Bonny Rierson `52. A wedding picture in 1953 at the Ames Lutheran Church included three of her Milford teachers even though she graduated from Ames; left to right, Mrs Margaret Gilreath -Milford `30, Mrs Jessie Petersen, and Mrs Kathryn Larson Principal.
The Milo Hadley farmstead was located a mile south of the School and around the corner to the west a hundred yards or so. Milo was a School board member for a few years, 1955-'58. Milo's son, Wilbert`56, lives on the place now. He, along with Leo Tjelmeland `42, Bob Jacobson `57, and Loren Book `64N are currently four of the people who have lived in Milford Township the longest. All are life-long residents and graduates of Milford. Wilbert is a master mechanic and has just retired from Rierson's Imp in Nevada.
Milo's farming adventures- page 304. 2010 plow event page 339.
Below: Wilbert Hadley, with his restored Oliver 88 Diesel, easily pulls a three bottom plow through some tough going at the 2007 Loren Book's Antique Plowing Days.
The telephoto camera is looking south from near Loren's farmstead on the east side of Sec 15 with the `Burley' place on the right and the Heartland Coop facility in the background on the left. The concept of plowing has changed dramatically from WWII to the present. The goal at the start of this time-period was to have all the trash buried- 100%- none visible when the job was completed. In about the sixties the moboard plow disappeared and chiselplows, with the accompanying visible trash, dominated. The placement of disk openers on planters made it possible to have a good stand of corn on this `trashy' seedbed.
This is the home that stood on the east side of Sec 8 in the northeast corner of the southeast quarter. This would be a mile west and one and a half north of Milford School. The view is to the north-northwest and the person on the pony is Jeanette Sowers who graduated Milford in 1928. That would make the photo from the early twenties. I don't know if this is where Jeanette lived or whether she lived at the first place north and this was where a cousin lived. Jeanette and her sister, Dorothy `31 lived a quarter mile north on the west side of the road at the time Dorothy graduated from High School.
The George Roberts family, the Jeffery Jacobson `33 family, and the Loyd Hughes `56 family all lived in this home at one time or another. It was torn down in about 1978 and another home built in the same spot. An unusual feature of this home was that it had a gas floor furnace that would operate with no electricity; but yet it had a thermostat. This is a very useful feature for a farm home to have in that should the electricity goes off in the winter, which it is prone to do, the furnace still is operative. One time in the seventies, the electricity was off for about ten days. Loyd's neighbor, John Fitzgerald, was without heat in their home and they came down and lived with Loyd for most of that time. Loyd had a l0" TV that would operate from a 12 volt battery and that's the TV they watched. It ran the entire time from a 12 volt truck battery that was so low it wouldn't start a truck.
Loyd Hughes farmed this land after Jeffrey Jacobson left. Jeffrey had a herd of cattle that grazed in the back 40 acres that had a very wet area in it. There was a lane for the cattle behind the buildings and the cattle stood there a lot of the time. When Loyd started farming this land, probably in the early `70s, he took out the fence and farmed the lane and I know this lane, with its natural fertilizer, produced some of the first 200 bpa corn I'd ever seen. It wasn't but a couple acres but it sure was fun to experience the combine have to really work to harvest that fantastic corn.