I grew up farming. I would have stayed and taken over but there were a lot bitter feelings with dad and his step siblings. It became apparent that life would have too much drama.
I went to college and got my teaching degree. I taught for 15 years and bought my home place. In order to get my foot in the door I worked summers, nights, and weekends for a neighbor for nothing more than a side of beef a year. I am now taking that 1000 acre farm over as there are no descendants and neither of us wants to see that family farm disappear. I worked harder than I ever thought I could for no money to prove myself to the farm's owner. My wife thought I was crazy. She now sees the value in it. My business partner still works the farm but is slowing down greatly as age takes its toll.
I don't think the work ethic is there anymore to do what I did. A while back we were at a function and one of the house reps from our state was there. She turned to me and asked what it would take to get more new farmers started. I told her that the group that need to be coming in had parents that farmed through the 80's and those kids were steered from farming. I have a cousin whose dad refused to let him come back to the family farm - he wanted better for his son. They know that the gadgets that they hold in their hands translate into gadgets for machinery but don't have the skill set to do without them. They also lack the budgeting to have a payday a couple of times a year and make that pencil out in lean months.
We use older tractors - 30 and 40 series Deeres. We have one from the 90's for planting. I have one tractor with a bank note. There's $7,000 left on it and when it's done I don't need to get anything else newer. That doesn't jive with the "trade in your year old cellphone" generation.
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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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