We had to build a cellar. The first day of June we went to Island Park and started getting out trees. We peeled all the logs as we felled them. The big ones were used for the beams and the huge ones were hauled to a sawmill for the finished lumber and sheeting. It was easy to get the trees cut but it rained every day and the mosquitoes were terrible. We had Dean Skinner's camper to live in and everyone else slept in tents. It was good to cook on a tiny stove rather than over a campfire, for that many. Carl Grover worked for us that summer and he knew how to do everything. His wife Melva was a jewel. She would drive back and forth and bring us groceries. She took our wet clothes to the Laundromat to dry, so we had dry clothes each morning. It took us two weeks to get the logs out.
When we tried to dig the foundation for the cellar, it was full of lava rock. Earl Wilcox blasted it out for us. It was a good place to build a cellar, several times beams were replaced but it finally collapsed in 2012
May men in the community told Jess he was crazy. The ground was too steep. He would never be able to dig the spuds. We had a gorgeous crop. the best looking crop in the entire valley we thought. There wasn't a weed in it. Since Jess and the older boys were building the cellar I hired Berneice Neilsen and her kids to help me weed. I didn't move pipe that year, they had enough help without me. I did help nail the sheeting on top of the cellar.
In the middle of August, disaster struck. There was a severe frost and the spuds never grew after that. There was a slight breeze blowing up the Snake River and up the hill and our spuds didn't freeze but continued to grow. We had some of the largest spuds grown that year. Stanley didn't plant until the middle of June and it froze in August. He only had as little pile of spuds in one end of his cellar. Most farmers spuds were like marbles, It was the shortest crop on record. We had our new cellar completely full. We sold the first part of the cellar for $3.00 and the last ones for $6.00 field run. That was fantastic. It is unbelievable what one fantastic spud year can do for your finances.
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