The East Place was a farm of 130 acres, located about a mile and a half southeast of Meadow Grove, NE.

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Growing up, this farm was where we kept work horses, harvested prairie hay and farmed about 40 acres of crops (corn, oats, and alfalfa). My grandfather, J.W. Warrick, had a hired man. He and his wife lived there.

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 Most of the farming was done by horses, and we harvested the prairie hay and stacked it in large "stacks" of hay. This was done by sweeping the hay into an overshot stacker (sweeping was done by a team of mules). The swept hay then was raised up in the air by a team of horses and cables.

 

  I remember a hired man my grandfather had.  He was a veteran of World War I and emigrated from Germany.  His name was Hans Kunzie and he could build the highest hay stacks in Madison county. (so they said}

He had two son's, both of whom went into the Marine Corp.  His Daughter worked for my grandmother.

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Driving the stacker team was my job.  We would also use the horses to move the stacker to new locations around the hay meadow.  Harnessing the horses in the morning was difficult for me because the horses' heads and backs were about as far as I could reach. Mowing and stacking hay was hot, hard work, especially with horses. There also was a problem with bumble bees and green head horse flies. They liked to bite the horses. The bumble bees built their nests in the meadow. They generally attacked the horses, but they also did attack me on the horse drawn rake.

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My grandfather also raised hogs at the "East Place" and the hired man had a dairy cow and a garden there. One of my great joys was coming into Meadow Grove with the hired man in a wagon, being pulled by a team of horses, for shopping or selling cream and eggs.