Inspired by this thread.
While “significant” is up to interpretation, I would say “I visited my cousin’s place a couple of times. They had ten acres, two horses, and a bunch of chickens!” is not, and “Well, I didn’t grow up on a farm. But I was raised in a rural area and spent my summers helping my neighbors plant/bale hay/harvest.” is.
FTR: I was raised and currently (although I’ve nothing to do with it) live on a 300+ acre, 100-head herd dairy farm.
Hi,
I have spent the last 10 years spending time on a friends ranch on weekends and a couple of weeks during the year- doing “real” ranch work- branding, gathering, vaccinating, castrating etc. Feeding, moving water lines, etc. I don’t know if thats significant, but when I go I’m not so much as guest as just one of the people who shows up and works. Sometimes its fun , sometimes its damn hard- but its worth it for the breakfast & dinner :). And its always interesting LOL. Although I live in an semi-urban area, I do manage to keep my own flock of sheep and know what it means to be in touch with the “circle of life” otherwise known as Two Socks the butcher lamb. Don’t worry, I didn’t name him until about two minutes before he was dead. The next butcher lamb is just “that brown lamb”, while his little ewe lamb siblings were named at birth.
Early years on a small farm. Chickens, a pig, large garden, orchard. But in later years spent a few weeks each summer on relatives farms. All in the dairy business. Rounding up the cows twice a day, etc. Wasn’t allowed to milk them since I was a stranger and they’d give less milk.
Could do tractor work, bucking bales, etc.
Oh, I also picked berries and occasionally beans for summer income from about 10 on. Made $6 on a good day.
I married a farmer. However, as she is enamored of Reptilia, I am never sure whether I am living on a farm or in a zoo.
I’ve hauled hay, mucked stalls, milked goats, held kids being disbudded and castrated, held goats and sheep having their feet trimmed, helped birth kids, fed and watered the critters more times than I can count. I have also played veterinary and curator to a wide variety of snakes, lizards, and turtles (with the odd frog, millipede, hermit crab, goldfish, and roach thrown in to keep the boredom at bay). (And for “normal” activities, I’ve spent time caring for cats, dogs, rats, and feeder mice.)
(BTW, I’m a nice suburban kid whose family owned a total of two cats and one dog the entire time I was growing up–and we didn’t get the dog until I was in high school and moving out of the house.)
Spent my summers on my cousins farm which was predominantly dairy and pigs. I have baled hay, gotten the tip of my thumb cut off in a tractor door, herded cows on a bike, bagged silage, spread slurry (eww) and as a a six year old (or maybe a little older, not sure) assisted my cousins of the same age emergency birth a breeched calf. You ain’t seen nothing till you seen three children hauling on bailing twine to drag a calf out feet first.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we shouldn’t expect the vast majority of urban Dopers to chime in announcing their complete lack of experience with farms. 
I grew up on a small (640 acres) mixed farm on Saskatchewan, predominantly grain with a small commercial beef herd. Since moving out, I have spent significant time on the farm quite often - month here, month there, and recently most of a year. Times change; Dad’s starting to get on and has sold nearly all the beef, my brother put up a big ass fence and bought a few bison, an attempt to begin a bit of an orchard has been set back by drought and grasshoppers. Well, everything’s been set back by drought and grasshoppers. Sadly, the small family farm is no longer economically viable. The farm pays for itself and not much more; it’s off-farm income that pays the bills.
I grew up on a small (75 acres) farm. My family raised dairy calves for a local dairy and also a few for beef. We also had horses, chickens, ducks, geese, and of course dogs and cats. My mother also raised parakeets and cockatiels and my father was a beekeeper.
I was a multi-talented farm girl. Since we raised calves, we sometimes had as many as 100 calves to feed on the bottle twice a day, plus put out feed and water. My afternoons and Saturdays were invariably spent herding cows, helping to give vaccinations, ear tagging, castrating, feeding, watering etc.
I complained mightily back then and claimed to hate every minuted of it but I’d give anything to live back on the farm again now that I’m grown and living in relative boredom in suburbia. It was dirty, sweaty and tiring work but I always felt satisfied at the end of the day, like I’d truly accomplished something worthwhile.
Yeah, I live on one. 109 acres, buncha cows (one of our bulls died a few days ago – my uncle is heartbroken), geese, ducks, dogs, cats, guineas, etc. etc, along with wild foxes, bobcats, panthers, and the occasional bear. The land has been in my family for about two hundred years – we still have a slave grayeyard hidden away on the property. We used to have goats but had to sell them because they kept dying on us. All of our peacocks got eaten. Not a bad life, overall, but bringing in the corn just about kills me every damn year.
I grew up on a farm, went to school daily with cow shit caked on my shoes.
No.
I was a town kid but the only source for summer employment in my little Ohio town was farm work–usually on a baling crew. Thus from school-out in early June until the start of football it was up at 5:00 AM and bail hay until dark six days a week. When you got a few years under your belt you could be the crew chief which meant you could spend all your time on the wagon and skip your turn in the barn. Mowing hay (stacking the 60 pound bales in the hay mow) was the worse part of the job.
City kid here. But I spent two weeks each summer on relatives farms around Danville, VA. Milked cows, “stripped” tobacco, then handed and strung leaves. This was the nastiest job I’ve ever had. Fed chickens, slopped hogs. But since I was a kid and didn’t have to do it full time, it always seemed like a lark. Living and working on a farm would have been too hard for this kid.
Done it all, still do but what else do you do in Northern Idaho?
Visited my friend’s Kansas farm for two weeks. I discovered there’s a whoooooole different culture out there.
Me: Do you have an encyclopedia to settle our argument?
(Friend’s) Dad: Uhh…
Grandpa: A what?
Dad: Encyclopedia. It’s… a bunch of books with stuff that no one needs to know.
Note the judgement, and the automatic assumption that his dad, at age 93, wouldn’t know what an encyclopedia even was.
Astounding.
:rolleyes:
I grew up in one of the most rural areas in Canada, and I also grew up reading encyclopedias for entertainment. Do let’s try to use a slightly narrower brush, yes?
I own and live on a beef cattle farm. Raised hogs for a while too, but it’s only cattle now. The way things are with the agricultural economy, it’s a good thing I’ve got an off-farm job.
You can make more net profit from your land renting it to deer hunters than you can by growing crops or livestock. Sad fact, but true.
I grew up as a semi-farm kid, my brothers grew up as real farm kids complete with membership in FFA.
My brothers grew up on the dairy farm in MN. Luckily I am quite a bit younger than they are so I only spent weekends at my dad’s 75 acre farm in VA. There were generally 3 hayings a year, 30+ head of cattle, 4 horses, a small orchard and 2 big-ass gardens. Every fall/winter after the weather got really cold we would head to my step-mother’s family’s place in WV for “butcherin’” (This for the unaware is when you shoot the hog, dunk it in boiling water by the feet, scrub it clean and then procede to gut it and cut in pieces.) The gardens were a little over an acre each and between them and butcherin’ the farm was mostly self sustaining. I also got a chance to witness the de-horning and castration of calves. I also found out that maggots are nasty and unpleasant, pigs stink, hay is quite itchy on 100 degree days and that thistles really hurt if you step on them :eek:
When not at my dad’s place, I was a horse farm girl. I can and have mucked stalls, brought horses in and turned them back out, and all of the chores that go along with having 4 legged animals depending on you.
95% of the time I am grateful that I do not have to earn my living on a farm. The remaining 5% I crave the hard physical labor that leaves you exhausted enough that you can go right to sleep instead of surfing the net until your eyes blur.
I grew up with horses, and spent many many many an hour shoveling and carting manure. And before I was of leagal work age I did ranch type work fro money in the summer, Bulding fences,(And damn they were good fences, I learned to put an extra wheelbarrow full of dirt tamped around the post, those fences will be the last thing standing on earth) and working on tractors(I learned about engines on a couple old ford 9Ns) Feeding livestock and throwing hay bales.
The brush is accurate. This actually happened. Really. I find it hard to imagine this happening among “citified” people who had the equivalent of masters degrees in their fields (which the dad did). I also didn’t say that this was true of everyone, or of you.