 Hannah
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North_Dakota_Wheat
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Jacob
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Thursday, August 05, 2004
Rock and More Rocks
Here are my kids on the rock pile at the edge of the field on section 1. A friend of mine was asking about what is was like growing up on the farm. I am still pretty young and so my experience relates to the mid 1980's. The surprise is that while talking about the things we did, I felt like I was talking about another person in the 1920's or something! As kids, we usually pick rocks by hand. My brother and I would throw the rocks like a shot put over to the rock picker. We would spend days on end picking rock. Our fields were thick with rock but most of them were too small to use the hydraulics to lift. They were the size of water melon and squash but big enough to damage the press drill. As you can see there were a lot of BIG rocks as well and those were rolled or pulled with the tractor. I remember the first few years on the farm I cut hay with a IH-200 and a sickle and my dad bucked the hay into stacks with our 1800 Oliver. It was true that we did have a mid sized four wheel drive, a Massy 1805, to pull the big disk and chisel plow, but a lot of us kids chores were good old fashioned manual labor. We hauled water to the pigs swinging four 5 gallon pails full and pitched the manure out of the barn. When we started we also still used grandpa's little red grain truck! As time went on my dad bought bigger equipment, but those first years were Back to the Past! I do feel like I am the last of a generation before the complete take over of the modern machine for everything. Though this change is a continuous process that flowed from horses on grandpa's farm to the mega four wheeler and combines on farms today, my experiences had many Back to the Past flavors. I just wish the wind-row rock pickers were around when I was a kid!
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Here are my kids on the rock pile at the edge of the field on section 1. A friend of mine was asking about what is was like growing up on the farm. I am still pretty young and so my experience relates to the mid 1980's. The surprise is that while talking about the things we did, I felt like I was talking about another person in the 1920's or something! As kids, we usually pick rocks by hand. My brother and I would throw the rocks like a shot put over to the rock picker. We would spend days on end picking rock. Our fields were thick with rock but most of them were too small to use the hydraulics to lift. They were the size of water melon and squash but big enough to damage the press drill. As you can see there were a lot of BIG rocks as well and those were rolled or pulled with the tractor. I remember the first few years on the farm I cut hay with a IH-200 and a sickle and my dad bucked the hay into stacks with our 1800 Oliver. It was true that we did have a mid sized four wheel drive, a Massy 1805, to pull the big disk and chisel plow, but a lot of us kids chores were good old fashioned manual labor. We hauled water to the pigs swinging four 5 gallon pails full and pitched the manure out of the barn. When we started we also still used grandpa's little red grain truck! As time went on my dad bought bigger equipment, but those first years were Back to the Past! I do feel like I am the last of a generation before the complete take over of the modern machine for everything. Though this change is a continuous process that flowed from horses on grandpa's farm to the mega four wheeler and combines on farms today, my experiences had many Back to the Past flavors. I just wish the wind-row rock pickers were around when I was a kid!
