I was born Aug. 31, 1910, at the family home located 12 mi. north and 1 east of Bethune, the fourth son of John and Magdalena Stutz Dobler.  In 1916 I started school in the 1 room Prairie View School, District 22, that my Grandfather Dobler and others built in about 1907.  It was only a scant half mile from home, but was moved 1 1/4 miles west in 1919.  I graduated from the eighth grade in 1924. 
    Emma Elma Ziegler, was the older of twin daughters born to John and Christina Ziegler at the family home 6 miles north and 2 1/2 west of Bethune on March 4, 1917.  Emma attended Union School, which was located 2 miles north and 1/2 west of their home.  She graduated in 1931. 
    We were married on April 11, 1937, on a Sunday afternoon, and left that same day for Proctor, Colorado, which is about 20 miles northeast of Sterling.  We had rented a 160 acre irrigated farm.  We drove a 1926 Dodge 4 door sedan that was not being used by my parents anymore.  This farm joined the one that my brother, Ted, had leased and was farming. 
   We moved some machinery and a few milk cows, also a General Purpose Tractor that both of us could use.  To me irrigating was all new, but Ted had been there a couple of years so he knew how to go about it.  We raised corn and barley, oats, and some wheat, as well as feed crops for the livestock.  That fall we moved a Corn Sheller from home. 
    The 1938 barley planting was interrupted when I had to take Emma to the hospital in Sterling.  Kenneth Lee was born that evening on March 29, 1938. 
    Every year we shelled our corn crop with the shelter.  We tried to raise a few acres of sugar beets the second year we farmed there, but the grasshoppers ate most of them.  We worked up most of the ground and planted a feed crop into it.  We raised a nice Coes crop, well seeded, that we cut with the grain binder and  shocked it.  We did not have it hauled in or in a stack yet when the first snow fell, and flocks of wild ducks from along the Platte River discovered this nice field of shocked Coes with well seeded heads.  After a few nights most of the seed was eaten by them, so that taught us a lesson - to get it hauled in and stacked up other years, before the ducks got it.  We raised pretty good crops, mostly corn, barley and oats.  The barley and oats were cut with the grain binder and we always had a big straw pile in the yard for the cows and the 4 head of horses we had. 
     We lived next to a pasture a rancher owned and used to run cattle in.  I asked him if we could pick cow chips for winter fuel, and he thought I was joking, but I told him it was for real and he said "go ahead and pick all you need", so Emma and I got the team and wagon and 2 tubs, and it didn't take us very long and we had a big load of chips picked, so with corn cobs and chips, we made it through the winter.  We had purchased a new 3 burner Kerosene Stove for cooking and baking, so we had to use an old heater to keep warm. 
     After 3 years in Proctor, in the spring of 1940 we moved back onto the home place, Section 3-7-45, north of Bethune, and took over the farming operation.  We put rubber tires on the old steel wheel John Deere that spring and it surely made a difference. 

In the early 40's we remodeled the old home, putting in new built in cupboards, new propane range, remodeled a large front room into 2 bedrooms and a bathroom with hot and cold running water.  In later years we added a propane floor furnace. . An older 2 row lister was replaced with a new one, as most of our farming was row crop, including feed crops for the now expanding cow herd.  We bought 6 bead of registered Hereford cattle at the "Howard Hunt" Hereford Dispersion Sale.  In the late forties we had the reserve champion bull at the Kit Carson County Hereford Breeders Sale one year. 

On Dec. 1, 1942, Charles Leslie was born.  Kenneth started school in 1944 at Prairie View School, now at a different location than when I attended and graduated from there.  He had to go only a mile.  In the late forties there were not enough pupils in the district to receive state aid for both schools, so the district bussed the children to one school 1 year and the other school the next year.  We had 2 schoolhouses in the district.  Kenneth graduated from the eighth grade at Prairie View in 1951. 

During the summer of 1951 we bought the "Adkinson Farm", located 3 mil. west and 1 north of Burlington, to be in a district where the boys could take part in FFA.  In August we moved onto the newly purchased farm.  We kept the homestead, Section 3-7-45, and farmed both places until 1975. 
    In the mid 40's we bought our first new tractor, an International Farmall H, Electric start.  Ken enjoyed working with a tractor he could start.  Not so with the old one.  As time went on we accumulated more new equipment and in 1949 we traded the H tractor in on a new Farmall M. We added a used International threshing machine, and later a new drill and manure spreader.  A used self-propelled combine was quite an improvement over the Case pull type we had been using. 
     The old "Adkinson" two story house was getting quite feeble, so we tore it down during the summer of 1959, and used the salvageable lumber to put up a new house with full basement in the fall and early winter of 1960.  In 1963 we added a steel round topped building, 40x75, and in later years 2 steel bins.  When we moved to this place, in the spring of 1952, we planted quite a number of Pine and Cedar seedling trees, and now the buildings are protected on three sides by evergreens and bushes.  It does make a difference on a windy day when you get in the protection of these trees.  They are a lot of work, but are worth it as much the wind blows in Eastern Colorado. 
    We have a rough l60 acres that we have put terraces on, and saved the soil from washing away have -- reseeded some to grass, and will do more as time goes on. 
     Several years ago we had to have a new well drilled because of the lowering water table, and installed a submersible pump.  We took down the windmill and put it into use on a well in the pasture. 
     REA was on the farm when we purchased it, as well as a Kohler 1500 watt light plant to be used for standby power and light. 
     In the mid fifties we put up a cement stave silo.  After a year or so, we installed our electric unloader and mounted a feedbox on an old truck.  Since then the feeding has been much less of a chore, and how the cattle still love ensilage. 
      All of our, farming was done on dry land ground.  We never had the urge to put down a well.  We hope we are leaving our ground in as good or better condition than when we started way back in 1940.  Our son, Kenneth's farm adjoins ours.  Our other son, Charles, died in a car-truck accident on June 23, 1963.