story of nick berns

nick berns is a white man in his 30's and he had a good life with a decent amount of money,  with a home,  job, and a stable life everything was working out for the young man till he started developing a gambling and alcohol addiction which eventually left him bankrupt and barely could afford to keep his home till he saw a ray of hope in the form of the homestead act which he took without blinking an eye.

Nick's hardships to come

nick a man who lost everything struck gold

because the poster claimed only needing 10$ for an entire piece of land in the great planes of colorado which he could use to rebuild his life. although this great deal comes with a promise to farm there for 5 years.

nick may not know at the time that only 

40% of people shall succeed because 

the lands had very little wood, extreme weather, harsh winters, and summers that bring loads of grasshoppers to your crops. 

nicks new friends

during Nick's travel to the new land he was riding the union pacific as he met a couple of interesting people there was a family of Exodusters their names were joseph and amelia there was also a Chinese immigrant by the name of wang. both of them had tragic stories that made nick ashamed of himself because to think that nick was put in this situation due to his stupidity while joseph and amelia were talking about the hate crimes, discrimination, and their escape from him crow south, they also talked about what they plan to do in colorado they intend to raise cattle and crops while attempting their luck and striking a gold deposit so that they can start a family and achieve the American dream.

nicks new friends

now it wangs turn he came here from his hometown trying to achieve the American dream but all he's faced was unfair treatment and very heavy labor until he saw the poster and the next day he found himself talking with nick, joseph and amelia about his plans wang was a gambler so he planned to mine as much as possible so that he can gamble some of them and hope to get big profit and use it to hire people that would work on his land. while hearing these stories and plans nick realized that he has no plan whatsoever.

nicks journey

It's been a couple of months till nick arrived at his land and he's been pretty busy trying to mine some gold, silver and grow some crops however it has been difficult the scarce amount of wood has made things pretty hard because nick had to become a sodbuster. nicks plan involves him gathering enough money to buy as much cattle and crops then sell it to people in the boomtowns nearby as a way to make even more money but the lack of rain and the summer heat has made it near impossible for nick to grow some crops until he learned the dry farming method which mad things a little easier 

nicks attempt at surviving winter

nick berns survived a full-year struggle but now he's in the winter season which is brutal compared to the other seasons so nick has been trying to prepare by gathering and canning as much food as he can and he also started gathering firewood and fur to keep himself warm. 

Its mid-winter and nick has underestimated how brutal this is. until one harsh cold week made him sick so nicks in a dire situation he attempted to save as much energy as possible and ration his food because there was no way that nick could go to a doctor in this weather.