[AT] A cow and farming ramble

[Larry D. Goss]

Your ramble reminded me of a conversation that occurred earlier this
week while we were visiting in eastern Ohio.  A dairy farmer was telling
us some of his experiences with new-age farmers.  He said the one that
"took the cake" was a lady who came to him to buy a couple of cows.  She
only wanted ones that needed milking on Monday through Friday because
she didn't want to tie up her weekends!  He said he sent her over to
some of his Amish neighbors.

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of
robinson at svs.net
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 10:33 AM
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
Subject: [AT] A cow and farming ramble

     I had originally posted this message to one of my list where we
were 
discussing cows. I thought since much of it is farm and tractor related
I would 
post it here as well.

############################################

     My family had milked cows since before I was born (1942). My
paternal
grandfather was not really all that good with cows and when he developed
heart
problems (died in 1943) my mother, a former city girl, took over the
milking. I
think they were only  milking 8 or 10 then, all by hand. My father had
taken
over the farming a couple of years before that. She and my father
increased the
herd to about 20 or so fairly quickly and had bought an electric milker.
The
milk was still placed in 8 and 10 gallon milk cans and placed in a tank
of 
water
near the drive for the milk truck driver to pick up daily. The milk
trucks of
that time in our area were just big insulated box trucks with small
doors in 
the
back and sides to sit the cans in. Block ice or dry ice kept them cool.
     My grandfather had been a pretty good trader and had over the years
traded
a house in town for a tiny 10 acre farm where they grew berries and
truck patch
crops. That he traded for a bit larger farm in the next county west of
us. He
then traded that farm for the about 70 acres that he owned when he died.
He
never owned nor used a tractor but had always farmed with horses. Of
course
farming an average sized farm was a lot different then than just a few
years
later. At that time here in Central Indiana an 80 acre farm was
considered an
average sized farm. He had a lot of ground in pasture for the cattle,
horses, a
few sheep and a few hogs. There was also one larger field kept in hay. A
field
of corn, a patch of oats and a patch of wheat used up the rest of it.
When he
acquired the farm there was a crib full of corn there. It was still the
great
depression and the price for corn was so bad that the former owner
decided that
it was not worth the trouble to haul it off so he just left it. My
grandparents
fed some of it and burned the rest in the stove instead of buying coal. 
     My father and a carpenter uncle of his built a couple of small
cabins 
along
a creek that ran through the farm which had an old gravel pit in it. The
cabins
were rented and they charged for fishing there. They put up an outhouse
and
built several picnic tables. One of those cabins was moved to this farm
when
they moved from that farm and I use it yet today as a seed house. It now
sits 
on
a high foundation and has a small garage building attached on each side.

     My father was working a 12 hour 7 days a week night shift at
Allison 
Aircraft in Indy during the war, testing aircraft engines. In 1942 he
bought a
new Ford/Ferguson 9N tractor, plow and cultivator. He was also on the
list to
get a new corn picker. Any new equipment was quite scarce during the
war.
Production was stopped on new equipment just as no domestic cars were
produced
from 1942 until 1945. It was believed that some palms were greased and
the new
picker disappeared before it could be delivered to him (somebody had
money and
was willing to pay a lot more under the table).
     After the war my father began to expand the farm operation. He
built one 
of
the first elevated milking parlors in the county where the operator (my
mother)
stood on a floor about 30" lower than the cows. The cows were let into
the
milking stalls one at a time by opening a door, by pulling a rope, to
the barn
where they waited and then milked, then let out of a door in front of
them 
which
was opened by pulling another rope. An attached milk house held the
electric
milk cooler and all of the washing equipment.  We raised mostly Holstein
cows
for volume but kept an assortment of good Guernsey and Jerseys in the
mix in
order to keep the butter fat content up. My father also began renting
more
ground around the neighborhood to grow grain crops. He also did some
custom 
work
for others. He wanted a second tractor but tractors were still quite
scarce for
a number of years after the war. He ended up buying two old McCormick
10-20
tractors and dismantled both of them making one good tractor out of the
two
which was then painted and received a new set of decals. In 1948 he
bought a 
new
Ferguson TO-20 tractor. He also bought a new Allis Chalmers field
chopper (the
first in the county) and a new Allis hay blower to blow the hay into the
loft.
This was all done with profits from the farm.
     My grandmother (not a farm girl) who understood very little about
the
changing face of farming after the war decided to sell the farm and move
to 
town
about 1950. Sadly (but perhaps much better in the big picture) she could
only
see the checks she was writing going out but could not see the income
coming in
which was much larger than she had ever had in her life.  This left my
parents
scrambling to find a place to farm. My father began selling metal farm
buildings, mostly grain bins and silos, and doing electrical wiring for
a local
electrical contractor. He made enough to make a down payment on the farm
that I
now farm (87 acres at that time). That was in 1951. They soon increased
the
milking herd to a maximum of 45 cows up through much of the 1950's. It
was
common on even fairly small farms to keep a "hired man". They tried a
few times
to have a hired man do the milking most of the week then my mother would
milk 
on
his days off. It just never worked out as they could never find anyone
reliable
and some of the cows would be skipped often. First thing they knew the
cows 
were
drying up so my mother took over the milking again. During many of those
years
we also increased hog production. The sheep were dropped due to an
extreme
excess of dog packs. My father counted 26 in just one pack. We were
renting the
farm across the road and farming just under 220 acres. We also shared a
beef
herd of about 30 cattle on the farm across the road with that owner.
     In early 1954 my father bought a new Ford Jubilee tractor and we
got a 
very
nice late model Ford Country Sedan station wagon. We also began
upgrading much
of the farm equipment. The farm was quite successful during those years.
     In the later 1950's we sold out the milk cows and concentrated on
the more
profitable hog production. Regulations were changing and in order to
stay on 
"A"
milk instead of dropping to "B" milk we were going to have to go big and
all
pipeline bulk milk or get out. Since I hated the milk cows (long story),
my
mother was very tired of them, and the hay and straw production to
supply them
consumed so much land and labor we shifted gears. During the "hog years"
on any
given day there were 600 hogs walking around on this farm. That may not
sound
like a lot compared to today's thousands in one building confinement
operations
but these were not confinement hogs. Those were also good money years.
Like 
most
things in farming that was not to last extremely long either. There was
a wide
spread epidemic of TGE (Transmissible-Gastroenteritis)(sp?). I well
remember
hauling dead baby pigs from the farrowing house by the trailer load
behind the
tractor daily. It was my job to haul them out to the fields where the
sows were
and hack them open so that the sows would eat them which would give the
sows
some minor level of immunity to pass on to the next batch. The "experts"
then
said that the only way to get rid of the disease was to not have a hog
on the
farm for two years. At the end of the two years we decided that we liked
not
having them so well that we then sold all of the hog equipment that we
had been
storing.
     We cribbed ear corn and I remember spending an awful lot of time
grinding 
cow feed and shelling and grinding hog feed. That got a lot better when
we got 
to all hogs. We would just haul corn to the elevator or buy corn there
and had 
it on storage there. Once a week the big feed truck would roll in and
auger 
fill all of the feeders.
     From that point until a few years ago this farm was mostly a grain
farm. I
am now changing that. Too many years of low prices and bad local weather
patterns. While I used to rent extra land away from the farm, exploding
land
values here and higher cash rents that the big guys are willing to pay
has made
that impractical. We are sandwiched between the exploding city limits
(now 1/4
mile away) and a large family seed corn and food grade corn business
that by
nature of its speciality status can afford to pay much more for farm
land use
than any regular farmers can.
     That is the reason that my efforts on this farm (now 100 acres at
this
location) today are now changing direction again. I am hoping that a mix
of
Horse boarding, Hay and straw production, U-pick pumpkin patch, U-cut
Xmas 
trees and a small farm market will once again make it a viable business
worth 
the labor. It is the also in the plan for the farm market to sell a
little wild 
bird seed that we will grow and package here. The U-pick pumpkin
operation will 
kick off each year with a hopefully large "Pumpkin Festival" on the
first 
weekend of October each year.
      Certainly not the first change of direction and not likely the
last.

-- 
farmer, Esq.
      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson at svs.net

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