 In 1923 Anton Brevik with sons Arnold, Len, Claire and Harold and wife Cloie farmed in South Dakota near Lake Cochrane and just on the Minnesota/ South Dakota border.
Cloie and Anton had homesteaded their land about 1898. They raised seven children including the four boys named above and daughters Bertha, Ruth and Nina while building a successful hog raising business. The barn shown on the previous page with the attached sale pavilion was built in 1923 for their annual, sometimes biennial, Purebred Poland China hog sales. Each sale was widely attended by prospective buyers from surrounding states.
Cloie worked as hard as Anton and their children. Every year she prepared lunch to be served without charge to everyone who attended the sale. This meant literally months of preparation filling the house’s cellar with homemade and canned mincemeat for the 40 plus pies that would be baked fresh for the sale. No doubt the sale day was anticipated as a social event in the rural community.
Each sale was a major investment for |
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the Brevik family. First, a great deal of work to get and keep their property ready for the crowd along with preparing and serving the lunch, which required hiring help while the children were young. They also paid for advertising and printing along with free transportation to the farm from the railway depot and crates for shipping the hogs as necessary. The crates were returned to the farm at the Brevik’s expense.
The Breviks raised the feed for their animals. Because the hogs were purebred, Anton practiced the habit of naming each one. Sales literature contained the name, age, weight and expected outcome of the potential purchase. Brochures and newspaper advertising often pictured one or more of the hogs with its statistics. Anton kept journals that tell a little about his farm operation. He kept abreast of farming techniques by attending conventions and growers’ meetings.
The barn and pavilion were separated from the house by a grove of trees, part of the 400 trees the Breviks planted to improve their homestead. Anton included several hundred evergreens in the planting as they reminded him of his birthplace in Norway. A large portion of these trees still stand on the property in 2003. While the house has deteriorated beyond repair, members of the family are reminded of how it looked when the Brevik children were growing up through a painting done by Jerry Barlow, wife of Anton’s oldest grandson. |