Do you know who he purchased the property from?

Transcription

1 NANCY DODD HINDMAN. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1377V A-B This interview was recorded on September 24, 2005, for Boulder County Parks and Open Space. It also is archived at the Carnegie Library for Local History of the Boulder Public Library, as part of the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Anne Dyni. It was filmed by Liz McCutcheon and transcribed by Anne Dyni. ABSTRACT: OH 1377V A-B. In this interview, filmed on location at the Dodd farmstead and Dodd Lake, Nancy Dodd Hindman talks about the history of this Centennial Farm, which has been in her family since the 1860s; about the Dodd family; and about growing up in that area. She shows the various buildings and outbuildings on the farm and describes how they were used. By Anne Dyni. Filmed by Liz McCutcheon. Notes: : interviewer Anne Dyni : interviewee Nancy Hindman Added material appears in brackets [A]. 00:00 The date is September 24, My name is Anne Dyni, and I m interviewing Nancy Hindman of 5305 Niwot Road in Longmont. We re standing in front of the Alva Dodd barn at 7016 North 73 rd Street in Boulder County. Nancy, what is your relationship to the Dodd family? My father was Hugh Dodd. He was one of the ten children of Alva and Della Gould Dodd. And I m his daughter, and in our settlement when the Dodd farm was divided, my son and myself and my husband now have ownership of the barn and the house the old homestead, we call it. OK. When was this property homesteaded by Alva Dodd? I think about 18 in the late 1860s. Do you know who he purchased the property from? No, I do not. I think it was Porter Hindman, who was one of the founders of Niwot. What was Alva s background. Did you know anything about where he came from what his ethnic origins were? Well, he came from Iowa and he was a farmer. He bought land.

2 And you said he married Della Della Gould who was the daughter of the pioneer Jerome Gould. Where was their property in relation to this farm? Just north of here, along Left Hand Creek. Do you have any idea what made Alva come here? No, I don t. I m going to show you a photograph of the Dodd family, which you have the original in your possession. I ll ask you to identify people in that photograph. Front row, left to right: Guy Dodd, Ruth McDonald, my grandfather Alva M., my grandmother Della, Uncle John Dodd, Bess Rider, Belle Allen, Mary Washem, and Inez Johnson, Courtney Dodd, Alva Jr., and my father Hugh Dodd. Mary is the only one of the ten children that left the area. She moved to Santa Ana, California. Other than that, they all lived their whole lives in the Niwot-Longmont area. 03:21 This property is now called a Centennial Farm. What does that mean, Nancy? That means that it was in the same family ownership and farmed for over 100 years. What other buildings does that include besides the barn? The granaries, I imagine, the blacksmith shop, the milk house and the home. We ll look at those in just a little bit. Do you know when this barn was built? In the 1898 to :59 Now, on the other side of the barn, we can t see it from here, there are two silos. I d like to get a shot of those in a little bit. But there is a granary is that what you call it, an elevator? on top of the barn now. That s not in the original photograph. When was that built? I believe that was in the late [19]60s. My dad and his two brothers fed cattle and they required a lot of feed for them. This was an elevator that was used for storage and grinding the corn. But it was an addition in the late 1960s. What kind of cattle were they raising here?

3 Herefords. They fed them. They bought them as calves and they fattened them and sold them as beef. We re looking now at a photograph of the barn as it was probably shortly after it was built. Nancy, could you point out some of the buildings that we see in this picture? To the left is the machine shed that is still here. I d like to point out that the sign up here that says A.M. Dodd & Sons was completely faded out when we took over ownership. And one of the first things my son did was have the sign repainted in its original state and got it hung up on the barn. And we were all very pleased to see that. That s the original sign? Yes, it is the original sign. There was enough for the painter to see that it s just exactly like it was. So that was the first thing that was done. There s two silos back here and they were used for ensilage, cut corn, and they were used to feed the milk cows. On the north side of the barn was where the milk barn was and I don t remember how many cows there were, but there were quite a few. They were milked morning and night, every day of the world. Are the stanchions still inside? Yes, they are. 06:26 And Alva Dodd had horses? The family had horses. They were used for working, team horses, and there were stalls all the way across this south side of the barn. They were all big black work horses. I remember two in particular. Their names were Min and Bill, and they were the last team that I remember. But they were used in the fields. We did have a tractor, several tractors, but the horses were used too, for a long time. [New scene] The south area here was an apple orchard full of apples every year. And they were made use of for applesauce and pies. There were also some gooseberry bushes to the east that I remember being there. Those were good, too. Do you know what kind of apples they were? No, I don t. Were they red? Red and transparent, which are early apples.

4 [Standing in front of the barn] 07:49 This is the milk barn side of the barn, and you can see the rows of stanchions that the cows were put in as they were milked. They put their head in here and then this would be closed and this block would come down to hold their head in, in here. They were fed in this feed trough and they always seemed perfectly content in here. My brother and I spent a lot of time in here while Dad was milking. And there were always little wild kitties waiting for milk. They milked twice a day. And the feed was thrown in from the inside of the barn through these windows that are boarded up now, and came into the feed trough here. Whose job was it to clean out the trough for the manure? Not mine [laughs] But it worked well. [Move inside the main barn] This is the west side of the old barn, and the family project is to restore it. It s a long, long, long job, but it s a labor of love. So hopefully down the line it will look something like it used to. This is a scales. It was not of course part of the original barn. It was added when the elevator was added. It still works. The scales are in here and we do have a license for it still. There s a hole here where the grain was dumped and taken up into storage in the elevators above. It was ground up, up there, and made into feed for the cattle. These are the scales and as I say, they still work. We don t use them anymore, but if needed to be, they would still work. Before the elevator was put in, this little room was a storage granary and after the harvest it would be filled to the brim with wheat or corn or barley. It was one of three enclosed granaries in the barn. [Move to next section of barn] This shows the south side of the barn. This is where the work horses stalls were. There were probably maybe ten different stalls for each horse. I remember the horses collars and their harnesses being hung up along the walls and they were just beautiful big heavy things. I can almost still smell the leather. They were beautiful horses. When was the last horse sold and tractors took over? Probably in the '40s, because I remember the work horses very well. I think they just died; they weren t sold. Min and Bill were the last ones. Do you know where your dad got his farm machinery?

5 There used to be a farm machinery sales in Longmont, and it was I don t remember who it was now. In Longmont, they didn t have to go so far. It was a farming town and that s where they got it. [Move to other side of barn] Down at the end of this ramp are the two doors and they re shut now. But on either side are one of the tall cement silos. And those silos held the cut corn which was ensilage. There was a cart that my dad and uncles loaded with the ensilage and pulled it up with a pulley up this ramp and then pushed it down and fed the milk cows at feeding time in the evening and the mornings. I remember that very, very well. I have no idea what happened to the cart, but it s gone. [Moves on down the length of barn] I believe this area was still part of the series of horse stalls and that there was a second story here. The doors up here above were where hay was thrown in and thrown out as need be. But the whole top of the barn was hay storage. [Close-up of hay loft] 13:38 I d like to move now to some of the other out buildings. What do we see through the windows there, Nancy? We see what used to be the blacksmith shop. There s still a forge in there. My grandfather and uncle and my dad did a lot of their own work with horse shoes, horse shoeing. The one to the right was the milk barn where the milk was kept cool until the milkman came to pick it up. [Return to west end of barn] The building that we re looking at with the lake and the mountains in the background was another granary, and there was storage for wheat, barley and corn. Now it holds stuff. [chuckle] Do you think it s as old as the barn is? I think so. [Move to front of the two outbuildings mentioned earlier] 14:54 This building that we re in front of right now was the milk house. The milk was brought from where we just were and into here, and that s where it was stored. There was a separator there that separated the milk from the cream. And this is where it was stored until the milkman came to pick it up for selling. But the family used a lot of

6 it. As all old farm members remember the thick cream that is no more. So this was the milk house. Then on to the left was the blacksmith shop. That s where they did work with the harnesses and horse shoes and mended machinery. There was always mending to do. That was a fun place. That was fascinating because there were always different shapes of metal and different things being done there. Did your father ever take some of his work over to Atkinson s blacksmith shop? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. The Atkinson blacksmith shop. Absolutely. Would those be items that he couldn t fix here? Yes. Like what would it be? Oh, just parts for machinery, and horse shoes. They did what they could here but yes there was a lot of work done down there. Let s take a look at that forge inside. There used to be some bellows there that we d wind and wind and they d blow. I d forgotten a lot about that. But they were there, and again I don t know where they are now. Was that one of your jobs to do that for your dad? No, no. We just did it for fun. [Move on to another building] This is the other side of the machine shed. The better machinery was kept in there. Also a new car that my uncle mentions in a history, that was purchased in It was evidently pretty special because he had a whole paragraph of it in his history. 17:19 This little ditch is part of the Hinman Ditch and it irrigates the land to the east of the barnyard. The area right in front of us at one time was a huge garden that my grandmother kept. We had squash huge Hubbard squash beets, peas, beans. And along this ditch was an asparagus patch, and it just grew and grew and grew all spring. We had all the asparagus that we wanted or could use. And on out to the west where those bushes are, there were Concord grape arbors, so there was grape jelly made.

7 I can remember how good those grapes tasted in the fall. They had a little bit of frost on them. A lot of food was grown on the property. In fact, probably most of it. [Begins describing the farmhouse across the road to the west.] 18:27 The little building in front is a double-car garage and the back is the house. That s where my mother and dad started their married life. And that s where I lived until I grew up and got married, and my dad lived until he died in It s rented now, and it s very well taken care of by a young man. He takes care of the yard. The little house on the right is a storage area. 19:15 Was this Dodd Lake the same size when you were growing up as it is today? No, it s larger now. It s kind of a different conformation too. It used to come in to where the grassy area is, but it was narrower over on the other side. It s about the same but a little bigger, I'd say. It s deeper. It's used for irrigation. It's filled by the Hinman Ditch. [Move over to the west end of Dodd Lake] In August of 2004, the Dodd property was dedicated as Open Space and we had a little ceremony with some of the Dodd family members present. This sign was put here on the Audubon property looking down to the Dodd farmstead. It s just kind of an overview across Dodd Lake of the old homestead. And to the right is the old home of Barnett Dodd who was the brother of my grandfather Alva Dodd. The lake itself holds many, many memories for me, and the people in the area as I grew up. We ice skated all winter long. It hasn t frozen hard enough to ice skate in many years, but when I was young, every night there was a bonfire and people would come, mainly from Niwot, and build a fire and skate. Such fun! We fished here. It has been stocked a time or so. I don t think it has for years. It is private now. It belongs to Boulder County Open Space and there s no fishing allowed. Our family retained the fishing rights on a little corner down where my old house was. We can fish in that corner, but otherwise I believe it s closed to fishing. What kind of fish? Crappie and bluegill and sunfish. And there are quite a few nice bass in here too. My dad used to fish for catfish. They lived way at the bottom of the lake. He did that mostly in the wintertime. Why, I really don t know, but he thought it was a real prize to catch a nice catfish.

8 I used to walk along the shore day in and day out looking for baby turtles. It was just very lovely. It still is a lovely spot. In the wintertime, in the fall there are so many geese an unbelievable amount of geese. 22:44 What other wildlife did you see around here? Ducks. We didn t used to see geese. Geese have just come in later years. But there were ducks and muskrats. There were a lot of muskrats that lived in the lake. And of course raccoons. Did anybody ever trap muskrats? Yes [chuckle], yes we did, and sold the pelts in Longmont. It seems like I wouldn t do that now, but it was just part of what we did. What would a pelt bring? I think $2. And we stretched them on a piece of board. Hadn t thought about that in years. I don t think there are any muskrats here anymore, but there used to be quite a few of them. 23:45 [End of Tape A] [B]. 00:00 Nancy, what do you remember about the event in the 1950s when a herd of cattle came out on this lake in the winter? I wasn t living at home then. I was in school in Boulder. My dad called me the next day and told me what had happened. The Herefords, the feed cattle, just got out on the lake and the ice was not thick enough to hold them, and they started falling in. Neighbors were called to help, and I know my Dad was crawling out on the ice. They used ropes and saved most of them, but I know some of them did drown. It was a very sad and unfortunate situation. I guess the cows were spooked by something, but everyone around remembers that night. So it did happen in the dark. Yes, it did. In the wintertime, of course, in the dark. Were they your father s cattle? Yes. My dad and his brothers. Well Nancy, thank you very much for this interview. It s been fascinating to visit your property and the barn and Dodd Lake.

9 You re welcome. I love it, and it s nice to talk about. 01:33 [End of Tape B. End of interview.]