Todays, Survey Says

The current Survey Says options struck me as being awfully limited when I thought back to what my grandparents spoke of doing 100 or so years ago. They for sure raised hogs, grandad enjoyed doing that his whole life. They also always milked at least a few head before evolving into being a dairy farm. They managed to raise eggs for a local hatchery as well. No sheep or ducks but they did feed out the calves they didn't keep to improve the dairy herd with. They raised their own feed on the homeplace and a couple of other small places they sharecropped. They sold a little grain for a cash crop and were big gardeners with a few fruit trees, grape vines, and berry bushes. Naturally they had their own meat. They weren't unusual. 100 years ago, perhaps half the people in this country lived this way. I think very few farm people stuck to just one or two of those options. gm

Thats how my Grand parents lived except done steers in Sullivan Co Mo.

We lived that way growing up on the farm.

All true enough, but to me, ''farming for a living'', or ''living off the farm'' means making enough money from a few enterprises so that you can buy what you need to live and don't have to grow everything yourself.

That's the way I grew up too...makes you appreciate things that most take for granted..

I agree with your examples. They posed the question for 100 years ago. It was true back then as well. Didn't your folks send cream cans to the milk plant or something of that nature too? I also noticed that by the time I finished my two-finger typing for this post, the topic had changed. Life's kinda like that. gm

Ya, I have plenty of old pictures here of a diverse operation. I don't know if they seperated the cream or not. I doubt it. There was a milk plant a mile from home since the horse and buggy days. It was open until 1975 in fact, and I had a milk route from 73 til they closed. They bought whole milk in cans, so there was no need to seperate it. When I was a kid myself, we had chickens and a hog along with milking cows. The dairy cattle were the money maker though. There was a grape vine, a few different kinds of apple trees and a pear tree.The grapes are gone, but we still have apples, pears and a peach tree. My mother always gardened, but not on the scale that my wife does. The wife even has a good sized commercial greenhouse, but that stuff is all her thing and she does it because she wants to. We wouldn't have to do all that, and we wouldn't if I had to take care of it at the end of the day.

I just have to chuckle when somebody buys a few acres and says they're going to grow enough food to be self sufficient. If I say anything at all, it's just to make enough money from one thing so you can buy everything else and don't have to mess with every animal and crop on the face of the earth. They usually think twice when I ask if they're going to grow wheat and make their own flour too?

Most farmers today would be just like a city person on a farm like that.What you described is the way I was raised up until the 1970's.Now my wife and I have gone to growing almost all our vegetables and preserving them,much of the meat we eat is deer meat and chicken.We do it mostly to get fresh good quality food that is not tainted with chemicals.

The early history of homesteading in the Midwest can be interesting.

A up until the 1950s low crop yields and high transportation costs ate much of the profit of growing grain in areas long distances from the mills. Feeding crops to livestock increased profits. Many counties in western Iowa imported grain to support livestock production. Crops were much more diverse back then, also horses typically consumed a quarter of a farms crops as hay, pasture and oats. Diverse livestock allowed mom and the kids to handle the chickens and milking. Egg and milk checks typically went to mom to support the house and buy clothes. Money to buy food was scarce, so farms raised their own food as much as possible. Early farming was often just a subsistence, the goal was to establish a homestead and break or clear land for cropland. High grain prices during war times paid off a lot of mortgages.

That ties in with an old dealer ad that was with an article in the new Hart Parr Oliver Collector magazine. I'd have to get up and look, but I think it was from March 1954. When you compare the prices then with acres farmed, yields and commodity prices, they really weren't better off financially. One that I remember was for a new Massey Harris mounted picker. The regular price was something around $1495, but on sale right now, one only, for $995. Think about paying for that back then. The guy who bought it was probably doing custom picking up until the snow was too deep for several years until he made that back. It wasn't something that an 80 acre farm would buy new for their own use. Used tractors in the ad, Oliver 70s, John Deere As, $600 to $1000. Used balers, $500-$600 or more. You didn't have a whole lot left to go to town and buy all the things I can go buy now with what I make farming.

Ya, the price of a lot of new and used stuff looks high now, but it's all relative. I can see now why Dad wouldn't buy a new Oliver 1800 of Ford 6000 like I wanted him to back then. The bank would have had the farm long before one was paid for.

Yep, very similar here in SW Mo. Except when Grandma Lula, from town, wanted to raise some guineas out here on the farm, Pop laid down the law. NO, Lula, no guineas! Sorry! I don't know, but I think the guineas must have been pretty loud and annoying.

Probably the corporate farms has put an end to that era.

One of our creme checks would pay the electricity bill. for the month, others went for food misc, but we had neighbor he was tight and strict, They would use electricity until the minimum was used and then he would shut it off, so they had to go maybe a week with out power, Glad my dad wasn't that tight!

So did we Tony.

dad told of how great grandpa tried to grow potatos for a cash crop one year on his farm . dad said it was about 40 acres of potatos anyway the price tanked and great grandpa had to go to the lumber camps in northern minnesota during the winter to earn money to pay the bills .that meant grandpa had to quit school in the 5th grade to run the farm. great grandpa lost the farm in the depression . grandpa went to barber collage in 1930 and was a barber in eyota from 32 to 42. grandpa built a chicken coop on the edge of town and grandma always had a big garden. dad told how he and his older brother went around eyota peddling eggs and vegtables in the 30s for extra money. in 42 grandpa bought his bils farm . they had pigs chickens a few cows and beef cows. in 48 grandpa and his bil swapped farms . dad started the dairy in 52 and sold the cows in 96. mom got a couple lambs and started
a flock in 56 she also raised chickens.dad died in 2020.and left the main farm to my sister and brother they sold it in 2021.