We worked pretty hard, pretty steady. Milked 3 to 5 cows by hand 7 days a week, morning and night, sold lots of the milk to neighbors, separated the rest and sold the cream. Grew, put up and hauled hay in the Summer and fed it all Winter. Moved a lot of manure, and my Dad didn't ever get a tractor with a loader until I went away to college. Raised lots of hogs and chickens. In the Summer, there were always weeds to tend to, in the garden or in some field. We always cut and hauled in 4 or 5 cords of firewood every year, and hauled coal once in awhile. I always wore out my pants in the right rear pocket, because that was where I carried my pliers--I fixed fence all the time. I also had to pick rocks very often, who knows how many hundred tons I hauled off the fields and piled over the years? There was always something that needed to be done, and my Dad and Mom pointed those jobs out to me if I hadn't noticed them.
I kind of enjoyed field work. It was peaceful and fairly easy, just sitting on the tractor keeping it going where it was supposed to. Summer fallowing was pretty dusty, and we never had real respirators, just tied rags around our faces. Plowing was great!
A couple of months after I turned 13, my parents left on a 2 week trip, leaving me home to take care of the ranch and take care of my little brother. When they got home, everything was in order, the separator and milk equipment was clean, as was the house and barn. I had sold milk, cream and eggs and collected more than $100 while they were gone. I did get in a little trouble for hooking the hay wagon to the tractor and driving it to the local store a mile away to get some stuff, including a case of soda pop. But all in all, my parents were pleased with how I had taken care of things--more or less like they expected me to. I suppose that leaving a 13 year old for 2 weeks today would be considered child abuse or endangerment, but it worked out fine for me.
Since I was so busy all the time, I didn't have as much time for the things some other kids liked to do as they did. But I also never got into any real trouble either. I got along great with my parents and got good grades in school.
I was great friends with my animals, especially the milk cows and bucket calves I handled all the time. They were pets and I still think about some of them 40 to 50 years later.
Working so hard on the farm was good for me. I learned responsibility, diligence and tenacity, was extremely strong physically and learned a lot about mechanics and how things work. And since I grew up that way, I didn't know any other way to live. Being a farm kid had a lot to do with the man I am today. I too think I was lucky to have grown up on an old fashioned working farm!
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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