What farm task do kids today know nothing about.

[buckeyefarmer]

Butcher

 

[Tractor Seabee]

I work at a food bank every Sat morning and see a lot of the generational decline in what skills we took for granted because our folks taught us. After several generations of eating out of the frozen case and cans or boxed stuff the knowledge base of cooking has died. It is amazing the answers we get when asking if folks would like fresh vegetables or bulk food stuffs we re-package from 50# bags. I asked one young lady with several kids and on welfare if she wanted some salad mix. Her answer was I do not know how to fix it so we don't eat salads. Lot of comments: Doesn't that come in a can?; I have never fixed a whole chicken, we always buy the frozen stuff you just heat up in the microwave; What do I do with these dry beans. With all their computer savvy they have never googled for recipes, common answer, "Never thought of that".

I shudder to think what will happen if we have real nationwide catastrophe. Keep your guns oiled, I guess.

Ron

 

[bunyip]

Brought up on a farm in the 50's, when I was about 8 I was put in charge of the rake at harvest, it was horsedrawn and not a hard job but I soon discovered that when the horse stopped and lifeted its tail and you watched that large pink spot uncoil it was time to get off and run.
Only once did I get sprayed with a speckled horse fart.
At 9 I was taught to drive the Ferguson TEA20 and year later the Fordson Major.
Had to pick eggs from the loft in the barn, I hated that as I knew the roosters would lie in wait and attack from behind, got winded by them a few times.
We grew sugar beet, raised pigs and had dairy cattle, a little bit of corn but not much.

 

[goeduck]

Using a real outhouse.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I remember as a kid in high school, suburbia on the border with farm land, upper middle class community. A young boy showed up of farming stock. He didn't exactly fit in, but the girls were attracted to him. He shocked us all one day with stories of Pig castrations.

Poor guy was killed a short while later in a car crash. I always thought he was a little more mature than the rest of us but having a fast car (Pontiac Grand Prix) at his disposal might have been his undoing.

 

[Gunny]

I've got one grandson that would eat chicken three times a day if he could get it, up until the time my wife showed him how to kill it, pluck it and cut it up. I swear he hasn't eaten chicken in over three months.
Also have a nephew that watched their neighbor make pork sausage the day after their hog killing, it's been over a year and he's still sworn off sausage. I told him if he'd been there for the actual killing and work up, with his attitude, he'd never eat any type pork again.

Then again, when I was in the 5th grade we had a field trip to a Fischers processing plant and it was about six months before I could get myself to eat bologna.

Heck, most of the young kids around here don't even know how to mow a yard anymore, much less take care of the mower

 

[Industrial Toys]

Are you friggin kidding me? And RUIN their $100.00+ SNEAKERS?

I will never forget my friends sister (who I had the hots for) cutting grass with a lawnboy in her cut off shorts and halter top. Poor girl ruined her Adidas though!

Me. I can't say how much I hated pushing a mower, on a hot day! My Dad had to get a heavy SOB Craftsman 3.5hp, the widest they made with a heavy steel deck. The perfect torture device for a tall, thin, non-athletic, lazy, unappreciative teenager!

 

[gemutlich]

Jeez, how's a guy supposed to follow-up a story about halter top girl? Lol

Out splitting firewood this morning with the '58 641 and TW-3, for and ministering to a friend whose Wife is battling multiple myeloma, thinking of this thread, it occurred to me that before I was tall enough to detassel, I was small enough to crank-away for what seemed like hours to make ice cream with grandma on the back porch. Darned good memory, long enough before I was of age to appreciate a good halter top and cut-offs though!

Wonder whatever happened to that old Lawnboy mower?

 

[k0ua]

Using a real outhouse.

The first 6 years of my life that is all we had. And when I went to school, that was still all we had for about 3 or 4 years in grade school. They finally put in bathrooms in the basement of the school. Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

 

[MossRoad]

"What farm task do kids today know nothing about?"

De-tasseling corn.

Hands-down one of if not THE worst jobs on the farm. Sun-up to sun-down, day after day, acre after acre, cold and wet in the morning then brutally hot too soon, but can't take off that long-sleeve t-shirt because yer arms and hands are already tore up from yesterday. Oh yeah, and the endless supply of gnats getting in your eyes and stinging the heck out of 'em while you're already miserable...

One of those tasks that just can't adequately be explained.

There's still corn detasseling jobs for kids here each summer. Seed corn is HUGE! Every year it seems like more and more seed corn fields.