I have written about the family funny farm, honey farm. It was a large scale farm. We shipped honey out in 55-gallon barrels, by the tractor-trailer load. This picture was take some time in the mid-60's, the largest crop we ever had. The oversized two car garage was full and we stored full barrels outside, the packing company couldn't haul them away fast enough. As I recall my parents netted something like $21,000 that year, about twice what they had paid for a house a five years earlier. The following year, we had a crop failure, barely filling half of the garage with barrels. That is farming.
Did you spend time on a farm as a child?
nope, I have never known anyone who had/lived a farm. now I have a few blogger friends that do!
ReplyDeleteNever did. But many in Jerry's family were crop farmers. He tells stories about his father and grandfather "watching the weather" in despair. It's not an easy life.
ReplyDeleteI picked blueberries and strawberries a few times and that,was it.
ReplyDeleteThe closest I've ever come was a petting zoo. Farms, in my mind, were scary places. My great grandfather had one, so my mother said. She used to visit as a kid, and after watching the slaughtering of a couple of chickens, she swore off of eating them for a long time. All of our beloved dogs who disappeared were sent to live on "farms". The neighborhood grocer, when I was five, Kept telling me he was going to take me to live with him on his farm. I was terrified that at least my mother would let him!
ReplyDeleteWow, this post has opened up some lost memories! Now, a farm sounds nice, if it didn't have a well or septic tank. There's only so much I can handle.
My mother grew up on a dairy farm in eastern Ohio. We spent part of every summer there and most Thanksgivings. My grandpa would put me on a cow while he milked her!
ReplyDeleteIt was an idyllic time for me, but I know that the farm success was always precarious. After those interested in farming died off, my aunt (now in her late 80s) leased out the land to an area farmer who farmed it for hay and other crops. I haven't been back since the last 1970s.