Farming

Category: Just Stuff | Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:38 am

My youngest sister sent me an email and told me her son joined Future Farmers of America and would I send him some information about our family and farming. I had to go back to 1943 or 44, the first I remember farming. I wasn't even in school. The first I remember wasn't farming but of having goats. We lived in a house on a ravine and Mom had to tie my middle brother to a tree or he would roll down the hill into the ravine. Next we moved to a farm near my Dad's brother, in "the sand". My dad had a mule Jenny that he pulled the plow with until my Uncle finished planting and then he borrowed his tractor. We raised mostly corn there. A couple years later we moved to another farm about three mile away. Before Dad worked in a factory at night and farmed in the day. When we moved here we just farmed. We planted corn, alfalfa, wheat or oats and soybeans. We also had cows, hogs, chickens,and turkeys. We had a big garden and several fruit trees. We had a tractor, disc, and harrow to prepare the ground for planting but nothing to help harvest. One farmer had the machinery and came to each farm to help. I remember one year we kids helped pick corn. The horses pulled the wagon and we walked along and pulled off the ears of corn and threw them in the wagon. We only had to do that one year. We planted watermelon and cantaloupe one year but they were labor intensive and didn't sell well. We moved to another farm up by Peoria but I can only remember having animals, gardens and grape vines. And Dooley broke her elbow and later the measles. The measles she passed to the other of us. Until I was in high school we always lived in the country but after that we always lived in town. My parents, grandparents and great grandparents all farmed in central Illinois. Farming sure has changed since we grew up and no one in the family farms anymore or even has animals. I am not sure I want to say those were the good ole days but I am not sure they were, it was a lot of hard work. Wannabe

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dooley wrote on Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:55 am:

Gee, you remember some of the same things that I do. I wonder why. I remember the mule named Jenny. She used to open the gates and let the cows into the corn fields. Dad would get so mad. I was five the first time I broke my arm and the second time it was on my seventh birthday. What a birthday. We moved to a new old house and I broke my arm. I do remember the itching when I had the measles with that cast on my arm. The third time I broke an arm I had kids of my own. I think mom and dad were happy that I didn't make it a yearly thing. dooley

glendann wrote on Mon Nov 05, 2007 5:56 am:

I remember walking behind a wagon pulling corn and throwing it in the wagon too.That was hard hot work in the summer here in Texas.Worse was hoeing it and then hoeing and chopping cotton.It was in a way the good ole days as kids wasn't sitting and watching TV all time as we didn't have one.I remember the first tv .It was a philco and it reminded me of a gas pump :).yep Farming was really tough on everyone.

Droopy wrote on Mon Nov 05, 2007 7:34 am:

I helped with the potatoes when I was young, before the potato picking machines were invented. It was hard on one's back. The furrowing, weeding, cutting of grass and then digging them up. Hopefully the modern farmers have good machinery to help them.

Frank wrote on Mon Nov 05, 2007 9:27 am:

I wasn't around in the days before the potato picking machine but even with it it was hard work. Never much of a farmer myself but still did my fair share of labour :)

Farming in the traditional sense is pretty much a dying occupation. I think it will have a resurgence when more biofuels are needed but even then most of it will be done with large machinery.

wannabe wrote on Mon Nov 05, 2007 5:08 pm:

Writing about farming brought back a lot of memories. I wish the "world" would slow down but not back to those times. Wannabe

Anitra wrote on Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:02 pm:

Back when my Grandpa was still actively farming I was a toddler, and my clearest memory is of the milking, because both me and the cat would get some of the milk fresh and warm from the cow. :)

As I grew older, I always spent at least a month each summer with Grandpa, but the only thing he actively kept up was the front yard and the flower beds around the border. We would harvest some fruit from the overgrown orchard, from the spreading blackberry vines, and from the wild huckleberries and salal berries in the woods. I'd do a bit of veggie gardening.

I'd visit friends that still have farms, and even help out with morning chores before the sun came up, but when you do it only a few times a year it's a lark. I still remember the food a lot better than I remember the chores. :D