

I don't think any auctions are held in the Nevada sale barn anymore, but the yards are still used for livestock marketing.  The property is now owned by Mo-Kan Livestock Market Inc. of Butler, Missouri (a town about 30 miles north of Nevada.)  It is a receiving station for Mo-Kan, and cattle are accepted on Wednesdays from 10 AM to 6 PM. I read on the Mo-Kan website that Mo-Kan transports cattle from the station to their Thursday auction in Butler for a fee of $3/head.

Mo-Kan streams their cattle auctions and accepts bids over the internet. Of course, they also take bids from buyers who attend the sale in person, but the internet helps them offer the livestock to a wider market. The internet auctions are facilitated by LMA Auctions, an arm of the Livestock Marketing Association (LMA).

LMA has about 800 members like Mo-Kan, across the United States and Canada. The mission of LMA is stated on the homepage of the website: "We are committed to the support and protection of the local livestock auction markets. Auctions are a vital part of the livestock industry, serving producers and assuring a fair, competitive price through the auction method of selling."

If it weren't for LMA and internet auctions, the Nevada sale barn might be just another abandoned building.
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* The people of Nevada, MO, pronounce their town's name with a "long a;" that is, the second syllable rhymes with "way."

Road Trip through the Ozarks

Christian County, Kentucky, to Hickory County, Missouri

Recently, I took a few days off from the usual humdrum and made a fast trip west to visit my family. I drove to Wheatland, Missouri, and picked up my sister; then she rode along with me to Kingman County, Kansas, where we spent several days visiting with my brother and sister-in-law. Then I took my sister home again, and came back home myself. The entire trip was about 1500 miles.

Here are some of the sights from the first day, as I traveled from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to southwest Missouri.

 This gas station in Wickliffe, Kentucky, is a familiar landmark just before the long approach through the swamps to the Ohio River bridge.

There was no traffic on the bridge over the Mississippi River, so I drove slowly, put my camera out the window, and blindly took some pictures. Most of them were out of focus and wildly tilted (not surprising,) but this one isn't too bad. The trees are growing on the extreme southern tip of Illinois. The Ohio River is on the far side of the trees and the Mississippi River is in the foreground. The two rivers come together in front of the trees and continue as the Mississippi to the ocean.

 

Much of the land in the Missouri Bootheel was cypress swampland until the 1890s. It was considered a great engineering accomplishment when nearly all the trees were cut and the swamps were drained and converted to farmland. Today, it's a very productive agricultural area, but a rich and complex ecosystem has been lost forever.

Most of the hay harvest this year in southern Missouri and southern Kansas was put into big round bales like these. We did see a few big square bales in Kansas. We speculated that they could be packed closer on a truck than round bales and that they would be more stable during transport.

In a gas station, I saw this stuffed bobcat and bird (I think it's a quail.) I don't think they'd win any taxidermy prizes, but they certainly were attention-grabbing, especially for little children.

The other end of this shop in Van Buren, Missouri, was more modern and less cluttered, but I really liked the look of this end. Van Buren always has something interesting to see. I took a few minutes off to drive around town and look at the Current River.

My next stop was at Winona, where I pulled into a gas station to study the map and plot a route across the Ozarks. I had finished my map reading and I was waiting at the stop sign to get back on Highway 60, when a woman in a Ford Explorer rear-ended my car. She was apologetic, but she didn't explain to me why she did it. My car didn't appear to be damaged, but I got her insurance information anyway. "Just in case," I told her.

I pointed my camera at the road as I went down some of the big hills. Here are two pictures that turned out all right. I'm thankful for Highway 60 which is all four-lane these days, but I always enjoy the point in the journey when I turn northward on a two-lane and head across the Ozarks toward Wheatland. I've seen some great scenery from the two-lanes in the Ozarks.

I usually go through Lebanon, but I decided to take some blacktop county roads (about 50 miles of them) and go through Buffalo instead. (This information is for those who really know their southern Missouri geography.) That's how I happened to pass through Conway, and by the way, it was the first town I'd seen in quite a while.

I finally arrived at my sister's house a little before sunset. When I opened the trunk of my car, I couldn't close it again. Once opened, the two parts of the trunk latch were misaligned and impossible to connect. So I called the woman's insurance company and made a claim that night.  (Lesson: Always get the insurance info, even if the car does not appear dented at first glance!)

For the rest of the trip, I had to fasten the trunk with a bungee-cord. We put most of our gear in the back seat because it was more convenient. When I got home again, I took the car to the body shop for an estimate, and the guys there bent it back enough to close it properly. Now, I'm just waiting for the appointment in about a week to get it fixed for good.

Ozark Ghost Town

Somewhere between Mountain Grove and Lebanon

Over the last twenty years, I've made around forty trips through the Ozarks of southern Missouri, either going to or coming home from my sister's house. She lives about fifty miles north of Springfield, Missouri, and I live in Kentucky.

On my trip up there last summer, I took a route I'd never traveled before and probably won't travel again. I turned north on Highway 95 at Mountain Grove, Missouri, thinking I'd see Dove Mountain which is just east of 95, according to the road map. But the hills were so big that I couldn't see the mountain. Or maybe one of them was the mountain? I couldn't tell.

Then I learned that a bridge was out on my planned route, so I took a long detour down some county blacktops. These roads followed every curve of the old wagon trails they were built upon, all the way to the top of every ridge and all the way to the bottom of every valley. Some of the scenery was beautiful, but I couldn't take pictures. If I had stopped in the road, someone might have come around a curve and hit me.

This little Ozark ghost town dates back to a time before
blacktop roads. Farm folks came here to buy things
they couldn't make and to hear the news of the world.
Everything changed after the Depression and WWII.

At an intersection somewhere along the way, where the blacktop road made a right-angle turn, I saw this little ghost town and pulled over to get a photo.

The main road that runs by this village was blacktopped sometime, but the street in front of these stores never saw that improvement. Maybe the brick building in the center was the last business to close.

I didn't explore. I saw vehicles at a house (the metal roof at far left in the photo), and I didn't want anyone to think I was snooping around. I drove on through the hills and valleys, and finally I came to a somewhat wider and straighter state highway that led to Lebanon, and eventually, I arrived at my sister's house in Hickory County.

The scenic route and the detour made my trip a little longer and slower, but I always enjoy backroads and the curiosities along them.

A Poor Corn Crop in Christian County

Effects of the drought 

A Christian County (KY) cornfield at Memorial Day

The corn crop in Christian County, KY, looked promising at the end of May when I took this photo. Farmers had planted earlier than usual due to the mild winter, and many fields were already well beyond "knee-high." Newspaper reports predicted a record-breaking year in corn production in Kentucky.

The price of corn has been kept high in recent years by the production of corn ethanol. Also, China and other densely populated countries buy corn to help feed the masses, thus driving up corn prices further.   Apparently excited by high corn prices. one of our neighbors harvested his wheat this spring before it looked ready and quickly planted corn in the stubble, (Then he accidentally burned the little corn plants with fertilizer -- which was probably both frustrating and embarrassing.)

We had a dryer-than-usual winter and spring in 2012, but if we had received a few generous rains in June, we could still have had a good corn crop. Even our neighbor's fertilizer-burned corn was looking pretty good. But we had an exceptionally hot June (day after day of 100° or more) with just a few sprinkles of rain. By the beginning of July, when the corn in Christian County should have been growing big, full ears, many fields were already dying from the drought.

USDA image for week of July 28, 2012

Now Christian County is officially in Level 2 (severe) drought. Our neighbor, who planted corn in his wheat stubble last spring, went out to his field one day in July and chopped it for silage. He's facing a hay shortage for his livestock and he probably didn't have crop insurance. I've noticed several other cornfields that have been chopped or baled. Cattle feed of any sort will probably fetch a high price this fall and winter. The grass, like the corn, has had a very bad year.

When we have a corn crop failure in Christian County, it takes millions of bushels of corn out of the market. We grew almost 11 million bushels of corn in 2011, but the crop this year will be much less than that. And the drought extends across most of the U.S. -- in fact, many areas are dryer than Christian County. The entire harvest of food in the United States this year is going to be a lot smaller.

A very dry pasture in the Missouri Ozarks, July 2012

I've read several articles about how the drought will affect grocery prices. There doesn't seem to be much agreement, so I'll stick with government figures. The USDA is projecting a 3 to 4% increase in most food prices (and something more than that in meat prices) as a direct effect of the drought this summer.

Some agricultural experts are urging the U.S. to lower its requirements (quotas) for ethanol production so that more corn will be available for food worldwide. Russia is also experiencing a drought.

The federal government is offering some emergency assistance to Kentucky farmers in drought stricken areas. Low interest emergency loans are available. Conservation Reserve Program lands may be used for hay or pasture with some restrictions and conditions. Crop insurance providers have been asked to voluntarily offer farmers an extra month before charging interest on the unpaid portion of crop insurance premiums.

The Climate Prediction Center sees little rain in the near future for Kentucky. The drought is expected to continue through October.

Wet and Dry

Flood and drought in the heartland

Mississippi River near Cairo, Illinois Bridge over the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois

The last week of July, I drove to southwestern Missouri to get together with my brother and sister at my sister's house. It was great to see them, and I also enjoyed the road trip.

I crossed the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. It was obvious that the fields along the approaches to the bridge were planted very late due to the spring floods. On the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, I saw more evidence of flooded fields and late crops. Farms in the area were flooded last spring when the Corps of Engineers broke a levee on the Mississippi to ease the flooding in Cairo.

Most of the fields had young, broad-leafed plants growing in them. First, I thought that the little plants were probably soybeans. Then I wondered if they might be cotton, because southeast Missouri grows quite a bit of cotton. There are short-season cottons that will mature before frost, even when planted late. Whatever the crop, I'm glad some farmers in the river bottoms may get a harvest this year, despite all.
.

Hay trucks on Highway 60

NOAA image

As I drove west on Highway 60, I followed two trucks loaded with big hay bales for miles. They were probably going somewhere in the drought-stricken plains farther west, where people don't have enough grass to feed their livestock. If only their pastures could have some of the water that flooded the fields along the Mississippi this spring!

It was very dry north of Springfield, Missouri, where Charlotte (my sister) lives. My brother Dwight, who has a ranch southwest of Wichita, Kansas, says it is terribly dry there, too. He usually rents a couple of pastures to another fellow every summer, but when last winter and spring were so dry, he decided to sacrifice the extra income and keep all his summer pasture for his own cattle. He hasn't had to buy any hay yet.

Near Charlotte's house on the night that I arrived, a farmer was mowing the dried-up, stunted, mostly-dead corn plants in his field. A couple days later, he baled the stalks for cattle feed. The drought-stressed cornstalks may be high in nitrates, so the farmer will need to have the cornstalks tested so he doesn't accidentally poison his cattle. The cows won't think that cornstalk "hay" is very good, but they'll eat it if they're hungry enough. 

This longhorn cow still has grass in her pasture near Charlotte's house. It has become hay on the stem, but that's much better than no grass at all!

Droughts and floods are problems for all of us, not just for farmers. These disruptions impact grocery store prices, affecting everyone who buys food. Please, pray for rain for those farmers and ranchers who need it -- and sunshine for those who don't need rain!

Log Cabins at Wheatland, MO

Old-time log houses

On the public square at the center of Wheatland, Missouri, a miniature village of genuine log houses awaits tourists. I call them "genuine log houses" because local residents of earlier times built and used them. The cabins were collected from Hickory County, Missouri, and the surrounding area.

My sister Charlotte has lived in the Wheatland area for over 35 years. I took these photos when we visited there a couple of years ago. Charlotte said that the original plan was to rent the log houses as shops for artists and craftspeople. That hasn't worked out as well as the town's leaders hoped, but the log cabins are interesting, nonetheless.

Charlotte said the fellow sitting on the porch at right is a retired fellow who volunteers at the log village on most summer Saturdays. He told us how the cabins were torn down and reassembled, Each log was numbered so the cabins were put back together as originally constructed. In the interest of weather-tightness, concrete chinking was used, and metal roofs and new windows were installed.


The photo at right above shows a "double pen" log house. The two log rooms were individual structures, connected only by the roof that covered them both.

The log structure in the photo above was the Butterfield Overland Relay Station along the Butterfield Trail in Hickory County. The Butterfield Trail ran from Missouri to San Francisco, and was named for John Butterfield who founded the Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Behind the station is a barn with round, unchinked logs.


The logs of most of the structures were shaped with axes and other hand-tools. The building of log houses -- or any log structures! -- required a tremendous investment of hard labor.

This house had a sign that said "1850s Museum". We went inside to take a look.

Feather tick and an old image

I don't know if either of the stoves above are of 1850s vintage, but they are oldies for sure. Apparently the legs of the big cookstove were bad, so it is sitting on some blocks of wood.

The Royal Princess stove at right would have had a stovepipe connected at the raised hole at the back of the top. In front of the stove pipe, you could set a tea-kettle on the flat area. The stove could be loaded through either the front door or the side door. I think maybe the shelf at right was where you set the bucket or pan when you were shoveling out the ashes. That would have made dangerous spills of hot coals onto the wood floor less likely.

Wheatland is a very small town in southwest Missouri, about 50 miles north of Springfield. Its largest industry is the Lucas Oil Speedway which brings quite a few people to town during race season and makes a lot of noise on race nights. If the logs in these old houses could talk, they'd probably say that they're amazed, simply amazed, at the modern-day happenings in Wheatland.

Hidden Log Cabin Museum

History preserved in Van Buren, MO

Wanda Newton is the owner of the Hidden Log Cabin Museum in Van Buren, MO. She was born and raised in Van Buren, but she lived in Chicago for a while as a young adult. When she came back to Van Buren, she was surprised how times had changed. The old ways of Ozark life were being abandoned.

Miss Wanda noticed that antique dealers from distant cities often attended estate auctions and farm sales in Carter County. She watched the dealers leave with their loot, and she worried that Carter County was losing its history, one auction at a time. She decided to start a collection of items that would be representative of life as it had been.

It was a good thing that her husband supported her, Miss Wanda says, because the auctions took all the money she made at her courthouse job. She dreamed of having a place to put her collection on display.

The hidden log cabin

Finally, an opportunity opened. The house next door to her home was put up for sale, and Miss Wanda bought it. Despite its mundane exterior, it was no ordinary house. Under the siding, it was a log house with several frame rooms built onto it.

And it was an exceptionally historic log cabin. The little village of Van Buren, on the west side of the river, was burned during the Civil War. When the war ended, the residents decided to rebuild on the east side of the river. The first building that went up was a new Carter County courthouse.

When the lots for the new town were surveyed, it turned out that the courthouse had been built in the middle of the street. It was moved back a few yards, onto the corner lot of John and Ash, and there it still sits.

When Miss Wanda became the owner, she undertook a massive restoration. She stripped the log room down to its whitewashed walls of hand-hewn native pine. The large yawning fireplace had been closed off and partially torn down, so she hired a stonemason to rebuild it. She didn't have enough money for the project, so she borrowed from her husband. It took her a couple of years to pay him back.

In the other rooms, she removed modern wall coverings to reveal the walls as they had been when the addition to the house was built. She did most of the work herself, and it took her several years.

Tour of the museum

When I visited the Hidden Log House Museum, Miss Wanda walked me through the first room and told me about it. "Don't you want to take any pictures?" she asked. I told her that I would take pictures on my way back through the house, but first, I wanted to give my full attention to what she was telling me. Every item in the house has its history, of course, and Miss Wanda is a good storyteller.

So, these photos are in reverse order, starting from the back of the house in the kitchen and summer kitchen and ending in the log room which is at the front of the house.

On the back wall of the kitchen, there's a large, antique sink. Miss Wanda's sister, now in her early 90s, washed dishes in that very sink as part of her room and board when she attended high school. (It was in another house at the time.) I should have taken its picture, but I didn't. I also regret that I didn't take a picture of Miss Wanda.


The center room of the house was probably a dining room or parlor, and it has a bedroom on the side of it. Miss Wanda left the first layer of wallpaper-- a bold burgundy and white pattern -- on the dining room walls.

The big memory jug is old; the small memory jug in front was made in recent years. Just in front of the chair, a small bowl holds some bits of jewelry and small mementos. There's also a jar of buttons. These are the sorts of things that people used when they made memory jugs and jars. Miss Wanda is not sure what sort of adhesive was used in the old memory jug, but the newer one was made with window putty.

Miss Wanda says to watch for the "Knickerbocker" label when you are at a sale that has old stuffed toys. Someone in her family liked to laugh about her stuffed animals, and as sort of a joke, gave her a book about collecting them. When Miss Wanda looked up some of her stuffed toys in the book and showed the relative their value, he didn't tease her anymore.

The photos that follow are in the log room that was the Carter County Courthouse for a number of years. I'm amazed that Miss Wanda was able to find and buy all the items displayed here. She says she collected all these things in Carter County and the surrounding counties. The antique furniture you see in this room is handmade, and many of the other items are also.

I was surprised how much room the spinning wheel took. Miss Wanda told me that she used to have a loom, too, but it took up twice as much room as the spinning wheel. She finally sold it to a lady who weaves.

The coverlet on the bed was woven on a loom over a century ago, with handspun wool yarn. I believe Miss Wanda said that she made the rag rug in the bottom photo herself.



Miss Wanda receives no funds for the museum beyond what she charges in admission. She has decided not to have the house declared a historic site because she's afraid of the restrictions and obligations it might bring. She closes the museum over the coldest months of winter so she won't have to heat it.

Sometimes, classes of school children spend an afternoon at the museum and Miss Wanda enjoys telling them about the simple lives of the people who lived in the Ozarks a few generations ago. But what she likes best, she says, is when someone stops who is really interested -- someone who asks questions and wants to take pictures. It absolutely makes her day.

On the web:
A description of the Hidden Log Cabin Museum in Patti DeLano's Missouri Off the Beaten Path.

Related post:
Van Buren, Missouri

Van Buren, Missouri

An interesting Ozark village

I dawdled a little on my way home from Kansas, a few weeks ago. My ten-minute stop at a gas station along the highway turned into a two-hour visit to downtown Van Buren, Missouri.

Let me explain. I've been traveling through southern Missouri for 19 years now, on my way to and from family gatherings. Highway 60 was (and is) the most direct route from Cairo, Illinois, to Springfield, Missouri. When I started driving Highway 60, it had some very narrow, crooked passages through the ridges and valleys of the Ozarks.

Highway 60 to Van Buren

The very worst part of the road was the 25 miles just before Van Buren, Missouri, and the 25 miles just on the other side of Van Buren. Woe to the trucks that were forced to travel that twisting snake of a road. Woe to the cars that were trapped behind the trucks. Woe to the children trapped in the back seats -- especially those who suffered from car-sickness -- and woe to their parents.

Because I remember the old road vividly, I appreciate the new 4-lane road that leads into Van Buren from the east. The road through the most mountainous area west of Van Buren is now 3-lane, and it will soon be 4-lane, too. The taxpayers of Missouri (and I suppose, the entire nation, through Federal highway grants) should be proud of this highway. I'm sure it's been an engineering challenge to build it.

Until the roads were blacktopped and tourists began driving through the Ozarks, most people around Van Buren made a living, one way or another, from the Ozark hills and trees. Country folks grew and made most of what they needed. Van Buren's handful of stores supplied the rest of what people had to have. A trip to Poplar Bluff or Springfield would have been a rare adventure in a big city.

I saw, sensed, and imagined things like this, during my many trips on the treacherous old road to Van Buren. The big new road doesn't inspire nearly as many thoughts of this sort.

A river town

The Current River runs briskly along the west edge of Van Buren, and you can walk right up to the water on either shore. Small watercraft -- flatboats, canoes, and rafts --were once important modes of transportation through the area. The river crossing at Van Buren was valuable property during the Civil War. Several skirmishes occurred in this area between Union and Confederate/guerilla forces. Today, the river is popular again for rafting and canoeing.

Tree covered ridges dominate the skyline at Van Buren. If there are any grain elevators or smokestacks in the little town, I've never noticed them.

The Carter County courthouse, a WPA project and Missouri's only cobblestone courthouse, sits in the center of a well-shaded town square. It is the tallest building in downtown Van Buren and probably the entire town.

The historic marker on the courthouse lawn tells how Carter County's primeval forests were clear-cut around 1900, bringing two decades of boom to the area before the last trees were cut and the sawmills closed. I think that Van Buren is still struggling to overcome that setback. Tourism has helped.

The commercial buildings around the square are modest structures, and the houses along the highway are modest, too. It appears to me that Van Buren has never enjoyed much excess of wealth.

Visits to Van Buren

I've stopped in Van Buren many times and wandered around for a few minutes. My kids will read this and remember photographs of themselves in Van Buren. Sometimes we stopped and walked around the courthouse square, when we were traveling to or from Aunt Charlotte's house.

When I passed through Van Buren most recently, I stopped at the new station along the big new highway for gas and a brief stretch. I intended to get back in the driver's seat and hurry down the road, but nostalgia called me. I decided to drive down to the river and find an interesting rock to take home. It would only take a few minutes, I told myself.

Near the river, on the street that used to be the highway through town, I saw a little sign that said "Hidden Log House Museum". After I had found my rock at the riverside, I decided to see what the museum looked like from the outside. Then I got out of my car to take its picture, and while I was doing that, the lady who owns the museum came outside to talk to me.

I had to go inside. It would have been rude to drive away, and the admission was only $2. Besides, I was curious. It turned out that the little museum was well worth the visit. I've never been disappointed by a stop in Van Buren.