Hmph…you can tell immediately that the dumb guy in the picture is not a farmer! He’s standing ON the rows of wheat instead of placing his feet BETWEEN them! Everyone raised rural knows better than that! 😉
My ancestors broke ground on Midwest prairies. My dad farmed initially with horses and was paying over $100,000 per machine by the time they retired. I left long ago and didn’t return to see that area for 40 yrs. [My folks had moved away.] Then I spent a week there – with my mouth hanging open! 😮
I’d been hearing stories from uncle/cousins still in the area. Cousin with how-many-thousands of hogs…with full breeder operations too. Buying up all the farms where our school bus used to stop and pick up other kids. GPS driven tractors. 😮 My life-long friend and I sat on the road as a “Star Wars” type machine trundled past. It’s WHEELS towered over our car! 😮 😮
Her son, who works in one of the machinery plants, gave me descriptions of field implements that cover about half the field in one swipe. Well nearly. Of course the fields are getting gigantic. This change just within my lifetime….
Which is all well and good. I’ve always said: Technology is GREAT………..{ until it’s not } And we don’t quite yet have R2D2 and 3CPO…..not quite.
Compared today with my era….like our whole family “walking the beans”. {anyone recognize what that is…er, was?} Walking every square foot of those acres, down beside each row of soy beans and pulling up “volunteer corn” from year before, morning glory vines, thorny jimpson weeds,and big old button weeds. I specifically remember one evening, we were heading back towards the house. My brother and I were probably 4 and 7 yrs old and had been out with our parents all day. No babysitters. We’d long since stopped pulling weeds and were bawling our heads off. So tired and the house was SOOO far away. We doubted we could still walk that far AGAIN! But of course there was no choice. Parents were trying to encourage us… but they were still out there too. Farming is hard.
Or….mixing the nitrogen-fixer/ water/ soy beans with your hands in a bucket before pouring it into the planter every few rounds. Then move the tractor/wagon ahead several rows and do it again. Carrying 40-60 pound fertilizer or feed seed sacks from the wagon to the bean or corn planter …..well before my small frame should have done that many pounds. After a couple years, my parents must have heard something – told me to wait til I was bigger to lift that much. Yeah, we didn’t know back then. You just did what it took….the whole family did. They had to invent stuff to keep my elderly Grandpa off the machinery….cuz he was getting too forgetful. But still wanted to do his part!
Baling hay was a time for neighbors to come and help each other. If a field is ready…cut, dried, raked [a machine] into rows…….then hay time. One drives the tractor pulling the baler and the hay rack. Several on the hay rack plucking up twine-bound bales shuffling out from the baler. At least two stacking the bales high. We all knew how to balance while the rack went over bumps and hills. And the ladies….yes, it really was that way…had a big meals and lots of “lunches” between dinner and supper. Then the whole crew would move on to the next farm that was ready among that group of family, friends, and/or neighbors. In that day, it took too many people for most single families to do by themselves. ‘Sides, it was more fun.
My boy cousin was killed in a car accident right at corn harvest. The next day the whole community showed up at their farm and just quietly harvested ALL of their corn until it was done. The grieving family only came out to thank everyone. That’s the way it was done. Dunno now.
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How are we going to survive if the machines shut down in THIS era. Even my era relied on diesel, machines, chemical fertilizer, seed came from huge companies…. A couple EMPs or even war….and we’re back to my grandfather’s era.
No one knows how to do that anymore. Technologically or SOCIALLY. Our communities are not ready either. We don’t live next to our grandparents and cousins. We haven’t known our friends since Kindergarten. Quaker Oats, Sara Lee and Tyson will not be in business if we have some deal-breaker event.
I want to live where people still do agriculture in small ways.
OldMtWoman ….sorry, get carried away with my old tales
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This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by
OldMt Woman.