14
www.FarmProgress.com – February 2014
Nebraska Farmer
NewsWatch
Sod wall offers a ‘moving’ experience
Editor’s note: John Carter of the State
Historical Society relays his experience
this summer in getting a sod house wall to
Lincoln.
By JOHN CARTER
I
N my long career of more than 35 years
with the Nebraska State Historical Society, I have been involved with some
pretty crazy projects. But this one put the
cork in that bottle.
For quite a while I have had the idea
that history is really biology. Along those
lines my colleague, Dave Murphy, an architectural historian, got me interested
once again in sod houses. Clearly these
are structures that are both on the land
and of the land. In a later issue of Nebraska
Farmer, I will tell you more about what we
hope to learn from the project.
The story begins a little over two years
ago when our archeologists were contacted by Larry and Karla Estes. They had
the ruins of a sod house on their farm in
northern Custer County, and because it
now lay in the main view from their new
house, they wanted to tidy the site up. But
they also had a sense of the building’s historical significance.
Dave and I were intrigued. What could
we learn from some of those sod bricks?
I called Chuck Butterfield, a range
management specialist and botanist at
Chadron State College. He got the idea that
what we really should do is sandwich a
4- by-8-foot chunk of the wall between two
sheets of heavy plywood. Simple enough,
but how do you cut the wall section out
and how do you move it?
I scratched my head and pushed a
pencil, and figured with material, equipment and labor, this would cost between
$3,000 and $4,000. My director, Mike Smith,
gave his blessing, and we moved forward.
Barnyard engineers
I went out to Custer County in June and
visited the site and met with Larry Estes.
I understood the problem; it was the solution that had me puzzled. But that is when
I was reminded of one of Nebraska’s real
assets — “barnyard engineers,” better
known as farmers.
Larry had the solution worked out
before I was done explaining the problem.
He had a stout forklift, and he even had the
plywood. He would drill a hole through
both pieces of plywood and the sod. He
would then lift the sandwich with his forklift, readying it for transport to Lincoln. He
made it sound so easy.
I then met with Dee Adams, who is with
the Custer County Historical Society and
also on the board of the Nebraska State
Historical Society. She and the folks at the
county’s Historical Society were as excited
about this project as I was. She introduced
me to Mike Evans, who deals seed but is
also an avid lover of history. We talked
about the project, and he suggested that
we stretch wrap the sod wall, and he just
happened to have a lot of stretch wrap. He
also volunteered to help with the work.
Dee also thought her husband, Kevin
“Kooch” Dauel, might transport the thing.
Kevin works with Vermeer High Plains, an
equipment dealer with their main office
in Lincoln, so he regularly makes runs be-
DELICATE JOB: Volunteers sandwich the sod house wall between two pieces of plywood.
SLOW DESCENT: The sod wall package is lowered slowly onto a pallet.
tween Broken Bow and the Capitol City.
With all of this local help, my costs estimates began to shrink.
As planned
It was a very pleasant November day
when a crowd converged on the Estes
place. As I recall there were eight “barnyard engineers” in all, each scratching
his head trying to figure out some part of
the problem. I might remind you that the
problem was getting 2,200 pounds of dirt
wall to lay down gently, not knocking its
individual bricks apart, then loading that
dirt sandwich onto a trailer in such a way
as to make it easy to unload in Lincoln ...
and then to haul it three and a half hours
to its new home.
First, they laid the plywood up against
the wall to measure out the section of interest. Once the desired section had been
identified, one of the team brought out an
old saw — maybe an ice saw or perhaps a
hay saw — which at some point had a bolt
welded to the top of the front of the blade,
making it a two-person operation.
The team first sawed the line that
would form the edge of our wall sample.
The other side was open, perhaps a door.
That went quickly, and then they moved 2
feet from the first cut and made a second,
allowing them to clear a space around the
section we wanted.
With the section cut free, the team
began to wrap the exposed wall horizontally top to bottom until it looked like a dirt
burrito. They then replaced the plywood
and began drilling, six holes in all. With
that done, 2x6s were screwed between the
plywood sheets on the edges for further
stability. Then the piece was ready.
Larry brought up his forklift, and
pointing the fork straight down toward
the ground, nudged it up against the now
bundled wall section. Team members got
a throw rope and looped it over the top of
the section, and then took the rope back
and wrapped the tail end a couple of times
around a stout tree. This gave them some
control of the rate of descent.
So over it went, slow and easy, just like
planned. Larry gracefully laid the section
on a pallet. He then drove around to the
side of the section and inserted the forks
into the slots on the pallet and gently lifted
it up. Applause rose spontaneously from
the assembled crowd.
The section was then loaded and
hauled to the waiting trailer, and there
gently set down. Kevin then hopped in and
drove it straight to Lincoln, where Vermeer
High Plains gave it a good home until we
could get it over to the university.
The whole thing left me dumbstruck. I
had just witnessed one of the marvels of
Nebraska. Working in agriculture you learn
how to do things. To me, this job looked
monumental; to the barnyard engineers,
just another job. That is not a talent you
can buy. You grow it, generation to generation.
My final bill for the project: two nights
at the historic Arrow Hotel in Broken Bow.
Carter is a historian with the Nebraska
Historical Society.
READY TO ROLL: The entire package is wrapped and ready to be loaded on a trailer
for its trip to Lincoln. The author is directly behind the wall, to the right.