Winnie's Way: Fur Farm Forey Forments Financial Fiasco

In 1927 my father became very ill with an ailment doctors were unable to diagnose. He and Mother felt it must be related to his job as a chemist for an oil company. So Daddy felt he must resign and seek a healthier occupation. He resigned his job and moved us to Trinity County where he had been born and raised.

Jobs there were scarce to he planned to make a living by supplying silver fox and raccoon pelts to a hungry 1920s market.

Daddy and his cousin signed partnership papers, saving the cousin’s farm and butchery from foreclosure by providing a place for daddy’s fur farm. Daddy’s cousin also provided a source of meat to feed the fur animals.

Cold snowy winters would make for prime furs.

A big new house was built for the family. The animal pens were built and things moved along as planned and the foxes moved in. On a hot July day, the men butchered a beef. Mother gathered the butchering scraps and offal and was cooking feed when she heard a sound — the house was on fire. It burned to the ground. When she tried to save the partnership papers, mother was badly burned. Daddy took her to Woodland Clinic where she surprised the doctors by living. She came home after Thanksgiving scarred , crippled, and still not healed, but their money had run out and they were in debt.

Daddy brought the foxes, ‘coons, and pens to our Papoose Ranch. The partnership ended when the agreement burned.

Mother got a job teaching a small rural school the fall of 1929, a job that lasted only until spring 1931 when the depression made it unavailable so we moved to the Papoose Ranch and depended entirely on it for our living through the Depression years until World War II opened up the job market.

The fur farm came to nothing. Distemper killed some of the foxes, and the depression killed the market for silver fox fur so by the time we sent furs to market, they paid little more than the shipping charges.