What farm task do kids today know nothing about.

[Oldoak]

My favorite was always loading the manure spreader by hand. Just a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and a pitchfork to work with. It's been over 50 years and my back still hurts when I think about it!

Reminds me of my young teenage days cleaning out the holding pens at the slaughter house every Spring. After a years worth of manure had been packed down from all the cows, sheep, goats and hogs that had been held in them. Pick and shovel was the only way to break it up. And the ammonia fumes that would rise up at times was powerful enough to bring tears to your eyes. That's how us kids EARNED our spending money.

 

[oosik]

K0UA - James, LMAO - not seen that little song before. Cheney, WA is a college town - Ea. WA University. So.....you got to expect some college "know it alls" have problems now and then.

Monday - was in Cheney. Stopped at the gas station. College student filling up his 2018 Ford Mustang - takes more than a banana to keep them in college now. This fellow came over and said - " could you show me how to work my credit card in the gas pump?." Well, that, in and of itself, wasn't that bad - but he had to add this - -" Mom usually gives me cash for gas money but now I have this credit card." AND one of these days they will be ruling the world.

 

[MossRoad]

marking/castrating pigs
gathering eggs
wringing a chickens neck
picking peas
plowing the back 40
eating chitlins, hog brains with scrambled eggs (hot breakfast every morning, not a pop tart)

Welcome to TBN! :thumbsup:

 

[coobie]

You've just described half the workforce in the US IMO.

++1 on this ..

 

[buckeyefarmer]

At the grocery store today a millennial at the self check out lane turned to his mother who appeared to be about 60 and said "but I don't know how to self check out !" Honest, this kid who looked to be in his early twenties and apparently shopped for groceries with his mother, did not know how to operate the self checkout. I was stunned and then I remembered this little song.

That is great.

 

[Oaktree]

I don't really know since I didn't grow up on a farm, and it's all been trial and error for me getting my farm going. The one thing that I've noticed over and over again when looking for help is a lack of motivation to finish anything. Lack of pride in what they are doing, and a reliance on not knowing how to do it without ever trying, as a reason not to do it.

Sometimes I think that's how I was when I was a teenager. I didn't want to do anything, so when I had to, I fought doing it and did as little as possible. It wasn't until the Marine Corps taught me a few things that I grew up.

Send this man to the head of the class. Nail hit on head.
We all tend to "forget" how clueless and arrogant we were when we were young...had all the answers even though we hadn't even heard the questions yet. Of course we didn't see ourselves this way.

It's a different time, and different skills are needed today. Ambitious, hard working young people exist roughly in the same proportion today as when we were young.

 

[turnkey4099]

Saw something similar on FB, thought we could start a farming version. Some to start..

Pitching hay with a pitchfork

Using a trip rake

Driving a team of animals

did my share of those and a lot to follow. I was 18 before I ever saw my first bale of hay

Harvesting with a stationary thresher along with all the stacking buncles hauling them, caring for the teams...

I am among the last, if not THE last survivor of trying to farm with horses in the 40s. Dad finally had to get rid of the horses and go to a tractor somewhere in the mid/late 40s.

 

[mjarrels]

Just watched college jepordy last week, there are some smart kids out there.

mark

 

[EddieWalker]

One of the things our parents insisted we learn was how to catch a live chicken and everything it takes to finally eat that chicken.

Squirrel, rabbit and pheasant were easy, we didn't have to catch them, we shot em.

I'm not sure why, but when I was a Boy Scout at Summer Camp, we did an over night survival camp out with just our pocket knife. No tent, no sleeping bag, not stove or anything else then what we where wearing and a Boy Scout knife. They showed us how to kill a chicken by wringing it's neck, and then watching run around with no head. So well did that, then cleaned it, and then started a fire without matches and cooked it on a stick over the fire. We made shelters from mostly giant pieces of bark that came off of the redwood trees in Northern CA. Fortunately it didn't rain, and the bark was thick enough to give us some heat. Each of us had to make our own shelter, no sharing. It was something very different then what I was used to, but nobody died or even complained. We where all into it and if I remember, they only allowed a few of us to do it, while there where a lot of others who wanted to, but couldn't.

Later while overseas in Yaounde Cameroon, we would buy a live chicken every day for dinner, and depending on what duty we where on, one of us would have to kill the chicken and pluck it for dinner that night. In the 14 months that I was there, we never ate beef or any other meat then chicken, or fresh fish brought in from Douala on the coast over night and still on ice.

Now I kill roosters all the time with an axe. Once they turn into the devil, they die.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Just watched college jepordy last week, there are some smart kids out there.

mark

Yes, this thread was meant to be about things that have changed over time.

While my son never pitched hay, he and his sr design team in college is filing for a patent on their sr project, a medical device.