Our farm was owned by the Rutschow family for many years. Carl Rutschow farmed it in the early 1900s, then his son, Norman Rutschow and his wife farmed it until 1971, when it was sold to Ed Barnes. Ed rented the fields for farming, and the woods for hunting. We bought it from Ed in the spring of 2000.
Steve and Margaret Rutschow, and their brother Dave (Norman’s children), grew up here. Steve and Margaret came by recently and we took them on a walk up on top of the bluffs, and around to some of the places they remembered from their childhood.
Here they are on one of our benches – in October 2015.
And here they are in about 1960, with trout they had caught in the creek. 
Dave, Steve and Margaret Rutschow visiting in October 2021
Steve brought an album of photos of his family and of the farm. Here are a few of the photos that show the way the farm looked, and some of the people who lived here. And their cousin Dale Rutschow shared some of the older photos of the family and the farm.
Carl Rutschow and his family – from about 1918.
An early view of the farm – from the late 1920s or early 1930s.
This is almost the same view from January 2015.
The barn and cows
Cows
Looking east, with Sumac Bluff on the left
Looking north-west to the farm house
Dave, Margaret, Steve and their parents, Gertrude Engelhardt Rutschow and Norman Rutschow in 1956
Rutschow family in September 1966
Johanna Laehn Rutschow at her 80th birthday party. Johanna (Hannah) grew up in an older farmhouse, farther north on what is now our property, and married Carl Rutschow (a widower) who lived in the newer farmhouse near the road. She was Steve, Margaret and Dale’s grandmother.
The farm – summer 1946
The farm and Sumac Bluff from the 1950s
The barn
Farmhouse after a snowstorm – March 1949
March 1949
The jeep and kids April 1948
Off to the bus on Steve’s first day of school 1953
Cows and kids
‘Pet raccoons’ behind the house 1953
Steve planting the pines August 1957
Here are the pines just after we bought the farm, in 2000.
We logged the pines in 2002. This shows the site of the old farmhouse, with Pine Point beyond, in April 2011. There are a few pines still left on Pine Point, and a line of Red Pines above the old farmhouse.
Floods that washed out the driveway happened in those days too. June 1950.
A big thunderstorm and the flood that followed washed out our bridge in 2010 – so it still happens. This photo – looking down from Sumac Prairie – shows the creek flowing over our driveway that day.
Steve made a book for 4-H about wildlife on the farm.
He bought the book to show us.
Steve won a blue ribbon for his scrapbook.
I found current photos that match two of the photos Steve brought.
This shows haying in East Center Valley in 1958.
This is nearly the same view from June 2013, with prairie growing in the valley.
And another similar view from August 2009 with Cup Plant blooming.
This shows the cows at the bottom of our Dugway trail in 1950.
Here’s a similar view,with prairie flowers, from August 2018.
