Farming in th 60's Quetion

Hey my friends I got to thinking about when I was 3 or 4 would have been around 1965 or 6 my grandfather we called Big Daddy farmed around 40 or 50 acres with a 8n ford and grew cotton. He hired people to chop and pick it. I remember playing in the cotton trailer I didn't realize I was actually working packing the cotton down. I would always run out on the front porch and cry when I heard the tractor crank up and him leaving but he would always see me and come take me with him. I farmed a lot of acres standing between his legs driving or setting on his leg. I'm sure I aggravated the hell out of him but he didn't mind. We would pull the trailer to the gin and go into the general store while waiting and buy candy and eat it on the ride back home. He died in 67 and I'm glad I have those memories of him. But what I was wondering is how much money do you think he would have cleared after paying for everything labor, fuel seed and candy! This would be in Fayette County in west Tennessee. Just wondering how we had everything we needed on that little bit along with my dad working driving a dump truck. It sure was a good time and wonderful memories that I cherish. Oh and by the way I learned the hard way to listen when he told me not to touch that pretty orange manifold on that 8N when we came home one night! Thanks.

That is a nice story. I never knew my grandparents, My dad was 52 when I was born.

I was born on my grandpa's 70th birthday. I would ride on a plank stuck in the hitch of the old Oliver 88 and cultivator for hours on end with him. I got to pick the rocks he turned up.
Same story about stopping in town on the way home. Grandpa lived in town. It was a little tavern however. He would have 1 shortie beer and I got a soda. My 3 sisters thought I was spoiled as hell. They didn't know I just handled 2 ton of rocks that day. LOL.

Great lunchtime reading today, thanks for sharing! It's hard to figure how farmers working similar size land made a living around here as well. I've got fond memories just a little later than that, same thing, riding along on the JD 2010 we had, the old D7 dozer, and anything else a young kid that liked tractors, trucks, equipment etc. My long time friend and farmer worked all the ground here in those days and he'd have you ride along any time. I have fond memories going back to those times and until the last days he was farming when I worked for him as a 2nd job. I would not trade those memories for anything. I reflect back to those days of barbed wire fences everywhere, crop fields, pastures and farmsteads, before the state road here was connected with the interstate and or major highways. Can't forget the general store either, that place had everything and then some. I don't particularly care for what it has become now, but there are good sides to it just the same.

I remember my folks talking about how they used to pick cotton in their early years, and how they hated it! However, they weren't much for story-tellin', so just when and where this took place is long gone now. Wife and I have boxes and boxes of old photographs, and don't have a clue about any of them. A few have some pencil writing that is quickly fading away. No more family, so nobody else to ask about the history.

I've always envied people who had a family past they were happy to keep alive.

Alas, I have no kids, so guess there really isn't a problem with not having that info. I s'pose one day someone will come along and find some neat old photos, mixed in among a lot of basic, old B&W memories forever lost in time.

Grandpa was 64 and retired when I was born, he part-time farmed most of his life, owned the General Store the last 30 years he worked. Always said he never made more than $10K per year in his life, yet died a rich man at 97. This farm is 50 acres, and when they bought it, was mostly fruit, berries and vegetables- more than enough for a part-timer plus a full-time hired man and migrant harvesters. Plus the two or three cows, hogs, and chickens, meant more work and more food. The list of people he helped with small loans is long, and he died with a box of store accounts he never collected because "those folks couldn't afford to pay any more than they did".

Cotton was pretty good around that time, probably 30 cents per pound so 150 dollars a bale, in North East Louisiana we made about a bale and a half to an acre, so about 225 dollars an acre gross. Boll Weevils were bad some years and yields suffered. West Tennessee probably had similar yields so your Grandfather might have been grossing 10-12 thousand per year which was good money for the time. Chopping was paid by the row and picking by the pound,stomping and pulling wagon was paid by the day, all labor was cheap. I had the time of my life growing up, we were free as birds, we worked hard but that was normal for the time.

In 1960 I was 3 years old, my father got blinded in a dynamite explosion in 1957 2 months be for I was born..
At 3 years old I must of been too much for Dad to watch being blind so I went to the fields to pick rocks with
my grand father & my Mother. One of the tractor we had back then was a MC Crawler. My Job was to hold the seat
down as Mom & Gramp picked stone on to a stone boat. I thought I was driving & remember it well. Dad & Grand dad
had 57 head of Milking Jerseys & kept 7000 laying hens. Farmed with the first cyclone John Deere A the area dealership
sold & the MC Crawler wish I still had both of them. Being blind didn't bother my dad it was just a inconvience he
could still milk cows, repair & rebuild what ever life threw at him. He later sold the chickens & went into full time
cabinet business doing custom kitchens gun cabinets & china hutch's. If it was made out of Wood dad could build it
than you could buy on the market & later making 180,000 turkey calls For the Scotch Game Co in New York..

My dad farmed with an 8N Ford in the mid 50s to late 60s.Also worked a full time job. Grew wheat and milo in central Kansas.Took his summer vacation to harvest his crop.Used an AC 'all crop' combine. Later ;updated' to an IH SP123 selfpropelled. Man that was a huge machine!Hauled grain in his heavy pickup with tall grain sides. The elevator lifted the whole truck to dump.I remember many hours of rideing the fender.It's also the First tractor I ever drove.I have a 'soft spot' for 8Ns to this day.He always talked of buying a "Big M" Farmall,but got one.He said an M was the best tractor ever built,by anyone.Must be why I like Ms too.

I can't figure out how my dad plowed with his M and I rode with him especially when he came to end of field with the little genius plows and had to pull the rope. I was maybe 5 in the late 40's.
He drowned in the fall of 50.

I made lots of rounds with dad plowing on the Oliver 88, was nice with the fender, or hanging onto the IHC 300 doing harrowing or disking - but had to be kinda quick without a fender to hold on to, and those jobs I quickly learned I was the hired help, rock picker.

Paul

my dad farmed wheat and corn in the 40's and 50's. mostly on land he rented. over the years he had 8N's, a 9N, a TO-20 and a TO-35. i remember before he bought his one row corn picker he would hire gangs of "black" men from Philadelphia to pick his corn. he paid a local guy to harvest the wheat. how he made any moola is beyond me. he also raised chickens and pigs. (before my time)

Danny, you need to read "A Painted House" by John Grisham. Great book about cotton harvest on an Arkansas farm in the early '50's, as told through the eyes of a 6 year old kid. A great read for anyone, but especially for you with your history.

Thanks I'll have to get that book.

Danny , I am going to back you up a few years, late 1953 I was 10 years old. My granddad farmed cotton just like yours. Me and my cousin cried to go with Papa Tom when he hauled the cotton off. rode in the back of the cotton wagon pulled with mules. Left home before day light ,went 19 miles to town, got rid of the cotton, but that steel wheel wagon on that rough gravel road, I still remember the beating we took to this day. That thing would actually bounce off the ground I think. Yea farming has changed.

I agree. That's a great book. I've read it a couple of times. Like most of Grisham's books, the ending isn't quite what you expect.

I am living on 40ac that are left from the 80ac my wife s grandparents raise 12 kids on.Most of it was just woods when my farther in law bought it and had it cleared. There is four stanchions in the barn and there was an old chicken house just abut where our house stands now. The way the uncles talked, they lived on what they shot or trapped,big garden and I would guess some hogs. He had a small truck and hauled to and from the local sale barns.

My dad all of us really raised beef cattle,laying hens,hand milked some cows,raised hogs he must have done pretty well we bought another farm and he sent 3 of us kids to college.
He also bought-sold-traded hounds and beagles and I raised fighting game chickens and pheasants.

Well, I was raised on the "small" farm during the '60,s . Graduated HS in '69 . Your question about "how did they make it on such small income". my Dad was as frugal as they come. We had 80acres and rented another 100. Their were 4 of us "free labor" boys and mom and dad. We used old, small tractors and small equipment. Ferg 20/Olly S55/ later on 2-Case 830,s. Case 600 combine...ALL paid for. We also NEVER used weed spray/chem fert or anything like that. We kept seed for next year from a minimal acreage of certified seed. We learned the correct way to cultivate . We didn't have manure loaders...we WERE the manure loaders. Butchered all our own meat. Only owned one car and an older 3/4 t pick-up truck for farm. So , you see, it is NOT how much you make....it IS how much you are able to KEEP. You see, we never had a bill at the elevator for fert/spray/seed etc. We never had a payment at the bank for machinery. Our grocery bill for a family of 6 was probably the same as a family of 2 in town. We didn't have any car payments. The farm that he paid $ 18000 for in 1961 was paid off in 1975. Did he have a huge savings...he11 no. He paid the bills and raised 4 scrappin boys to value life and family. He retired to mail carrying later on and retired from there and maybe this is where the "payoff" came...He sold the farm (without a realtor/commission) for $ 140,000 in 2002 or so. Put it into investments and the interest paid in full for he and mom s apartment rent. He died at 78 and mom at 83 and with that farm money (us 4 boys never got allowances) and a little inheritance from our grandpa, us boys ended up with $ 100,000 each ...pretty good "allowance" I'd say. Moral of the story....you will never make more than you can spend..so..you'd better spend less than you make. That's how we lived...and it worked. Stop paying everyone else and making a living for everyone else. That's how farmers used to "make it"

I never rode with dad on the tractor when I was a little kid. Mom wouldn’t allow it. She was a nurse and saw too many injured people. I did ride to town a lot with dad in the 49 International pickup but dad never bought me candy or soda pop, that was wasting money. In the summer we would haul oats to the elevator with that pickup. The front end of the pickup was hoisted up with the truck hoist, flooding the engine. The pickup was 6 volt and sometimes it wouldnt crank it over long enough to fire it up. Lucky for us there was a steep downslope going out the door so the guy at the pit and I would get it rolling out the door, dad would pop the clutch and it would be running, with ME running along behind to catch up. We would have to rock it a bit to get the front wheels off the hoist though, then we could get enough momentum to bump the rear wheels over the hoist and it was out the door.

Dad would also pull the Grain-o-Vator to town to pick up feed so I would ride along. In the hot summer going to town wasn’t so bad because we had enough speed up to get a breeze in the windows. Coming home was a different story. A tarp to throw over the ground feed in the Gran-O-Vator cost money and wasn’t even thought of so dad would go to the garden hose the feed mill had and wet down the top of the feed, then came a 10 to 15 mph ride home in a dark green pickup that was hotter than Haities. That pickup was the first vehicle I drove. Wish I had it now just because.

RandyB TRUE WORDS TO LIVE BY, my mom and dad raised 7 of us monsters, 5 boys and 2 girls, my dad used to haul ore from keno hill mine to mayo in the Yukon during the winter on big sleighs with 6 or 8 horse hitches, we never had tractors all the summer farm work was done with horses, in the winter we would go out with dad to the wood lot, and cut load and haul next years wood in on sleighs 16 to 20 cords of wood each winter, we had 3 big gardens and grew all our basic food needs, I can still see the potato field as clear as day in my mind and when your 6 and 8 years old those rows where 12 miles long I swear!! and we where out there weeding and hilling it seemed like all summer! looking back I wouldn't trade it for todays world and how kids are raised today. we learned how to work, we learned the value of a dollar, and as dad and mom both kept telling us "when you have learned to live within your income you'll have learned a lot" . I was born in 1949 and by the time we left home and went to work all of us knew how to do a days work for a days pay , stay out of debt, and keep your word. life seemed simple back then, it sure as hell isn't today.

Mom grew up on a farm, but after getting married didn't want to do that any more. She did not want me and my brothers to miss out on doing some kind of farm work though. So starting around 8 years old we picked berries and beans at local farms. At 12 or 13 some of us got to work on the irrigation crew and bucking hay bales.

Dad was in the Air Force so not much money in the house. We had to give Mom half our wages so she could buy school clothes for us in the fall. The other half was ours to use as we pleased. Certainly learned the value of a dollar that way.

My parents both grew up on hog/tobacco/cotton farms in eastern NC. I was born in 63 and have a lot of fond memories of playing the tobacco barns and making stilts out of the tobacco sticks. Probably my favorite those was riding on the feed mill through the hog fields, grinding feed and filling feeders with my uncles. They kept around 500 hogs and each year would butcher 7 or 8 at home, that was a lot of fun too.