(Background notes: The church mentioned in this section of the Olfert’s Montana homesteading story is the Lustre Mennonite Brethren Church. The Bible School/Academy mentioned here is now known as the Lustre Christian High School, which to this day accepts boarding school students. Henry Franz, who boarded students of the Bible School when it first began, was born in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, in 1894, the sixth of ten children born to Peter H. Franz and Susanna Teichroew. Kathrina was their fifth child, and Agatha [Grandma Toews, Oma’s mother] was their seventh child. Henry was a lifelong bachelor of whom Oma has good and interesting memories. Being a bachelor, you can tell from the picture of his house that he had plenty of room for boarding students. He died in 1979 and was buried in Bethel Lustre Mennonite Cemetery.)
In the early years, first we had a pastor, John F. Thiessen, who was also a farmer near the church. Then after a few years we had an assistant pastor. That’s also when the academy (Bible School) started. Henry G. Baerg was the carpenter or the boss on how to build it. Then we started to have the people come to the Bible School (later, Lustre Bible Academy). Most of them had to go home each night, except those that were from far away. They boarded with the neighbors. Henry Franz, Kathrina’s brother, boarded many of the students, as he had a large house for this reason just down the road from the school. That’s the way we started with the school. Aaron Dick taught school one winter and started another winter until we got some other teachers. Henry Wiens and J. J. Toews and others, Leo Goentzel, etc. I don’t know how many others have taught at the academy.
Eventually we started to get the grade schools together instead of having all those little schools. If I am right, there were seven to nine little one-room schoolhouses (Lustre School). Then there was the school by the Wiens’s, that was three, by Orlando Wall was four, Grandview was five, Cottonwood was six. Then our school was seven, and Church school was eight, then Koslowsky school was nine, Pete Friesen’s school was ten. Is that all? The school by us was the Fairview school, which was opened when they moved the second Lustre school building to our corner. Then finally they cooperated to have one school close to the academy, and that’s when all the other schools closed (1957).
In 1917 farming really got going. I broke about 100 acres of land. I seeded thirty acres of flax, thirty acres of oats and about forty acres of wheat. Crops had a good yield that year, but the next year yields were quite poor. In 1922 crops were exceptionally good, but I had a disastrous accident. We bought a Fordson tractor and were going to do everything without hired help. I planned to cut the wheat with the binder during the day and shuck the bundles at night. That came to a very quick end. I made one round with the tractor and eight-foot binder. I was going to grease the spindle bolts on the front wheels. They were so very tight, so I took a heavy hammer and was going to pound the bolts out. Then, oh, a little piece of steel chipped loose and flew right through my left eye. So I was taken to Wolf Point to the doctor by neighbor John F. Thiessen, but the doctor couldn’t help at all. I was taken to Minot by train and laid there for 18 days and nights in terrible pain, hovering between life and death. The doctor said that it was like a big boil with pus, and the eighteenth day it was ripe to be opened and drained, so that is what they did. Again, God was good, and after 20 days I could go home. All this time Kathrina was with me and put hot poultices on me day and night. Later I had an artificial eye, since all sight was gone. My crops were harvested by the neighbors. What a relief to see when we got home that the wheat was all cut and threshed and in the bin. That same fall there was the disappointment to see that a storm had come and demolished two empty bins to shreds. It had been a twister. Our wheat was in another bin, and the rest on the side of it on the ground. I was not easy to keep down, and that same fall we built a new barn. It measured 28 feet by 40 feet and had 12-inch studding with a hip roof. Later a 16-foot lean-to was added on the north side. As time went on and with the drive for long hours of work, as well as God’s blessing the earth, we eventually farmed far more than the original 320 acres I thought we would never need.
