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Thursday, November 27, 2008 6:09 PM CST
The life of a farmer has changed through the years
By MARY JANE COARTNEY
The pattern of farm life has changed a lot in the past century, as has just about any way of living.
People had telephones. Many families in town had electric lights, even if it was a single cord hanging from the ceiling, with a light bulb turned on with a switch.
Farmers hurried to get corn shucked by hand, aided by a shucking peg or a hook, and scooped into corn cribs, again by hand labor.
There were a few young men who were able to shuck a hundred bushels of corn in a day and scoop it into the cribs.
Farmers were happy if the corn was in the crib in time to do some fall plowing.
School days were over for most farm lads when they reached 16. They did a man’s work as soon as their school days ended.
My widowed granddad lived at our house. He was 70 and able to do a hard day’s work. Other farmers had a “hired hand.”
As soon as corn was harvested it was time to start fall plowing (if winter hadn’t already arrived).
Today’s crop rotation often means that it is time for the “snow birds” to fly south. Some of our friends are already in their southern homes: Florida, Texas, Arizona.
I’ve been in several states but never in Florida.
Just south of the little wide place in the road called Rardin there used to be a one-room country school called California.
One of my classmates at the Greenwood school told me that she went to school in California. Her four older siblings lived in Florida.
Each year they sent their parents a big box of oranges and grapefruit. I was impressed to know someone who had relatives in both Florida and California. And I had never seen a grapefruit.
Oranges were something we got in the toe of our Christmas stocking. Lemons were common. Most of us drank more lemonade than iced tea back in 1920-1930.
This has been a rough year for farmers. The hard rains this spring washed a lot of gullies in fields where there had never been any erosion.
In other places where there had been small washes there are foot-deep washes. Those places are hard to see from the high seat of a huge combine. That meant that work had to stop as soon as it was dusk — bad when everyone wanted to get the grain harvested as soon as possible.
A flat tire on a big machine means a call for the repair truck. A guy can’t manage to change one of those tires taller than his head.
Last year a grandson was pleased when he found a deer antler back in the field. My son was not that pleased when he found the mate in a tractor tire.
Hunting season is fun for the hunters. Many love the taste of venison. Deer should not have the gamy taste of years back. The deer of Coles County are corn fed, just as the good-looking animals we see in the show ring at the county fairs.
We have read of the cattle drives in the 1800s in the “wild west.” The deer population means that we are feeding a herd of some 20,000 deer. They like corn, soybeans, garden stuff, tulips and roses. For some reason, they do not care for daffodils.
Charleston, like other towns, has a lot of deer tracks across the lawn. A letter from Wyoming carried a picture of three mule deer resting in the shade of a garage in a town of several thousand.
Hunting may be a fun sport but a number of our family have gotten their deer without a hunting license as the speedy creature darted out in front of a car. The repair shop profits. There have been lots of fatal accidents caused by those deer creatures.
Mary Jane Coartney of rural Ashmore is a writer and poet. She has lived in Coles County for 95 years.
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Techno-less wrote on Dec 1, 2008 4:00 AM:
My parents weren't farmers, but my great-uncle and cousins were. I was fortunate enough to spend time on their farm while growing up. It was wonderful.
I remember my Uncle did not harvest his corn until November or December so it could dry out in the field. Now-a-days they harvest it much earlier to make it to market before the prices drop, and the elevators have to use energy to dry the stuff out. My Aunt had a preset number of jars of each type of home canned vegetable that she put up every year. She also walked the fields and forests looking for wild greens to put up. Today I wish I had paid more attention. I really miss those greens.
This is the time of year I remember them the most. Onset of cold weather was hog butchering time. They butchered their own animals. It was a long process that ended up with chops, roasts, bacon, sausage and lard in the pantry. Add in the chickens and hunting, and there was meat enough to last til the next butchering season. They didn't have much money, but there was food on the table. And the scraps helped to feed next years hogs.
Farming today is more of a business and less of a lifestyle. It is the nature of the modern world. Production is greater that possible in my Uncle's time because of the more advanced methods, which is good because there are a lot more people in the world to feed. Enough for everyone if we could just put aside our differences and feed them all. But I miss the old style family farm with the putt-putt tractor and the huge garden. The world moves on: we lose, we gain. "