Over the years, "big money"
ranged from 16 cents to 25 cents per tie. Men worked from dawn
until dark, six days a week. In winter, sometimes at -30 degrees
F, they worked in their shirtsleeves. Men dragged the ties to
the riverbanks and piled them until the spring freshet swept them
downstream to a rail line, then they were loaded onto cars and
shipped out. Men tried to outdo each other and the record for
ties cut in one day is said to be one hundred. At least that's
the story.
Meanwhile, Hilda and the children
lived at home and managed very independently. As the children
grew able, they helped with household and outside chores in the
garden and with the animals. Like many women, Hilda made money
for the family by selling eggs, homemade bread, milk, and garden
produce to the families of the employees of the nearby East Kootenay
Sawmill which operated until the mid 1920s. The children were
frightened by the East Indian and Chinese millworkers they saw
when they delivered their goods to the mill. Although they had
pigs, chickens and 5 milk cows, they had no horses or machinery
so the ten acres of slough grass to feed the cows over the winter
was cut by hand with scythes. It was raked with wooden hand rakes
and hung over posts and racks to dry in the sun. Then it was packed
on their backs three quarters of a mile to the hay shed. They
climbed the ladder carrying a pitchfork of hay, dumped it and
stamped it down. When Gabriel was gone Hilda and the children
did it by themselves.
