Snake Farm

“she picked up the snake like it was a toy, she charmed the snake but not the boy…”

-Grandma Frankie

This place used to be a snake farm - no joke. Sure, Great Grandpa Lem grew winter wheat, just like all the neighbors, but when the old silo wasn’t full of grain, it was used to hold snakes - by the thousands. Lem would not only trap snakes on the farm and in the surrounding countryside, but he’d make a trip every couple weeks all over South Central Kansas and Northern Oklahoma, paying school children “a quarter a critter” for any snake they caught for him. He’d then ship them all over the country and the world - rattlesnakes, bull snakes, garter snakes, advertised in Billboard Magazine and shipped to your door.

Grandma Frankie was never afraid. Some of her earliest memories are sitting in a high chair in the middle of the silo, surrounded by a sea of snakes, while they were fed. It sounds like most folks’ nightmare, but she took it in stride and eventually participated in the family business, trapping and handling better than anyone around.

Now, we have an average number of snakes around here. When they don’t catch us by surprise (I still might scream first), we greet them and thank them for their services.