Down on the Farm Part Two

Down on the Farm Part Two

Summer time was filled with farm work. We got up around six in the morning and often worked until sunset with breaks for lunch and dinner. One of my summer chores was to hoe weeds in the cornfields and vegetable gardens. I would start out at one end of a long cornrow and with my long handled hoe take out the weeds that grew between the cornstalks. Where the weeds grew close to the plant, I had to get down on my hands and knees and pull them by hand. When the weeds were heavy, it would some times take an hour to do one row. I would sing the top ten in my head and often repeat the list several times in doing just a couple rows.

We grew pole beans, lima beans, lettuce, beets, and other vegetables for eating and canning. We had a large tomato patch for eating, canning, and commercial selling. All of the patches had to be kept free of weeds. So there was plenty of hoeing for me all summer.

When the vegetables were ripe we had to pick them. We picked tomatoes into bushel baskets and took some of them into local markets to sell. I really enjoyed the ride into town to deliver the tomatoes. One year we sold off several acres to a cannery. I remember that as I struggled to hoist the bushel baskets up to the cannery truck, the driver said, “That’s your right hand man, huh?”

I felt a sense of pride as my foster father answered, “My right and left hand man too.”

One of the big summer jobs was bailing hay. First we had to cut the hay. Then it was raked into rolls with an old horse pulled rake. My foster father hooked the tractor up to it, and I rode on the iron seat to weight the rake down. Round and round the field we’d go raking the clover and timothy into long straight rows.

After a couple days drying during which we turned the rows by hand with pitchforks the hay was ready to bail. We had an old bailer that I rode so that I could poke the bailing wire through a chamber. The machine returned the wire to me. Then I had to pull it tightly and run it through a small hoop and tie it together. If the wire weren’t turned tightly enough the bays would burst open when they fell from the bailer. Poking wire was a tough job sitting behind the tractor with the wind blowing the hay chaff onto your sweaty back.

Once the hay was bailed, you had to the lift the heavy bails onto the truck. Some times my foster father would stand on the back of the truck to stack the bails. I would lift the bales onto the truck, and get to drive the truck from time to time as we inched up the windrows. I loved to drive the old truck, and thus loved bailing hay even though it was hot hard sweaty work.

Once the truck was loaded, we took it to the barn. The bales were lifted out of the truck to the hay elevator that would take them to the top story of the barn where they were placed in high stacks for storage. Both jobs were back breaking. Lifting the hay from the truck to the elevator was hard, but at least you would catch a breeze outside. Inside the barn it was hot and dusty, and the sweat would roll into your eyes.

We were always glad to see the truck empty and the hay neatly stacked away. I remember that my foster mother would keep us supplied with pitchers of ice tea during the day to quince our well-earned thirst.

After we finished bailing hay, it was time to combine the wheat. I rode on the combine and had to shake the bag as the wheat poured into it. When the bag was full, I would shut off the grain pipe, tie the bag, pull it to the holder on the side of the machine, place another bag under the grain pipe, and turn the pipe back on. We dumped the bags at pick up spots and when the day’s harvest was done had to load the heavy bags on to the truck.

We drove the truck to the barn and backed it to a large bin where we stored the wheat. The bags were carted to the bin, and opened. We shook out the wheat where it would lay in the bin and provide winter-feed for the chickens. Some of the bags would be stacked filled with wheat to be later sold.

As the summer progressed garden crops would ripen. I continued to hoe weeds between hay and wheat harvests. We picked the vegetables for summer eating and there was always a lot left over for my foster mother to can. Once in awhile we had extra sweet corn to sell and there were always extra tomatoes. I remember a couple of summers when I set up a little fruit stand and sold sweet corn and tomatoes to make a little extra spending money.

Even with all the summer work I did get a little free time. All of my friends at school either lived on farms or in Newtown, so I got to see them hardly at all during the summer. On Saturday nights, my foster mother would some times take me into town and drop me off at the movies. Most of the time I would watch the film alone, but every once in awhile, I would run into a classmate and we would spend a little time chatting about what were doing over the summer.

During the day when all the chores were caught up, I loved to take walks into the little woods way at the end of the fields. Waking through the quiet empty woods I learned to respect the silence and mystery of nature. Often I would stay focused on the silence and get into a deeper part of myself.

Other times I would play soldier. I would pretend that I was scouting for a company of troops who were getting ready to attack the North Korean enemy. I would cross the little creek that ran through the middle of the woods checking both sides for any sign of enemy troops.

Later when I received a twenty-two rifle for my birthday, I would spend my spare time hunting for pheasants and jack- rabbits. I don’t remember killing much game, but I spent a lot of my spare cash on boxes of shells that I used for target practice. I remember my sophomore year in high school I joined the rifle club and use to get a ride into town once a week or so to do target practice with other club members.

When I was able to pick my classes in high school instead of taking the academic route that would lead to college, I decided to enroll in the agriculture program and became a Future Farmer of America. There were only about six or seven kids in the program at each grade level. Most of the kids were from established farms and planned to be farmers when they grew up.

In the agriculture program, I took a lot of shop courses, and began to raise a couple hundred chickens on my own. It took about fourteen weeks to take a crop of chickens from birth until they were old enough to sell to the wholesale man. I usually made just enough money to get another batch of chicks started with maybe a few dollars left over to put into the account I had to save money for my first car.

In my junior year, I learned that my foster father was renting the farm from a rich landholder. My foster father’s brother and sister had decided against his wishes to sell the old family farm of their father and split the money. My foster father had a lease on this hundred acres that he thought would last to the end of his life. However, as property values rose, the landholder saw the chance to make a killing and sold the farm to a wealthy man who wanted to be a country gentleman.

With tears in his eyes my foster father auctioned off his farm equipment and bought a house by the river just outside of Yardley and some ten or so miles away from the old farm site.

I stayed with by foster parents for several more years, but my days as a farm boy were over. However, you know the old saying, “You can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”

The lessons I learned down on the farm about the value of hard work, about not leaving a job half done, about love for animals, and all living things have stayed with me all these years. Being a farmer isn’t an easy kick back life, but it is a life well worth living.