synsteby

An Attentive Farmer

Watches Species Come and Go

Ole Synsteby was 15 years old when his family emigrated from Norway's Lesje parish in 1872, bound for Lake Hanska, where he would evolve over decades into a rustic Renaissance man.

After acquiring a farm on a bluff overlooking the lake, he planted evergreens along the lakeshore to conserve the soil and searched Minnesota's north woods for interesting trees. In an experimental nursery he tried to grow pear trees, and even a South American coffee tree. He studied wild animals to determine whether any species was headed toward extinction.

He also hunted, trapped, collected Indian artifacts, read books and told his children stories about the old days in Norway. When it came time to rest, he would often climb a tree on the bluff at the lake's eastern end to watch the sunset reflected on the water.

In the early 1930s, Synsteby recorded his observations, which were later published as a small memoir, Interesting Tales of Pioneer Days in Lake Hanska and Vicinity.

In an introduction to the memoir, his daughter, Venus Simundson, wrote that Synsteby would "stop plowing the

field to go to the nearby woods to rescue a small bird from a hawk, or leave a piece of ground unplowed because a wild duck or prairie chicken had a nest on it."

"The contribution which he gave to those who knew him was in the appreciation of the beauty and the simplicity of nature as he himself had discovered it."

Why the immigrants left Norway:

All these that took homestead land during 1867-68, 69 and 70 were Norwegians, mostly from the valleys and fjords in the southern part of Norway. Some of them had a farm to sell, but a good many had been tenants, and I know a good many of you do not know what a Norwegian tenant, or as they were called "Husmand," really is. I will try to explain it to you.

Even in Norway you will find good sized farms needing many hired people to run them, so the owners of the big farms hit on a good plan to get cheap help, and help they could get whenever they wanted. These big farms owned not only the cultivated land but they had vast stretches of woodland and pasture land; yes, also great parts up in the mountains, with lakes and rivers they claimed as theirs.

I doubt if they had any legal instruments to prove their title to these mountain lands, but they kept them all the same. You may say they had land to burn and so they said to a man, "We'll give you so many acres of land on my farm for you and your family to live on, and you give me in exchange for using my land your help in working on my farm."

A contract was made up and agreed to. The tenant was given privilege to get logs enough to build himself a little loghouse on his rented farm. He could also take all the windfalls he needed for firewood, during the summer months especially. During haying and harvest he had to be working on the big farm.

If he had a patch of overripe barley on his little farm that simply had to wait until all was harvested on the big farm. But, of course, you were allowed to harvest your barley in the night time, that is if you did not feel too tired after a long day's work in the harvest field on the big farm.

The farmer could call on his tenant whenever he needed his help. His wages during the summer months were not very high and during the winter, when he stood and threshed out barley with a flayel, from long before daylight till dark, he got as much as six shillings a day.

No wonder he got disgusted with life as a tenant.

On Frank F. Lee, my great-granduncle, and his brother, Ole F. Lee, my great-grandfather:

We will now look up a few more of the old pioneers.

Section 32, and fractions of Sec. 29 and Sec. 33, south of the east end of Lake Hanska, we always called the island. It is an island created by the two outlets of the lake and when the water in the lake is up to its normal height, you could not get over to the island except by boat or wading. Now of course, there are bridges.

The first settlers on the island were Frank Lee and John Nilson.

Ole Lee, a brother of Frank Lee, settled there a few years later.

Frank Lee came up here from Chicago in 1871, and took up a homestead claim in town of Riverdale, Watonwan County, and at the same homestead, and (to) still be a citizen of Brown County, he built his frame house right on the line between Brown and Watonwan counties. The kitchen stove was in the north half of the house and the south half was the dining and bedroom.

Frank and Ole Lee were born in Oier, Norway. Frank Lee came to America in the year 1867; he had learned the tanner trade and he worked as a tanner in LaCrosse, Wis., for a while, but finally came to Chicago, where he did carpenter work.

Lee was one of the leading men in the Lake Hanska Congregation, and it has always been the case when a man is trying to lead and do things, no matter if he is right, he will have opponents, and Lee had enough of them.

I will not say that Lee was always right, but in most of the conflicts he got into I noticed that when the smoke of powder drifted away, and hot heads cooled off, Lee came out victorious because he was right.

(Frank) Lee came to America to do things, and he did. He was a hard worker, and ambitious to go ahead, and in 1872 he harvested the biggest wheat field in Lake Hanska. Our nearest market place was Madelia, about 11 miles from the Lee farm, but Lee made two trips there in a single day with loads of 15 or 20 sacks of wheat, but of course he had to use part of the night too.

Lee was the best boss I ever had in my life. One day he told me to grease the lumber wagon. I got off the burrs on one side, but I could not get them off on the other side no matter how I tried, so I had to go and tell him, and of course he got the burrs off in a jiffy. I can do it, too, now because Lee told me about right and left threads.

I was set to plow a field a good ways from the house, and I kept plowing till it was dark, and Lee came to find out what was the matter, and he told me not to work so late or I might get lost on my way home again.

At a meeting of the Lake Hanska Congregation it was agreed on building a tower on the church, and Frank Lee and myself were appointed a committee of two to buy the lumber, and engage an architect to do the job.

At the meeting it was understood that the tower should not exceed so many feet in height. I forgot how many. We had a committee meeting in church, and while there we laid out on the ground the posts to form the frame for the tower. I did not like it. It would look too blunt and too low for our church, and I said so. Lee thought we had to build it according to the plan agreed to at the meeting.

Then I laid out the posts again the way I thought it should be built, so many feet added to the height. Lee looked at it for a while and said "I see you are right." We ordered the architect to build it that way.

The hottest dispute I had with Lee was when I started to save Lake Hanska. I wanted a lake with lots of water in it, and Lee would rather have it drained to the last drop. I spent a good many days of my time getting signers on a petition to have a dam built at the outlet by Lee's farm. I met with the county board several times and tried to show the land owners the benefit they could get by the dam, but they said the land on some of the farms adjoining the lake would be overflowed, although we did not ask for a dam even up to the high water mark.

At our last meeting, some twelve men and a lawyer met up to fight against the proposed dam, and it looked rather hopeless to me, but I told them I was willing to compromise by lowering the dam some inches, and by so doing they gave in, and it was moved and carried that the dam be built, and it was left to the County Board to look alter the darn in the future, in case of repairs needed.

I do not know why but some used to call the dam the Synsteby darn, for to ridicule me or honor me, I do not know, and I did not care a snap. I got what I worked for and these same people who opposed me are giving me thanks today for what I did.

Do not think that Lee and 1 looked askance at each other from the time we had a dispute; far from it, we got to be very good friends to the last, because we knew each other fairly well.

On John Nelson, my great-grandfather:

He was a very busy man to the last, either working on a job or going to start a new one. John was a rather small bundle, but full of live wires.

On the birds, flora and fauna of Lake Hanska:

The common prairie grass you do not see any more now for the simple reason it has no place to grow. The blue grass, or jumgrass, came to Lake Hanska with the grasshoppers. I do not know where they brought the seed from, but the seeds must have been ripe and good or else they would have been digested on the way over here.

Bluegrass is now taking up every nook and corner where the land is not cultivated. You can not now go out in the bottom and pick a bunch of mocassin flowers, nor will you find any "kaiser krone" (Zar's crown). a lily that used to grow on the highest prairie land. It resembled a tiger lily. It grew on a stem about a foot high, and it was very scarce. It is now extinct as far as I know.

I tried to save a few of these prairie flowers by transplanting them in the garden, but I did not succeed. They thrived for a while but they finally died except two or three that seem to be alright.

The Explorer Amundson did not have very good luck either with the little Eskimo girl that he brought back with him from the Arctic zone to Oslo, Norway. There is no doubt but Amundson did all he could for a little girl, but it was no use. She was always dreaming, and wishing she could go to her father's igloo, and eat her fill of boiled fat seal meat, and drink some oil to keep warm. She did not like Oslo, and all the funny people she saw there, and Amundson noticed she was getting morose and restless, and found it best to send her home again to her own people.

Now these prairie flowers did not think, but the laws of Nature had set them out to grow and bloom in certain places, and in a certain soil out there on the prairie and the cultivated soil in the garden did not agree with them.

It is always hard to change nature's laws, and it must be done gradually. Much harder it is to change the living of more or less civilized people, like the Indians, Gypsies, Laplanders and Eskimos. We have been trying to civilize the Indians for a long time, but they still like their teepees better than the white man's house.

That is, they are still Indians.

In the fauna of Lake Hanska there is also a great change since 1872. Some animals and birds are extinct, and others nearly so.

Below I have made out a list of birds and animals now extinct in the town of Lake Hanska, but I will not say but they may be found in some other locality: The Yellow Plover, the big snipe (a plover), the curlew with the long curved bill (a plover), the turkey buzzard, the indigo bird, the two varieties of mudhens, the prairie snipe (a plover), the red tail haw, the wild canary bird, the redtail songster. the kite and fish eagle, the wheat sparrow (these little birds used to come early in the spring in swarms of thousands.)

I do not know where they came from nor where they went from here, but you could not leave any of the wheat you had broadcasted on your field without dragging it in before you left to go home for dinner or lunch. If you did you would find every kernel of wheat picked up by the sparrows, and as: "Thank you for a good meal", they left a lot of small particles of fertilizing matter all over.

The snow sparrow or snowbird used to come right up to our door when a blizzard was raging. The snowbird likes to live with the snow, and in the summer if you go up to the snowcapped mountains you will find the little fellow up there by the snowline. In early spring many thousands in one flock of these white little birds came to to the valleys to pick up weed seeds from the fields. Then we used to shoot them as they were good to eat, but grandfather told me not to scare them away from the field because they picked up so many weed seeds.

The Mergansen pigeon was still here in 1872, and I remember I shot a few of them when they were feeding on acorns. The Mergansen pigeon disappeared one year. Every single one of the many millions that darkened the sun when they flew up, and it is still a mystery what happened to these birds.

Animals extinct in Lake Hanska are: The red fox, the red squirrel and the chipmunk.

This article I presume will be tiresorne reading for some of you, but I know all lovers of nature will be interested and to show the changes Lake Hanska has gone through it had to be taken in.