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Earning a Living

Four men and two dogs are sitting on a pile of logs in a field. The field is very rough. There are stumps and debris scattered over the entire field.

Doreen Abernathy/Colleen Reiswig Collection

In the early years, most of a pioneer’s income came from crops grown on land that was cleared with horses, stumping powder, mattocks and shovels.

When the pioneers weren’t farming they were logging.  Imagine how appealing it was to earn some money to supplement the farm income by selling logs to the valley sawmills.

During the depression years, if the pioneer didn’t have the money to pay his property taxes, he work what he owed by doing repairs and improvements to the local roads.