care”. The third step in the admission process would be to classify the inmates to improve “personal treatment as well as …the common comfort of the household. Lastly, would be to instruct the individuals any rules of the home. Also identified were three things that required special attention in poorhouses: cleanliness, good order, and employment. This was due to “three things in which an average pauper delights, - dirt, disorder, and idleness”. Work requirements According to the museum curator, those living at the Redwood County poor farm were required to work. The men were apparently able to find work with local farmers, and the women doing work on the poor farm itself and/or doing various jobs for other community members. The curator stated that the employment with local farmers usually became permanent employment, and that the farmer’s chicken coop would then be converted into a home for the family to move into. Depression years Contrary to popular belief that the Redwood County poor farm always existed on the current acreage (55 acres), twenty five and a quarter acres were added to the property for four thousand four hundred eighty five dollars on March 8, 1932. However, the biggest change came in 1935. During the beginning of the Great Depression “reliefer” families were placed in a nearby mansion, which caught fire that year. The lumber from the mansion was salvaged and constructed into six cottages on the property for the families. These new buildings were small “shacks” without electricity and share a single well and pump. Accusations came in 1937 that the families living in the colony cottages were not impoverished and were ordered by the county commissioners to vacate the buildings by July 1 that year. The families appealed to a state relief administrator, who intervened and asked the commissioners to continue to allow the families to live at the colony as long as they paid eight dollars a month rent. The county relief officials agreed with this, but expressed a desire for the families to leave as soon as the found available homes. The few years the county poor farm spent as the county colony ended when the colony cottages were put on the auction block. An interesting fact is that one of the cottages on the property continues to be rented out. Later years In the fall of 1939 discussions began advocating that the home be turned into