Wannaskan Almanac for Thor’s Day, July 5, 2018

“We have been on the trail since July 1, 2008, left Pembina and St Vincent, MN about 10:00 am on our way to Northcote, MN, 10 miles out. We plan to take off early in the morning to stay out of the mid-day heat. Pum (the ox) in doing good, and should be ready to go tomorrow. Then it is on to Hallock, where we’ll stay at the Lowell Youngren farm. We should arrive there sometime tomorrow in the early afternoon. Happy trails and a few miles more we’ll spend the night at the Hilde farm.

We gather crowds here and there along our way to Saint Paul. Funny where they find us. We’re heading to the Marshall County Park at Florian for the 4th of July. Then we’ll be off to Old Mill State Park for 2 nights.
We have had such a wonderful time so far Pum is doing well everyone asks about Pum. He is getting pretty smart though when a car or pick-up truck stops he stops too he knows that people are going to pet him and take his picture he is such a ham. But we love him anyway.
Should go for now
Orlin Ostby, Family & Friends”

Steve, Jackie, Orlin, Mandy, Catherine, Pum and Chris at Old Mill State Park July 5, 2008 for Minnesota's Sesquicentennial

Delmer Hagen and his ox, Napoleon, for Minnesota's Centennial 1958

Ten years ago, today on July 5th, my wife Jackie and I were at Old Mill State Park with the Orlin Ostby family and their six-year old Holstein ox named Pum, participating in a historical activity celebrating Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial semi re-enactment of Gatzke, Minnesota resident, Delmer Hagen’s walk of 1958, that he made with his Shorthorn ox named Napoleon, and two-wheeled ox cart, from Pembina, North Dakota to Saint Paul, Minnesota, when he participated in Minnesota’s Centennial celebration. 

Employed by Canadian fur-trader Norman Kittson, in the middle 1800s, First Nations people called The Metis drove long caravans of oxen pulling large wooden two-wheeled carts laden with furs, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Pembina, North Dakota down trails along the Red River of the North, to Saint Paul, Minnesota, a distance over four hundred miles. Returning north, they brought trade goods and farm implements to settlements along the way. This form of freighting goods existed until steamboats and then railroads improved travel.

“An ox is any breed of bovine, cow or steer, that is four-years old and trained to pull,” we said a thousand times during the six-week walk from the northwest corner of Minnesota to the Minnesota State Fair in August. “Pum is a Holstein steer. He weighed 2700 lbs when we started and is down to a fighting trim of 2500 when we finished. He likes to have his picture taken.”

Chris and Pum with a kitten Chris found.

Catherine and new friend

Orlin was 68 in 2008. His wife Amanda and I were in our mid-fifties, Jackie was in her early sixties. Orlin and Mandy’s children, Christopher, was 15, and their daughter Catherine, 12. Two finer adolescent ox-cart drivers could not be found in Minnesota if we had looked for them. Chris and Catherine were the perfect ages for a quiet and slow trip at that point in their lives. Steeped in family history, animal care, and farm life, they were just on the cusp of their teenage years. They had been around cattle and horses all their lives. Both knew how to drive a team. Both were fearless, just like their folks. Orlin’s cousin, Tom Thronsedt, from Jamestown, ND accompanied the entourage, driving a pickup that pulled the livestock trailer.  Mandy drove a truck that pulled the travel trailer in which we ate many a meal.

Chris, Pum, Steve, Jackie, Orlin

Catherine, Mandy and Tom in Metis style clothes

Orlin had the gift of gab and talked equally well in English and Norwegian, so he was always a hit with the older crowds. Amanda was friendly and outgoing too. Chris, who could bench-press 350 lbs, enjoyed effortlessly lifting teenage girls onto Pum’s back for a ride. Quiet, shy and lovely Catherine had her admirers: “Who’s that babe you’re walking beside, Ma?” one of Jackie’s sons asked her by phone. “Careful tiger, Catherine’s only twelve...”

Jackie and Catherine walked beside Pum, and were often cautioned by Orlin to watch for traffic passing by. He kept a keen eye on our safety, as well as Pum’s and his admirers who always had the opportunity to get close and pet him. Pum wore a brass ring in his nose with a short lead attached to his harness, because, as Orlin often reminded us, “He’s just an animal and therefor unpredictable.”

Pum's nose ring

It was in 1958 that Delmar Hagen encouraged 17 year old Orlin Ostby to make the trip in 2008 for Minnesota’s 150th birthday, an idea that Orlin stored away in his noggen until 2003 when he noticed a sale ad for a young team of Holstein steers in Rural Heritage magazine, a publication he had learned about on RFD TV. A ten year old boy named Thomas Philbrick from Candia, New Hampshire had purchased the two young half-brother Holstein calves, that were in training to pull as a team, for his 4H project. The yearlings were from a neighboring dairy farm that raised pumpkins for Halloween and who had named them, “Pum” and “Kin” in a bit of fun. Telephoning Thomas, Orlin learned more about the team, Thomas, and the Philbrick family. After receiving a video tape from Thomas showing Pum & Kin’s progress and skills training, Orlin purchased the team in June of 2003.

Thomas Philbrick, Pum and Kin going through their paces

That same year Orlin approached me to write the story about his Pembina Trail walk. He had read The Raven and enjoyed the stories in it, and so thought I might be interested in his story. As we both worked for Polaris Industries, Inc., in Roseau, Minnesota, we saw one another frequently in passing. One day he introduced himself, told me of what he planned to do and asked me if I wanted to come along...
I was horrified.

Orlin couldn’t know how I so loathed this obviously dull period in our history. I mean he wasn’t talking about retracing the canoe routes of the voyageurs across the Great Lakes. He wasn’t talking about shouldering 35 foot long birch bark canoes across portages or backpacking 90-100 pounds of furs on our backs with the tumplines tight across our straining foreheads, sweat running down our chests. He wasn’t asking me to learn and dramatically recite the poem,“ The Voyageur,” by William Henry Drummond. He wasn’t asking me to join the immigrant wagon train and be a re-enactor. He was asking me to simply walk beside an ox for 400 miles ...

Looking at the old black and white photographs of the ox cart drivers and the miles-long caravans of ox cart trains of the mid-1800s I could not think of a more miserable life of toil and was thankful to have missed the experience.
 “Walk with ox and cart?’ I thought to myself, ‘Good Lord, nothing could be more boring than walking beside an ox one painstakingly slow step at a time!” A person would have to be crazy to do this in the 21st Century, but maybe he had me pegged.

Jackie and Catherine use their umbrellas against the hot July Sun. Pum and Chris plod on lost in their own thoughts.