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FARMING

“God looked down on the earth and said, “I need a caretaker for this world I have made,” and so God made a farmer.”

― Paul Harvey

When Theron moved to Cedar City, he wanted a little piece of land to farm.  He was mostly interested in raising chickens and so he bid on the old C.C. Camp buildings at Duck Creek, thinking he could use them to build coops.  He bid ridiculously low, but thinks he must have submitted the only bid, as it was accepted immediately and he was told to tear them down with haste.  Luckily Albert Albertson was hosting a Forest Service School that summer and asked to rent them for those attending, which gave Theron a little more time.  In the meantime he bought what is now the east side of 500 West Street in partnership with Wilford Clark.  In all, they had ten building lots between 300 South and 400 South.  Wilford took the north half and Theron the south half.  They paid $750 for it.  Theron farmed his half one summer and then built the chicken coop with the old CCC buildings right in the middle of the land.  He lined it with celotex to make it nice and warm and then someone told him that chickens would peck the celotex and so he had it plastered.  About that time the war had ended and the boys were coming home and were desperate for places to live.  Will Clark begged Theron to let one of his sons have that for a house.  Situated as it was, in the very middle of the property, the usefulness of that land for farming was gone.

It was rumored that Hyrum Ford's son had ten acres for sale out by the railroad tracks.  Theron went to see Hyrum and he said he wanted $1,000 for it.  (It is the property where the excelsior plant was later located)  Theron bought it and the very next day the city offered him $1,100 for it.  Theron thought he was pretty smart to make $100 in just one day, but he now wishes he had hung onto it a little longer.

I.E. Riddle had some property on 8th West, by the creek, that he wanted to sell.  There were six lots, and the asking price was $850.  Theron bought that piece and used it mostly as a corral.

Then Sam Gentry sold four acres west of his house for $600 and Theron bought that and farmed it for several years.  When the location for I-15 was chosen, it included this piece of land which was then surrendered to the Federal Government.

The next purchase was twenty-two acres from Thelmar Stratton for $5,000.  It was mostly sagebrush and willows.  Theron and the girls spent days and days clearing the sagebrush. Then they cleared the willows along the east fence.  They used a tractor and chain to pull them out, then piled them and burned them.  It was really hard work.    A nice concrete ditch was installed and it is now one of the most desirable pieces of land in all of Iron County.

Theron had a beautiful garden.  He planted corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and pumpkins, to name a few.  Asparagus grew wild along the fence line.  He was a meticulous weeder.  At the end of his life when he had trouble standing he would weed as he crawled along the rows.  He once told Lucretia he would give her five dollars if she could find a weed in his garden.  Lucretia and all of the children were frequent helpers, and later the grandkids helped too.  When he harvested the vegetables, the whole family was expected to help with the canning.  They would shell peas, snap beans, and shuck the corn.  Theron had has his own can sealer and a huge pressure cooker.  After the cans had cooked, they were cooled off in the bathtub.  Theron also sold a lot of his produce to the local markets, especially potatoes, onions and pumpkins.

Theron and Lucretia also grew beautiful flowers -- gladiolas, mums, daffodils, roses, and iris -- intended not just to beautify their own yard, but were shared through so many beautiful arrangements for special occasions.  Their harvest was so plentiful that they cut and sold them for profit.  They also divided the roots and shared them with neighbors and friends to beautify the entire neighborhood.

According to Con Hatch:

“To me, Theron was one of the most down to earth practical men I have ever known. He loved the soil. He loved the simple things of life—the beautiful things. He learned early in life the importance of preparing a good soil, of planting good seeds at the proper time and of nurturing those seeds through the growing season, keeping the unwanted weeds away and then enjoying a beautiful, bountiful harvest. My, how he loved to work. How he labored. Year after year he planted and harvested. He planted and harvested—values, crops. And of course, he shared these things—always sharing, always giving—a sack of potatoes, a bushel of corn, a bucket of squash or other vegetables. Of course, this was not just a Theron project, it was a family project. Through Sister Lucretia and Theron’s great leadership they shared so much with us. They filled a long time ago the admonition given to us recently by our beloved prophet, President Kimball, when he said at the April 1976 conference, ‘We call upon Latter-day Saints everywhere to strengthen and beautify the home with renewed efforts in three specific areas: food production, storage, and preservation. We encourage you to grow all the food you possibly can on your own property. Grow vegetables and eat them from your own yard. Study the best methods of providing your own foods. Make your garden neat and attractive as well as productive. If there are children in your home, involve them in the process with assigned responsibility.’ Well, the Ashcroft family has been doing that for years and years. Work, industry, and thrift are a trademark in the Ashcroft family. I remember Don said that one of the great blessings he thought came into his life was that his father taught him to work. I know that Theron and Don had many projects. They had that father/son relationship we like to see. And more recently with David and Charles and other grandsons, this became a grandfather/grandson relationship. What a beautiful example to us. And then there were the flower gardens. Not only at the Ashcroft’s home, but around the school buildings at the College, planted and cared for by Theron and Lucretia and their family. Nor can I forget the Church Welfare Farm’s production and canning. No matter what the occasion, Theron was always eagerly there, whether it was fertilizing, plowing, planting, watering, or harvesting, Theron was an eager participant. I remember one event with special significance to me when Theron was Stake President. One Sunday morning as we were meeting as a stake presidency word came to us that the cattle out on the farm (ranch) had not had water for two days. So it was hurry home, change clothes and be on our way. I believe Morris Shirts was left to conduct a priesthood leadership meeting that day that all of us should have been involved in, but the ox was in the mire. It was time for action in Theron’s mind. Theron was always thinking service, service, service. How well he exemplified that great statement made by King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon when he said, ‘I tell you these things that you may learn wisdom; that you may learn that when you are in the service of your fellow men you are only in the service of your God.’”

Theron was an amazing farmer. I don’t think he was ever without a milk cow. He also had pigs and sheep. This meant chores to do both morning and evening. He would leave for the farm very early so he could be home, have breakfast and be ready to go to school before eight o’clock. Evening chores were done before supper and his evening meetings. He would occasionally butcher a pig or a sheep, so the family always had meat. One of the things we all loved was when mother would fry up a pan of side pork for breakfast. We would take our bread and dip it into the drippings. It was salty and oh so yummy. We also always had milk and rich cream for whipping and churning our own butter. However, it also meant repairing corrals and cleaning out manure. It meant lambing, and docking their tails. It meant feeding dogie lambs, branding them, shearing in the spring, and since the brand was painted on it meant branding every time they were sheared. It meant moving them to a new pasture when the feed became scarce. It meant hauling them to the mountain for the summer. It meant calls from neighboring ranchers reporting that one of Theron’s lambs had been seen on their property. Then it meant walking the fence lines to find the breach, fence repairs, then walking the neighboring property to find the errant lamb and return him to our own property. Theron sold his wool to the historic Baron Woolen Mills in Brigham City. Sometimes he would take his profit in beautiful woolen blankets that were created from his wool. The mills were started in 1869 by Lorenzo Snow. They were completely destroyed by fire on June 29, 2015. It was a devastating loss.

Once Don went away to school, Theron had no help but his girls.  They weren’t always willing participants, especially when it involved chasing the sheep down some of the streets where their  friends lived.  After Harl moved back to Cedar he and Theron did a lot of farming together.  They had amazing experiences.  Harl recorded this one in his journal:

“Theron had an old red pickup with racks on it.  I think the racks were made with pipes.  The pipes were not very close together.  One morning we loaded up this pig to take it to Nelson’s to butcher.  Nelson’s was out north of town a ways. We got the pig into the truck alright, but on the way out, at Milne Truck Lines (which is about where Parkway Ford is now located) the pig jumped out and went into a ditch that ran along the east side of the road.  We got out of the truck and I tried to turn the pig around and send him the other direction.  He left the ditch and went across the highway to the west side of Robinson Coal Yard.  There was a long, low [advertising] sign located there.  The bottom of the sign was about two feet above the ground and the top of the sign was about four feet above that.  It was a big long sign.

“Theron was in the coal yard chasing the pig. which would stop occasionally and then take off again.  The pig was running just about parallel to the sign when Theron got close enough to grab the pig by the tail.  The pig turned and headed underneath the sign.  Theron held onto the tail until he was scraped off by the sign.  We finally did get the pig loaded back into the truck and taken to be butchered!”

For a few years, Theron became a beekeeper.  He kept the hives out to the farm.  He had an extracting machine which he set up in the family’s laundry room.  Lucretia made him a set of protective clothes for working with the bees.  He always saved pieces of the sweet honey comb to share with his children.

When the old man McConnell passed away, his estate was divided.  He had lots of good mountain property.  One part of it had been given to his son-in-law, Cecil Adams.  Sheldon Olds had bought some of it and Lehi Jones had purchased 100 acres at $25 an acre, and had a chance to buy all of it.  He would have bought all of it for $25 an acre, but one heir, a lady in Draper, wanted $35 an acre for her 100 acres.  Lehi wouldn't pay that much, so Theron wrote and offered to buy it from her.  She sent the deed by return mail and he mailed her the check and that is how he acquired his first mountain ground.

This was a beautiful piece of property over in the Zion drainage.  Theron surveyed it all and fenced it.  This is where he would take the sheep to pasture in the summer.  Harl recorded another story in his journal about hauling these sheep to the mountain and back.

“He would haul the sheep up there and then back again in his pickup truck.  He figured if he laid a bunch of boards through the pipe racks across the bed of the truck he could haul two layers of sheep at a time and that would be much more efficient.  So he worked on that to make ready to haul them down in a double-decker.

“We left for the far piece early in the morning, maybe 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.  At the far piece there was a small corral with a loading chute.  We backed up to the loading chute and loaded the bottom layer in.  Then we put the boards in for the second layer.  We were able to load the second deck in and things looked really good.  We started up the road toward home and then decided we had better check our tires.  Upon checking, we found one rear tire going flat.  We did have a spare, but it was up underneath the bottom layer of sheep near the cab of the truck.

“Not wanting to unload all of the sheep, Theron tried to crawl over the backs of the bottom layer of sheep just underneath the second layer boards to retrieve the spare.  He was finally able to work the tire through the sheep and over the tailgate.  (I guess sheep from both layers were dropping “you know what” around and on Theron all this time, but what was coming from above was most objectionable).  We finally got the flat tire off and the spare onto the truck only to find that it, too, was flat.  We simply tried to limp down to town with what air there was in the spare.  Anyone who has ever herded sheep could understand why Theron was so reluctant to unload the sheep, but was willing instead to crawl in for the spare.”

Later Stoney Perry died and his property was sold by the court. It was advertised to be sold by sealed bid. Theron knew that Rulon Wood was offering $40 an acre for it, so he submitted the bid of $45 an acre. There were 300 acres in the piece, including land on both the north and south side of the road. They opened the bids, announced the high bed, and then asked if there were any who would like to raise the price. Some Las Vegas boys started to go wild. When the price got to either $68 pr $86 an acre, Theron called for a recess. He met with one of the Las Vegas men, Jake Dielman, in the hall and they agreed that Jake would take the land south of the road and Theron would take that north of the road, and they would quit bidding against each other. Then they went back and told the judge of their decision and the bidding ended. The next day, the Corrys came to Theron, laughing and said, "Want to buy some more land at that price?" But prices have skyrocketed, and the Corrys wouldn't dream of selling their property for that price now. Theron had bought 112 acres, but it was divided between four men; Theron, Ianthus Wright, Bob White and Joe Fillerup. Ianthus selected his cabin site first and then Theron found one that he liked. The land was purchased in early spring of 1963. That winter Theron took his tractor up and got logs from the Forest Service. He paid $40 for them, cut them, hauled them down to Johnny Bauer's Sawmill and had them squared and then hauled them back up the next spring. It was early spring of 1967 before the cabin was completed, just before Theron and Lucretia left for Ireland.

Wonderful memories were made at the cabin -- cooking dinner on hot rocks, wading in the creek, relaxing in the hammock, the mantle clock chiming day and night, finding the “special” stones in the fireplace, sleeping in the loft. After Theron passed away the cabin was sold to Bobby Delaney. They added onto it extensively, and this is what it looks like today. You can still see the original cabin there in the center.

One final story can perhaps be told here.  It is related to the farm, but is probably less about farming and more about frugality.  Theron was a frugal man.  He had lived through the depression and knew what it meant to do without.  He was very careful with his resources.  He never wasted anything and it bothered him when other people did.  At the Ashcroft house, you turned off the lights when you exited a room.  You ate what was on your plate.  You were careful with toilet paper.  You followed President Kimball’s adage, “Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”  Theron always saved the kitchen scraps in a bucket by the back door.  Every evening he would take the bucket to the farm and feed those scraps to the pigs.  Later in life when only Theron and Lucretia were home and they didn’t generate many scraps, Theron went up to Safeway and inquired what they did with the produce that didn’t sell.  They said that they put it on the back dock at 6:00 each morning to be picked up by the garbage truck and that he could take anything he wanted before the truck came.  I’m sure those pigs enjoyed their breakfast!

Theron noticed other things on the dock – perfectly good packages of pastries and cookies with a tiny hole in the cellophane wrap, so many loaves of day old bread, canned goods that had reached the expiration date, cheese, spices and jars of fruit with torn labels, and so much more.  It seemed wasteful to him to send them to the dump when he knew so many families around town who were struggling to put food on the table.  He drove a little Volkswagen Beetle with a rack on top.  Every morning he would fill that rack to capacity and deliver it around town to people he thought could use it.  It was his personal humanitarian project.  He helped a lot of people, but no one enjoyed it more than he did.  Every day was a treasure hunt for him, and the best part of his day was telling others about his amazing finds.