Originally posted by Sheepwheat
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Ok so guys are telling some tales and I’m liking it. 😂
1976er here. Dad was more a cow guy than a grain guy. Wasn’t big on expansion or being very aggressive with farming. He just did a good job on a small and diverse farm, and that was good enough for him. 40 bushel canola at 13 bucks was decent dollars in the 70’s and 80’s, why would you need more land? Lol There are good and bad things about that. I always felt loved, he always had time for me. But it kept this farm in the dark ages and left behind, on the other, negative hand. Not so much with machinery, he was pretty fair at keeping up that way, but when land was cheap, he could have bought lots more, but didn’t. Why, when you're making good money already? Lol And of course, being second generation, raised by depression era German peasants who came to Canada with fifty dollars, he learned frugality in the first order.
Our farm was a throwback to a different era. We were a 1940’s like farm in the 1980’s. At the time I felt embarrassed. Milking cows, separating milk, taking cream cans to town, collecting eggs, slopping pigs, HUGE garden. No one in my class did that . At this time I am thankful because it has allowed for some cool ideas and income stabilization options, because I know how to raise animals, butcher them, etc. There is a huge opportunity in niche markets these days as people shift to wanting to know where and how their food is raised, are more likely to be supportive of smaller, local farms, etc. It opened up a whole new option to me, as land is an impossibility to get your hands on around here, unless you have relatives, are crooked, or won the lotto of genes. Just the way it is. No problem.
My dad died when I was 13. It was obviously a life changing thing. Short term and long term. But I had him long enough to pick up a lot of his ideas and attributes which I value. I never saw him chasing dollars. I knew that life to him was not about that.
Pails to fill the press drill, 11-52 in bags, (hundreds of them), the old 95 combine, 14 foot cultivator, having one short seven inch auger that needed blocks under the tires to reach the top of the HUGE 2911 behlen, rows of wooden bins, spraying with a pool sprayer with a no cab tractor at 25 acres a tank, swather with no steering wheel, picking square bales by hand, spread the 46, spray the treflan, cultivate it twice, harrow with diamond harrows, then seed, all with the same tractor, losing the drill into a steep ditch when it slipped off the transport, butcher a couple hundred chickens, dig an acre of potatoes, somehow I got it done. Somehow I hunted fished, and trapped all the time too! I could no way do that today. It was the passion and the hope of naive youthfulness that gave me the energy.
Along the way, the passion and the hope fizzled, along with the youthful naïveté. Closing elevators, no semi, no control over grades, moisture, when shipping occurs, poor prices in high yield years, great prices in low or no yield years, lack of technological interests, naturally risk averse. Marriage and kids bring a whole new thing, life isn’t so economical, one must make a living in earnest. Lol
Too many bad weather years, losing interest in how it’s all gone, getting left so far behind.... doing it for close to thirty years, mostly ALONE, with less than ideal tools, and far too much physical labor due to affordability issues; it all takes its toll. Having land plucked out from under you by richer neighbors, and the stretch of wet years from hell itself sealed the deal. It was quit altogether, or do something differently. Grain farming alone wasn’t cutting it.
So thanks to the at the time, silly little 1940’s farm we had on the go in the eighties, I was able to adapt and change my farm. We are still on the land, we are doing pretty well for the first time in a very long time, my attitude of defeatism went away, my envy/negative attitude got more under control, stress is far and away lessened, my care about what others may think of me disappeared. I am a better me than I used to be.
Thanks dad.
1976er here. Dad was more a cow guy than a grain guy. Wasn’t big on expansion or being very aggressive with farming. He just did a good job on a small and diverse farm, and that was good enough for him. 40 bushel canola at 13 bucks was decent dollars in the 70’s and 80’s, why would you need more land? Lol There are good and bad things about that. I always felt loved, he always had time for me. But it kept this farm in the dark ages and left behind, on the other, negative hand. Not so much with machinery, he was pretty fair at keeping up that way, but when land was cheap, he could have bought lots more, but didn’t. Why, when you're making good money already? Lol And of course, being second generation, raised by depression era German peasants who came to Canada with fifty dollars, he learned frugality in the first order.
Our farm was a throwback to a different era. We were a 1940’s like farm in the 1980’s. At the time I felt embarrassed. Milking cows, separating milk, taking cream cans to town, collecting eggs, slopping pigs, HUGE garden. No one in my class did that . At this time I am thankful because it has allowed for some cool ideas and income stabilization options, because I know how to raise animals, butcher them, etc. There is a huge opportunity in niche markets these days as people shift to wanting to know where and how their food is raised, are more likely to be supportive of smaller, local farms, etc. It opened up a whole new option to me, as land is an impossibility to get your hands on around here, unless you have relatives, are crooked, or won the lotto of genes. Just the way it is. No problem.
My dad died when I was 13. It was obviously a life changing thing. Short term and long term. But I had him long enough to pick up a lot of his ideas and attributes which I value. I never saw him chasing dollars. I knew that life to him was not about that.
Pails to fill the press drill, 11-52 in bags, (hundreds of them), the old 95 combine, 14 foot cultivator, having one short seven inch auger that needed blocks under the tires to reach the top of the HUGE 2911 behlen, rows of wooden bins, spraying with a pool sprayer with a no cab tractor at 25 acres a tank, swather with no steering wheel, picking square bales by hand, spread the 46, spray the treflan, cultivate it twice, harrow with diamond harrows, then seed, all with the same tractor, losing the drill into a steep ditch when it slipped off the transport, butcher a couple hundred chickens, dig an acre of potatoes, somehow I got it done. Somehow I hunted fished, and trapped all the time too! I could no way do that today. It was the passion and the hope of naive youthfulness that gave me the energy.
Along the way, the passion and the hope fizzled, along with the youthful naïveté. Closing elevators, no semi, no control over grades, moisture, when shipping occurs, poor prices in high yield years, great prices in low or no yield years, lack of technological interests, naturally risk averse. Marriage and kids bring a whole new thing, life isn’t so economical, one must make a living in earnest. Lol
Too many bad weather years, losing interest in how it’s all gone, getting left so far behind.... doing it for close to thirty years, mostly ALONE, with less than ideal tools, and far too much physical labor due to affordability issues; it all takes its toll. Having land plucked out from under you by richer neighbors, and the stretch of wet years from hell itself sealed the deal. It was quit altogether, or do something differently. Grain farming alone wasn’t cutting it.
So thanks to the at the time, silly little 1940’s farm we had on the go in the eighties, I was able to adapt and change my farm. We are still on the land, we are doing pretty well for the first time in a very long time, my attitude of defeatism went away, my envy/negative attitude got more under control, stress is far and away lessened, my care about what others may think of me disappeared. I am a better me than I used to be.
Thanks dad.
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