[AT] History Exam, now kid memories

[RonMyers at wildblue.net]

Farmer my Gt. Gt. Gt. grandfather who came out to Oregon in 1843 had 640
acres we have always had large farms out here. I grew up on 160 acre farm
we had Jersey milk cows and pigs and Plums and Peaches and a 5 acre hay
field and lots of pasture so it was mix of things that we had to do to get
the income. OH we did not have a tractor that run.
We mowed and brought the loose hay in then filled the field with cull
fruit from the packing sheds to dry and feed the hogs. We sold the cream
and fed the milk to the hogs with the fruit cook in a large barrel.
My grandfather from the early to middle 1700 at one time owned 1/6 of
100th of New Jersey (about 50,000 acres) given to him from the king. I
guess my family was on the wealthier side of the immigration to America.

Ron

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "charlie hill" <chill8 at suddenlink.net>
>
>
>> Farmer you are a little off base on little tractors to farm tobacco.  I
>> know
>> that is still the case in the Burley belt, etc.  Down here in Flue
>> Curred
>> country the small tractors went by the wayside a LONG time ago.  If a
>> tobacco farmer in eastern NC has a tractor smaller than 75 HP now a days
>> he
>> uses it to mow his yard.
>>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>     I'm not off base Charlie...  :-)   I just have a different set of
> goals
> for our future society than most folks. Quite frankly I don't really give
> a
> rats... err... uhh... whiskers, yeah, thats it, whiskers...   :-)   about
> the big guys. They can make needed crop changes and in many cases nurse at
> the government teat to get along. They may not not like the loss of income
> level (who does) but they have a chance to survive. Nobody in any
> occupation
> is guaranteed a constantly increasing income level. All kinds of
> businesses
> go belly-up every day and big farmers like to brag about being a business
> instead of a lifestyle.  I tend to reserve my wishful thinking for the
> small
> "core" family (parents and their children at home) who are in many cases
> devastated by some of these changes and have no base of larger acreage or
> other wealth to help them through. To those little guys farming is a way
> of
> life instead of "just" a business. The guy with a thousand acres can grow
> soybeans or hay or other crops even if it makes less or he don't like it
> but
> the guy on 3 or 4 acres can not make enough on a lower value crop to
> subsist. About all he can fall back on is a truck patch and if he is not
> near a large population center he has little chance of that. I know many
> others don't care any more about that little guy than I do the big guys
> but
> in my mind he is not only as valued as part of society as the big guys but
> is maybe even more valuable.
>
>     I found it very interesting when the reporters with the troops were
> filming the efforts in the early stages of the Iraq war to get food out to
> the people. When they stopped to deliver food to a lot of what we would
> call
> the poor subsistence farmers they were told by those little farmers to
> take
> the food on to someone else because they did not need any food. They were
> eating as well as ever.
>     It is pretty scary how concentrated in the hands of a few our current
> food supply is. I sure would like to see a zillion little producers
> growing
> our food instead of these big companies.
>     If you have a wire wheel you can knock out quite a few spokes and keep
> going. If you build a wheel with 3 big spokes you only have to lose one to
> bring collapse.   :-)
>
>
>
> --
> "farmer"
>
> Francis Robinson
> Central Indiana, USA
> robinson at svs.net
>
>
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