Who remembers when

[blueriver]

remeber when ... I got some of that good old equipment as well as a couple differnt teams of mules ... last year Mike and Maude hit the decks a runnin when the old seat spring on the sickle mower broke ... sounded like a shot gun went off!!

I hit the ground ... the team and the mower where found standin at the hitchin rail ...

 

[MBDiagMan]

Yes sadly the seat and the spring plate it mounted on went MIA by the time I retrieved the plow from my dad some years ago. My dad bought a small horse farm in NC about 8 years ago and I was helping him move when I saw he still had that old plow. I asked him if I could have it and He couldn't understand why I wanted it. I told him that I earned it with the years of my childhood sweat I put into that old iron. I don't think it meant much to him but to me it is a big piece of my past. Every time I look at it I travel back to the days I was a boy and remember how much I hated it. As a man I see a piece of my past that shaped who I am today. It can only mean something to me. I hadn't seen it in 30 years when I asked my dad for it. When I saw it after all those years the flood of memory overwhelmed me and I never realized how important those early days really are to us. I think my dad saw it in my eyes when I looked at it and asked him for it. I guess it is kinda silly but sometimes thinks can hit you pretty hard.

Great posts!

I think that your Dad was being a good parent naturally, rather than strategically thinking about the good it would do for you. In addition in the days of hard work, before so many in our Nation became so spoiled, it was just a matter that there was work to be done, so we do it.

What I would like to have from my youth, that parallels your plow, would be the old pair of posthole diggers that my Grand Dad called "character builder."

 

[Timber]

Great posts!

I think that your Dad was being a good parent naturally, rather than strategically thinking about the good it would do for you. In addition in the days of hard work, before so many in our Nation became so spoiled, it was just a matter that there was work to be done, so we do it.

What I would like to have from my youth, that parallels your plow, would be the old pair of post hole diggers that my Grand Dad called "character builder."

I too laid a lot of fence as a boy and split a lot of wood. I wasn't a very big child but by the time I was 15 I was pretty lean and ripped. Not like a body builder, much leaner. You are right in those days there was a task to be done and you did it with what was available. I split wood every night before dinner and worked in the garden every day after school. Everything we ate we grew or killed. Try to explain that to a kid today, why you had to hold the wings of a bird close as dad slit its throat so the heart could pump the blood from the meat. or how to pull the quill from bird without tearing the skin.

 

[ToadHill]

I never worked with horse drawn equipment but the Amish in my area use nothing but that, and I see them in the field all the time.

I do remember throwing hay bails up 5 tiers on a wagon then climbing into the hay loft as the hooks came up the pullies to dump a load that had to be restacked.

Climbing up to the top of the silo to throw down silage to feed the 82 milkers we worked with, and shoveling out the gutters with a wheelbarrow and running it up a ramp to dump into the spreader. The pulling that through the field with on old Oliver Row Crop 77.

 

[nue2farm]

We did not have horse drawn equipment, we lived on about 4 acres in Central Arkansas. My Dad used a push plow, the kind that had a large wheel in front and handles on back. He used to hook my brother and I up to it with ropes and we pulled it while he pushed.

I remember him borrowing a plow and a mule from a BIL. That mule gave him a real workout..... I guess that's why he used us from then on. I may have to get one of those plows to "spook" my brother with:thumbsup:

 

[RalphVa]

I'm glad that I didn't have to mess with horses. Messing with cows at milking time was enough.

I was plowing fields (with a tractor) by the time I was about 8 or 9. I remember the ole tractor engine getting a BIG boost when I ran out of propane and had to switch back to gasoline. Never heard much about diesels in our part of Oklahoma. The smarter ones must have used them. Maybe it wasn't available in our area.

Hardest work was pulling boles or weeding corn/cotton with a hoe or hauling hay.

Ralph

 

[mbrule]

I never got the kind of experience that you guys did with equipment. But we did have a large garden that was my brother and I's responsibility. We kept chickens for eggs, also our job. Raised one cow and tended to my Father's Ex's horses. Always working, though not quite farming.

I wish that I had got more experience around farms, farm equipment, and killing animals for food.

I fear that kids today will have even less experience in these basic skills than me!

Thanks for the posts, I am enjoying the reading......

 

[Bird]

I can remember my granddad selling his last pair of horses when I was 5 years old (a gray mare named Snip and a bay mare named Nellie). And I can remember watching my dad plow the garden with a team of mules (the mules actually belonged to our landlord at the time). When dad bought 10 acres, and also rented 25 adjacent acres for pasture, he also bought an old 1940 John Deere L. We had a horse drawn disc and dad asked mother to ride on the seat for added weight while he pulled it with the John Deere. When they went over a terrace, mother did a back flip off that disc seat. She wasn't hurt, but she wasn't about to get back on there either.:laughing: Dad had to find some big rocks and concrete blocks to tie on for weight.

 

[Dale Ks]

This line from the original post made me laugh "Your doing your best to keep a strait line but never strait enough for dad."

My grandmother recently passed away at the age of 96 and I had the pleasure of going through her things and settling the estate. Ok going through her things was the pleasant part, not so much the estate. Anyway she would write little notes and things, put them in a box for keeping. One of the notes I found was that her dad told her that he could always tell at harvest if she did the plowing or planting because the harvest was better as the crooked rows yielded a higher percentage as she could get more seed in a crooked row.

 

[mooseracing]

I have used a horse drawn slipbucket attached to a tractor growing up. Still got thrown around on that thing. My grandparents dug their foundation in clay with that same slipbucket behind an old A-C, way to high if gearing. Then I got stuck on it when I was younger, some days though my dad would put the tractor in low range, hop off get it to dig, then hop back on.