I didn’t dispute the accuracy of your anecdote. I object to your characterization of this event as illustrative of there being “a whoooooole different culture out there” - hence the suggestion that you not paint with such broad strokes.
Yes, grew up on one, still in the family.
Again, I find it hard to believe that this would happen among “citified” people who have advanced to being quite respected in their fields. This was also not the only example of this type of thing, and not the only people involved, by the admission of my buddy, who grew up there.
I think there IS something going on there much more than there is in the urban areas. I stand by my statement.
Helped band calves? Yes.
Helped butcher steers? Yes.
Cut corn with a corn knife? Yes.
Built fence? Yes, and have creosote burns to prove it.
Stacked hay bales in 100 degree heat? Yes, and have knot on my head from passing out in the heat to prove it.
Toted water when spring ran dry in 100 degree heat so cows wouldn’t all die? Yes.
Attempted to build par 3 gold course in middle of pasture? Yes.
We raised Angus cattle, the farm across from us raised Arabian horses. Unfortunately, Mr. Tyler (our neighbor) got kicked in the head and was not only merely dead, but really quite sincerely dead.
While growing up, my dad had a 75 acre ranch with about 35 head of Angus. While it was a working farm, it wasn’t for income. We also had horses. Various brief stints with chickens and hogs.
I’ve fed, herded, tagged, milked, vaccinated and artificially inseminated cows, built fences, bush-hogged, and shoveled more shit than I ever want to see again.
I hauled hay in the summer. Good money, HARD work…
Knowing that this type of work was what I was faced with without an education, I used that as a motivation in college.
I grew up on a New Zealand dairy farm. If I never step foot on one again it will be too soon.
Hours: approximately 28 per day
Time off: nil
I am a city boy from here on through
Well my parents knew some people who lived on a farm does that count? Actually I stayed with these people when my parents were away on vacation one year for ten days or so. I helpped milking the cows and even helpped give birth to one of the cows while I was there. I was quite young, 9-10, so I don’t remember much about it though.
I grew up on a farm that was similar to An Arky’s experience, except it was all cattle. We also had a big garden where we grew corn, potatoes, beans, strawberries, etc. etc. Between the cows and the garden, we grew a large percentage of the food we ate.
I couldn’t get off the farm fast enough. I live in the city now, and wouldn’t dream of living in the country again. Now that I’m older, I have respect for people who farm and who enjoy the work, but I ain’t one of them.
for a time my parents and i lived on 5+ acres of our own and kept our expanding herd of horses there. (we went from 3 adults 1 foal to 4 adults 1 foal in the intervening years.)
so mucking stalls, holding up a horse’s head while the skin on her forehead was being stitched back into place, bailing out flooded stalls in mid-winter, loading/unloading hay and sawdust, dealing with post-delivery afterbirth, giving shots, treating wounds (and we’ve had a doozy or two on occasion; first foal had an accident-prone/semi-self-destructive streak for a while), breaking to saddle, keeping fences intact, rehanging barn doors after idiot horse pulls them off track, chasing strange horses through the neighborhood when they break out of their paddocks in the middle of the night…
my husband has this big dream about buying a large property to retire to and keep horses on.
you’ll notice we’re not there already. i’ve at least convinced him that it’s impractical up until retirement. i’m in no major hurry to take that full load on again just yet. i’ll settle for the still-daily stall cleaning, feeding and occasional vet duties while we pay board for someone else to worry about fences taken out by drunk drivers, wells running dry, mini-tornadoes taking off sections of the barn roof…
I detassled corn for about 3 weeks when I was 14, before I was fired for missing too many tassles in one row.
Detassling is removing the “tassles” from the tops of corn stalks. The tassles hold the pollen, so this is done to prevent pollination. I think it’s to produce feed corn for livestock. I was a town kid, so I didn’t know much about farms. In Iowa though detassling was a common summer job for teens. Most of my friends did it too.
I hated it. My allergies were out of control, it was hot and we’d have to keep working in the rain unless there was lightning nearby, and the day I was fired I’d been walking through knee deep mud. My father’s always said I probably subconsciously wanted to get fired. Hell, I wanted out of there, I just didn’t intentionally miss the stalks.
At least I made enough to pay for half of a Honda Express. Man I loved that scooter.
A working farm? Yep you could say that.
Gramps (maternal grandfather) was a grazier who owned or leased around 750,000 acres at one stage. If you were to add together the blocks owned by my parents, uncles and cousins now there’d still be a bit over 200,000 acres.
Primarily sheep, some cattle, winter cereals and some irrigated cropping.
Up until maybe 10 years ago, my grandparents ran a 300+ acre dairy farm. My mom used to live with her parents, so when I had my 6 weeks of summer visitation with her, that’s where I’d be. Even after she stopped living with them (when I was in 3rd or 4th grade) we’d spend a lot of time there.
My mom and grandparents were always worried that if I got hurt on the farm that my dad would sue them. When I was finally old enough that they stopped worrying (11-early teens), my grandparents stopped farming (all of their kids were out of the house, and they weren’t making money). But I’ve helped milk, bail hay, herd cattle in and out of the barn, etc.
Owned a chicken farm.
- It’s more fun to kill the culls by cracking them like a whip than putting your foot on the neck and yanking the legs.
- Don’t wear that nice hat in the chicken house, you can never clean it.
3.The first time you use a tractor to bush hog, it’s fun. Soon it’s tedious. - A joke: A farmer won $1,000,000 in the lottery. When asked what he planned to do with it, he answered “I’ll probably just keep farming 'til it’s gone.”