Grant-Kohrs Ranch Historic Resource Study/Historic Structures Report/Cultural Resources Statement

D. Vignettes of Daily Life at the Ranch

At a whist party one Saturday early in the spring of 1885, the guests enjoyed cards and conversation. During the evening someone calculated the time spent in Montana by the group of twelve, and came up with the impressive total of 239 years. The most senior pioneer present was none other than Conrad Kohrs— who had arrived on 2 August 1862. This prompted the anonymous reporter to enquire of Mr. Kohrs what his age might be. Con replied " 'There are no spring chickens here' and the games went on." [25] In the years prior to the more sedate whist party era at the home ranch, dances lasting all night had brightened the place more than once [26] Young Con Kohrs continued Johnny Grant's practice of hosting dances with real gusto.

But work formed the main routine of the ranch, dominating the life there. The pattern, stemming from the earliest days of the ranch's history, was a set one: having herding cattle, mending fences, hanging gates at corrals, feeding animals, and slaughtering an occasional beef for the house or the bunkhouse crew. Wagons needed repair, buildings needed paint or whitewash, and calves and colts needed caring for from time to time. The crew at the ranch put in a busy day. But they enjoyed compensations. The tradition of the range—hard work expected and good food provided—manifested itself at the ranchhands' dinner table in the bunkhouse.

Chinese made their name there as cooks. Possibly the best known, who returned to China and died early in the 20th century, carried the alliterative name "Ham Sam the Chinaman." Tom Sing succeeded Ham Sam, and Tom Wing succeeded Tom Sing. They all featured that rich and fulsome cattle country cuisine, the legendary reports of which in pulp westerns and movies are probably closer to fact than fiction. Sourdough biscuits and bread, [27] beef, and beans furnished much of the core of the menu at the bunkhouse, but other items appeared on the table as well. One ranch hand, looking back in the late winter of 1975 to his summers as a teenager working at the ranch about 1917 to 1920, recalled the typical breakfast for the hands at about 6:00 A.M. It consisted of bacon and eggs, hotcakes, oatmeal biscuits, coffee, and milk. He added that the hands sat down to eat only after the horses had been fed. At noon the hot meal featured beef, beans, one or two vegetables, and for dessert, pies and cakes. The noon meal was the major one of the day, but the evening meal usually featured almost as much as that at midday. [28]

A particular feature at the bunkhouse table during the Warren era, reputedly always welcomed on the earlier roundups, and probably a staple of the northwest ranching diet, was the "bannock." Con Warren described it. Squares of a mixture of lard, flour, milk, baking powder, and sugar blended into a sweet biscuit dough were cooked in deep grease and came out as hot, semisweet fried bread, with no syrup needed. On the roundups, beans (buried in the iron pot under the coals of the fire in a lard can) and bannocks at breakfast, served with hot coffee, made a popular and simple breakfast. Warren recalled that one old white mule, up in the high pastures east of the ranch house, would "nuzzle up really friendly when he smelled a bannock being fried." Con always remembered to present the equine gourmet with the first fruit of the pan. [29]

The copious meals that graced the table at the bunkhouse began after the dinner gong sounded. Located just outside the door of the kitchen, its peals, awaited with sincere anticipation, brought the crew from the sheds and barns in the vicinity.

At the ranch house the quantity of food featured about equalled that of the bunkhouse, but the variety was larger. Dinners often featured beef, lamb, or veal, and often lots of roast turkey. Stew and heavy soups began most meals, and pie almost always closed them. [30] Coffee appeared at every meal, in large amounts, and at other times as well. Conrad and Augusta and their guests, Con Warren recalled, would sit on the porch for morning and afternoon coffee. The afternoon coffee featured cake, chocolates, and cookies as well, and young Con Warren especially relished an invitation to join the adults for "afternoon coffee." [31]

The reminiscences of those such as Con Warren and J. H. Gehrmann, recalling their days at the ranch as young boys, help round out the story of the daily routine, and seem to bring it into balance with the accounts of cattle raising, transportation, and marketing. They show that ingenuity and fun blended with the daily routine of the business. Coyote control, as practiced in 1904, serves as an example.

The home ranch maintained its own flock of turkeys for the table at the main house and at the bunkhouse. The turkey house sheltered the birds usually, but in the summer they would roost in a big tree near the stallion barn. Coyotes often circled underneath at night to attack any bird that lost its balance. When the coyote population reached uncomfortable proportions, the ranch hands killed a lamb and slivered its carcass, injecting it with arsenic. The hands then hung it on a gate arch near the turkey roost, high enough that the coyotes would have to jump to get to the meat. This they would do, and tearing off a chuck, have the meat ingested before they realized the danger—if they ever had time to think about it. The carcasses often lasted less than a week when the coyote population was particularly heavy. [32]

Birthdays and Christmas sparkled at the home ranch. Relatives and invited friends came for dinner, and Augusta's cook served fancy meals.

On those special days particularly, but every other day as well, flowers formed much of the scene in and about the house. The lilac bushes on the south, irrigated by the running water coming through the yard, created a tunnel through which children would run. A large flower garden lay just south of the house and down the bluff, but within the fenced house yard, and added its profusion of colors to the scene. [33] Round plots of flowers in the front yard stood on each side of the entrance, and in the house sprays of roses stood in vases—especially in the dining room. [34]

The ranch house served as a colorful center for the ranch and its myriad activities. The bright green yard and cottonwood trees, the white house and green shutters, and the flowers, set the ranch house apart from the rest of the complex, its particular mix of colors and brightness in sharp contrast to the raw dirt of the corrals. The focus of the social scene at the ranch, and separated in distance by about forty feet (but in social status by a wide gulf) from the bunkhouse, the ranch house, its visitors, guests, and occupants enjoyed the benefits resulting from the long period of success that had crowned the life of Con and Augusta Kohrs and John Bielenberg.

Introduction
Historic Resource Study | Cultural Resources Statement | Historic Structure Report