Barnes County: A Moment in Time
100 Years Ago... Elizabeth Briggs sings
People of Valley City will be pleased to know that they will have the opportunity to hear Miss Elizabeth Briggs, daughter of Mr. E. H. Briggs, and well known here, sing.
Her voice is to be broadcasted from Rockford, Ill., and those of our radio fans who want to hear her voice can do so. W. I. A. B. will do the broadcasting. Miss Briggs is said to have a fine voice and this opportunity to hear her will be much appreciated by her numerous Valley City friends.
Candidate for Mayor
W.H. Pray announced himself yesterday as candidate for mayor of Valley City, being the first candidate to come out and declare himself a candidate. Mr. Pray is a well known citizen of the city and will no doubt make his platform and aims known to the voters between now and election day.
1949
Keeps pace with changing farm technology Far cry from dairy barn of some years ago
By Staff Writer After years of grain farming, Lawrence Nayes, well known Barnes County farmer, living about two miles southwest of Fingal, is trying his hand in dairying and is meeting with great success in his new venture.
Dairying has its new ideas and developments like any other industry, and the new wrinkle being successfully worked out on the Nayes farm is the milking parlor and pen barn innovation. It is a far cry from the dairy
farm of only a few years ago, but it does cut labor and handling costs and will ultimately aid in increasing the milk production yield per cow.
Mr. Nayes has been farming near Fingal for the past 28 years. He has a section on his farm. Last summer he bought a Holstein herd in partnership with his son, Leroy, and is milking eight cows at present. He hopes to have 20 cows when the rest freshen.
Leroy, 26, a graduate of the NDAC and a FFA member, spent four years in service, receiving his honorable discharge as a first lieutenant in the army air corps. He received his Masters degree in agronomy at Minnesota U, and taught in Veterans administration at Jamestown last year.
After becoming interested in the dairy business with his father, he sold out some months ago again, and returned to teaching veterans’ vocational agriculture, and is now located at Casselton.
Built new barn
The elder Nayes constructed a new large 36x64 dairy barn last fall, and expects to complete the milk room this spring.
Besides their son, Leroy, Mr. and Mrs. Nayes have one other son, James, a student at the NDAC, and three daughters, Virginia, teaching at Buffalo, Loretta, Mrs. Charle Baird of Oakland, Calif., and Dorothy, Mrs. Wayne Wilkins of Valley City.
Mr. Nayes is assisted in the grain farming and dairy work by a hired man. The milking operations take less than half an hour, and with a pressure water system even less time is taken to clean out the parlor before and after milking. The farm gets its electrical power from a Wincharger, but is equipped and wired up for REA when the “juice” is available.
Most startling thing about the “plant” is the system of handling the cattle. It has the simplest dairy barn imaginable -a
huge room without stalls or stanchions with a thick straw floor, a water trough, and feed row.
Cattle free
The cattle roam around the building in perfect freedom, able to eat or drink at will. They can lie down in any position they choose. There is plenty of room, no crowding and the air is fresh and clean. There is virtually no animal smell.
At milking time the animals are taken into a “milking parlor” where they stand in stalls, elevated about two and a half or three feet from the floor level. The parlor handles three cows at a time, so that the two milking machines can be kept operating continuously.
An animal is taken in a door at one end and up a ramp to the stall level, a door is opened in the rear of a stall and the animal enters. There is a feed trough in each stall for grain feeding. When a cow is milked a door is opened in the front of the stall and the animal goes out another door into the barn. Two cows can be milked in about four minutes.
One of the labor saving features of this system is in cleaning the barn. During the winter straw is added to the floor cover as needed to keep the animals clean. In the spring a manure loader can be taken in and the floor covering cleared off. This cleanup is necessary only once or twice a year, in comparison to the daily clean-up chore in conventional dairy barns. Animals in the barn remain clean throughout the winter.
Dairying requires a larger capital investment than grain farming, but once a herd is started, the farmer can make herd building a continuous process through selective breeding of his own cattle. The equipment and barn remain in service through a period of many years.
Basketball
Dover school recently organized a basketball
team with Dick Pederson as acting captain. They have played two games so far, one with the Sulton grades, which they won. And this past week they lost to the Hanford grades. Merle Michelson is doing the coaching.
As a first at the U.S. Navy’s School of Music, 10 women have been accepted in the school as musicians and will graduate. Chris Flatau, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Don Flatau, Valley City, is one of the 10.
Miss Flatau, a ’73 VCHS graduate, plays piano with the Navy school’s dance band and is in the percussion section of the concert band. She is one of 54 students, the only girl in the band and the only student from North Dakota at the school.
She will graduate in the spring and then be assigned to a Navy band
as her station. Until that time, minimum practice time is three hours a day with a full day and evening of classes in between.
The majority of the girls have had some college music training. Miss Flatau joined the Navy in July, following high school graduation.
Her mother is a piano instructor in Valley City and has had her daughter on the piano bench since early childhood. The student joined the Navy for this particular schooling and seems to be studying and enjoying it to the fullest said her family.
The Musicians Rate was opened to women in November of 1972, the first in the 71 years of the school’s existence. Recently these accepted first 10 women in the Navy and Marine Corps musicians school were pictured in the school’s small newspaper, Chris Flatau among them.
The Navy Music School is located at Little Creek, Virginia, part of the installation of Norfolk.
Triebold purchases creamery building
Vernon Triebold, of Oriska, has purchased the former Barnes County Cooperative Creamery building in Valley City according to Donald Ommodt, general manager for Cass-Clay Creamery, Inc., Fargo.
The sales of property and title transaction took place this week, six weeks following CassClay’s purchase from a local cooperative. The settlement figure was not disclosed.
Triebold said he is investigating the beginning step for a business at the 140 2nd Ave. NE location, but the plans are as yet indefinite. The announcement will be made soon, he continued.
The new owner is a life-time resident of the Oriska area. He and his wife, Ruth, and family, eight of 12 children, live seven miles east of Valley City, along I-94. They maintain a large farm and feed lot operation.
Cass-Clay Creamery bought the building and facilities in January fol
75 Years Ago... ‘Milking Parlor’ innovation in dairying
1974 50 Years Ago... Chris Flatau accepted into Navy’s School of Music