That wasn’t boring at all. Would Love to hear more, stuff from n changes in fertilizer and herbicides. Water sources as well have always been interesting to me. Thank you
Thanks to everyone who’s commented apparently this is bringing back memories for a lot of people I was texting with my cousins and we said it would’ve been nice to get my dad and his brother my uncle Lyle who passed away before Christmas together and done an interview like this it probably would’ve been long but boy it would’ve been interesting and I think it would’ve been cool but like I said my uncle passing gave me the idea to do this
I really enjoy listening to older fellows talk about the past. Thanks for sharing this interview with your father. That dairy sale catalog is very similar to the way they print catalogs for registered cattle sales yet today. It looked like it was showing the pedigree of the cow on the sheet you showed. Nice video.
Great video Andy, I'm going through a very very similar situation with my father for the last months going through old pictures of the farm and my grandparents home all the down to the clock chime in the back ground 👍👍thanks for the idea of the video, May your father rest in peace 🙏🙏
You should be thankful that you still have him around,never knew either my grandfathers and my dad passed shortly after my return home from Vietnam so keep him close as you can and visit him as often as possible or you will regret it and it was a real good video really enjoyed it.
I H POWER RULES WOW Took your advice and checked out this video and damn glad i did Im 65 now and lost my Dad back in 2016 Miss him everyday and wish i had the insight to do a video like this one This is priceless and his story would not be much different then your Dads Bless him and his memory He worked hard Asked for nothing but respect and raised a great family May God bless your Dads memory and all your viewers
Beautiful interview with your dad. I enjoyed every minute of hearing him talk. My dad has been gone about 20 years now. I sure wish I’d have done something like this before he passed.
Man this video brought a tear to my eyes Andy listening to your dad reminds me of talking to my dad about farming back in his youth. My dad was a little younger than your dad as he was born in '39 and we lost him in '17 I sure wish we had made a video like this. Enjoy every minute with him and thanks for sharing this with us oh and by the way ur dad looks and sounds damn good!!
Mike Ryan Yeah one person commented that I was a little choked up at the end I guess I didn’t realize it until I watched it but it’s real life thanks for watching
Thank you Andy and Charles for sharing. So sorry you lost your father my father will turn 90 November 7th of this year 2024. And it’s hard seeing how he is slowing down but we still talk about the old days. Both when he was growing up in the 1930 40s and up to present day and then when I was growing up. We did attend the same old 1 room school house kindergarten - 8th grade In fact both my grand father and great grandfather attended there as well Deanville school located near Brown City Michigan it’s in the center of the thumb.
Andy, I really enjoyed that video. I know it’s a three year old video but I just did see it today. I haven’t been a subscriber but maybe a year I lost my dad in 1996 when I was a young man. Luckily, I had an older brother to keep me in the right direction we farm together and still do today and I actually have a son that farms with us. I love farming. It is a great life and I do enjoy watching you and Jimmy. You may not see this, but I sure did like seeing your dad talk about the old days. It brought back a lot of memories.
Andy Gehring yup Even when he repeated himself a few times and he took a few moments to try and answer a question it’s still was great that’s why I didn’t edit any of it out
Robert Emory I think my dad was right no other generation will see the changes they’ve seen stop and think about it getting electricity going from using horses to machinery putting a man on the moon and now today’s technology
Wow, a great idea to interview your father! I enjoyed listening to him and how the country and farming had changed throughout the years. A true hardworking gentleman / family man! I’m sorry u lost him. Thank u for sharing 😎👍
This was a very interesting post. I like history. Grew up in Denmark on a jersey Dari. My dad and grandpa sold out in 1991 an went to cash crop and beef cattel. I left my home stead and am living in North Eastern Montana.
Outstanding video, love seeing from his time farming to yours. It's always nice to hear how things had been. Thank you for sharing, your Father is pretty cool! You're pretty cool too Andy!
Thanks for sharing your interview with your Dad with us. It nice to hear how people got started in farming and the difference between then and now. No grandfather dairy farmed his hole farming career with jersey cattle. From 1933 to 1972 when he quit farming.
My first tractor was also a 3010 tricycle John Deer and i still have it today. Holding up and still doing its thing. 2nd tractor was a 4230 , my first diesel tractor and was a good tractor
Really enjoyed this video Andy. Thank you to your father and you for sharing. My grandfather (father’s father) was born in 1929 but we lost him in 2001; I miss him dearly. I just waxed his 4240 yesterday that he bought new in 1981 & I live in my grandparents house, so I fully understand emotions involved with family farming.
Yeah probably no other generation will see what my dad has seen when you stop and think about it we will continue to see technology advances but he saw electricity motorized tractors and vehicles a man being put on the moon it was pretty cool doing that interview thanks for watching hope you subscribe and come along for the ride
Andy I can not thank you enough!!! That video you made is priceless !!👍 The old times will come back but it's going to take time again thanks Andy for doing this I can tell you how much I appreciate you doing this thanks ❤️!👍😁👍
It’s so wonderful you have these memories from your Dad. It will be wonderful for Chelsea to have and appreciate as time goes by. Thank you for sharing these precious family memories. ❤️
You are Very blessed to still have your dad I lost my dad 25 years ago been farming by myself for 26 years I'm almost 50 i always in joyed listening to him talk about how he aquired the family farm while walking Bean's it could have been a minney a series on TV
Loved the video man. I’ll be the third generation of our family farm. Grandpa passed away March of 2017 and I wish I would have done a video like this with him! Thanks for sharing.
What a great and wonderful thing to be able to talk to your Father about things. That was very interesting. My dad passed at a young age. I was 19 and just started farming with him. I’d give anything to be able to talk to him like you did!! I’m 65 now and farm with my Son An Grandson. That’s very rewarding!!
Thanks Richard yes I did learn a lot from him and sorry I missed your comment I found it because I occasionally go back and re-watch this video since he passed away last July
Thank you for sharing this precious time with your dad, jI admire these folks. My dad was born in 1930, lost him is 2014 wish I had a recording of him. I am just amazed of how farming has evolved. How many cows did you milk when you decided to get out of the dairy business? Ag is all hard work; Dairy is a tough business to be in.
Thank You for doing the video with your dad. I wish I could have done on with my father. Just to hear his voice again would be rewarding. He started shucking by hand and just before he passed we picked him up with the loader and he shofled into the cab of a 12 row combine. If I had only taken a video or recording. My loss your gain with your dad Thank You Thank You for sharing this with us 😂😂😅
That's really cool... I miss hearing the stories of the old days... SO many good ones and most of that generation is now gone forever from this mortal sphere... Oh, there was plenty about farming in the video... It's changed SO much in just MY lifetime, and I'm actually a couple years younger than you are Andy (born in 71). My great-grandpa Howard Bushnell moved down from Kansas around the turn of the century and bought his uncle's farm-- the family had originally been from upstate NY and had gradually moved south and westwards over the course of the 19th century, first to Hallsville, Missouri, then later to the area near Coffeeville, Kansas. His uncle had moved from upstate NY and bought the farm in Fort Bend County, Texas, near what was then known as Schendelville, which was later incorporated as Needville. His wife was ready to sell out and move back to NY, because the Great Hurricane of 1900 had killed 6,000 people just 70 miles away in Galveston. My grandmother was born on the Needville farm and passed away on it at age 92. She attended a one-room schoolhouse at "Marlow School" just across the creek from the south end of the farm. Grandpa B farmed cotton, hay, and cattle back then, and he got rich in WWI selling square bales of hay to the Army for their horses and mules for $1 a bale, which was BIG money back then! He eventually bought 7 more farms in the area and owned most of the downtown area of the next town over, Boling. He was something else... Grandma said he was very smart, could figure the cost of a load of lumber in his head, how many board feet were in it, etc. just by counting the ends of the boards, all to the penny. He was strict; the kids rotated through the job of bringing a bucket of water into the house to drink out of overnight, and if he got up and no bucket of water whomever's turn it was got rolled out of bed and had to go get it no matter what time of night it was. A neighbor once told me, "If he was owed a penny he'd ride all day to collect it, but if he owed a penny to someone else he'd ride all day to pay it!". He was a big man, and he carried a pair of pearl-handled .38 pistols on his hips, and he knew how to use them. I still have one; he was a lefty and the RH grip has a carved bulls head in the face of it with rubies set in the eyes. I had a big farm operator neighbor tell me one time, when he was growing up he and his parents/family worked for Grandpa Howard picking cotton and chopping cotton, and he'd be sitting on his horse watching everybody work and would tell him "take that apple crate to the end of the field and set it up by the fence" and so he'd carry it down there as he worked and set it up and once everyone was working on the next set of rows, great grandpa Howard would pull his .38's and shoot the nails through the apple crate... he was that good. Another neighbor, an elderly black man who was best friends and worked with my Grandpa Leon, who had worked for my Great-grandpa Howard when he was a kid, told the story that Howard would toss him a nickel and say, "Ernest, I want you to throw that nickel straight up in the air when I tell you to" and he would, and Howard could "slap leather" pull his gun and shoot the nickel before it hit the ground... Well, Howard was also a man of, shall we say, generous appetites... He had some sharecroppers that lived on the farm, one of them was a Bohemian woman who was basically "fresh off the boat" from Europe... she was older and didn't catch Howard's eye, but her 16 year old daughter Sophie did, so basically she threw the girl at Grandpa Bushnell figuring if he caught her they'd be fixed for life... Well, great grandpa Howard caught her alright, and soon set up housekeeping at the farm with her (by this time he'd built a big fine Mediterranean style white stucco house in town for Grandma B (his wife Louisa) and the girls. My Grandma, Mary, was just a girl but she stayed on the farm rather than in town most of the time in the big two-story farmhouse they had. Well, Grandma B divorced Grandpa B and he set up housekeeping with young Sophie on the farm, much to my Grandma Mary's displeasure... Well, this was back in the late 20's or early 30's and word spread, and the Ku Klux Klan, the self appointed "defenders of right and virtue" sent Grandpa B a threatening letter... I found it in his old safe and still have it... basically it said if he didn't stop messing around with that girl they would "cut his bollocks off" and threatened him not to think he could leave with her... Well, that didn't dissuade Howard in the least-- so the KKK decided to ride out to the farm one night to tar and feather him. He grabbed his pistols and a rifle and held them off all night, trading shot from the front door of the house with the KKK men he kept pinned down along the roadside in front of the farm. By sunrise they lost interest and all rode off back to town and their homes and farms, but Grandpa B reloaded, saddled up, and rode up town... Then he walked down main street in Needville with both his six-guns on his hips, cursing the KKK men as cowards and calling them out into the street for a "fair fight"... "Where are all you Ku Kluxers now??" He shouted as he walked down main street... but NOBODY would come out to face him in a gunfight. He didn't have any more trouble out of the KKK after that. MTC! OL J R :)
luke strawwalker yeah I was born in 67 that was a fun video to do I could’ve spent an hour talking with him he could’ve told stories about the one room school houses a lot of things but most peoples attention spans aren’t that long and it sounds like you’ve got quite the family history but trust me you don’t wanna come back to NY because the state is going to hell in a handbasket with the idiots we have running it i’m going to bed now it’s 11:30 PM I’m almost ready to turn into a pumpkin 🎃😁 take care
Well, anyway, Grandpa B finally moved off to Louisiana with Sophie and had several kids by her, and bought several farms over there around Iowa, Louisiana. Then he got tired of Sophie and left her and came back to Needville, wooed his ex-wife Louisa back and remarried her, and lived in town the rest of his life. He left the best farms to his sons, and my Grandma Mary and her sister Peg inherited the old home farm, splitting it between them. He had been retired and was renting the farm to someone else, but my Grandpa Leon (who married Grandma Mary in the 30's) finally talked him into letting him farm it in about '52. Grandpa B had bought the first tractor in Fort Bend County, a Fordson, and later replaced it with a Farmall F-12 and then an F-20. Grandpa Leon bought a pair of Fords, an NAA and an 8N Golden Jubilee, and started farming cotton on the home place. Grandma would never let him live down the fact that the Needville farm was "HER farm" and would "never be his" so in 56 or 57 he bought the 160 acre Shiner farm, and they moved up here in 58. He tried farming cotton on it for a couple years but Shiner is never more than 2 weeks away from a drought and he nearly lost the farm-- one year he made 7 bales on 70 acres of cotton. SO, he switched over to growing hay, and he and Dad paid for the farm by baling about 40,000 small squares a year off the 160 acres... the farm would grow up 6 feet tall in johnsongrass which makes GOOD hay if you know how to handle it. They sold a large amount of their hay to the Hagen's Auction Barn, which is now the Hallettsville Livestock Commission. They also drove down to Needville and farmed cotton and raise hay and a few cattle there as well. They bought a Dearborn cotton stripper to fit onto the 8N and did custom cotton stripping as well back then. Dad graduated in 65 right after they moved back to the Needville farm, and left the farm for about a year to live with his sister who's husband had moved them to Georgia. He didn't like it and returned home to farm with Grandpa. He rented some farms from his aunts and uncles and some other ground around and was farming when I was born in 71. He'd farm all spring and summer and get the plowing done in early fall, then go work for one of several IH dealers or a Deere dealership during the winter as a mechanic or parts man. Then in the spring he'd quit and go get his next crop in. Back in the 70's you could do that... you could quit one job before lunch and have another job by the time you got back from lunch! Not like now! Anyway, farming was getting tougher; they didn't have the money to pour into buying ever larger equipment and renting more land, and some of the local BTO's who'd jumped onto the "get big or get out" train with both feet had lured some of his aunts and uncles into renting their farms to them instead of Dad, so that made things harder-- the only land he could find was "problem ground" with lots of weeds or droughty sands or poor soil. In 76 Dad worked at the nuke plant that winter making $5 an hour driving a dump truck, which for '76 was about like making $30 bucks an hour or so now... He said he'd never seen so much money in his life and didn't have to work 1/3 as hard to get it as farming, so he basically kept the job and Grandpa helped him farm, but it was too much and he let the rented ground go over the next couple years. Dad helped Grandpa farm the Needville home place and the Shiner farm, which they had switched to cattle once they paid the farm off in the late 60's or early 70's. Grandpa got sick around Labor Day of 82 and went downhill SO fast that he passed away in early February of 83... I was 11 about to turn 12 at the time. Dad helped me a lot the first two years basically taught me how to farm the place and by the time I was 14 he turned the entire thing over to me and Grandma, as he was routinely working 60-80 hour weeks at the nuke plant getting all the overtime he could possibly get... More to come! OL J R :)
My earliest memories are riding STANDING UP between Dad and Mom in the front seat of Dad's 72 Chevy pickup... NO carseats back then, yet we managed to survive! LOL:) Anyway, we didn't really know how good farm life was in the early 70's... When I was a little kid, I remember we'd go check crops or Dad would be working in the field and get through, and we'd ride over in the pickup to Rosenberg (next big town over) and go to Ron's Chicken... you could get a two piece order of chicken an a roll and fries for 35 cents... if you wanted a coke or tea that was another 10-15 cents. The biggest cup they had was smaller than the small today! Or, we'd go to 2M's drive-in and get a burger basket for about 50 cents... Dad had bought the 72 Chevy pickup used, about a year old, but he only paid $1,200 for it NEARLY NEW! Those old Chevy's rusted badly back then and the door jamb was rusted away so he traded it in on a brand spanking new F-100 Ford pickup in 77 and he only paid $1,800 for that truck BRAND NEW after trade-in! I found some of Grandpa's old receipts for farm stuff back then-- fertilizer was only $60 per ton back then, a 50 pound bag of cottonseed was only $15 a bag, grain sorghum seed was $8 for a 50 pound bag, and corn wasn't a whole lot higher... fuel was cheap, but chemicals back then were fairly high and pretty rudimentary... nowhere near as many as available now. Grandpa had bought a Ford 5200 row crop new in '68 for $8,000. Dad went partners with Grandpa and traded in his Farmall M wide front for a Case David Brown 1710 (IIRC the number) in '75 for like $8,000 difference. Dad had bought an old Case combine someone had been doing custom cutting with and had run a bunch of sodium chlorate through, which some guys back then sprayed on the grain sorghum to kill the stalks and "desiccate" it so it would dry down faster (which isn't a problem anyway in our 100 degree plus mid-July harvesting temps) and that chlorate is just like salt-- drew in moisture and rusted that combine all to pieces... Dad spent the first winter he had it pop riveting and bondoing up holes in it and had to install roofing tin in it to replace the shaker pan under the straw walkers, they were SO rotted out! He did custom combining with it as well as harvesting our own grain sorghum crops and was doing well enough that he and Grandpa decided to sell the machine and buy a brand new Ford 640 combine (built in Germany by Claas-- their "Senator" model in Europe) and do custom work, mostly because a BTO from Boling, who was an elder in the church they attended, promised them "if you buy a combine, I'll buy a cart and yall can harvest my crop EVERY year!" Well, he bought a "Big 12" cart (which was like maybe 120 bushels tops) to pull behind his 4020 and Dad and Grandpa bought the combine, which was only $12,000 BRAND NEW in '74, WITH an 18 foot grain head on it... They started combining for the BTO and didn't get half done and the BTO reneged on his agreement-- a neighbor of his had contracted WAY more sorghum than he could deliver, so he offered to combine the BTO's grain for free, haul it to the elevator to fill his contract and pay him the going market rate across the scales just so he didn't have to "buy back" the contract. That left Dad and Grandpa in a lurch, as they couldn't make the payments without the custom work. Luckily another BTO from near Rosenberg had rented a bunch of river bottom ground to grow grain sorghum, which was selling for big money back then, and it got all ate up with morningglory vines and he couldn't combine it, so he put the word out anybody who could combine it would get all the work they wanted. Dad and Grandpa drove the machine 13 miles over to Rosenberg, through town, and out the other side and pulled into the field where every custom operator in the country had showed up... I remember that day though I was a little kid-- looked like a combine parking lot, or a farm show, all these new Deere, IH, Gleaners, White, Oliver, you name it, they were there. Everybody pulled into the field and didn't get 100 yards before clogging up, choking the machine on green, sticky morning glory vines... Then they'd spend an hour unplugging the machine with a pocketknife and a lot of swearing, because there were NO reversers on those machines back then! Dad clogged up two a couple times, BUT the Claas/Ford had a cool gadget to help-- the cylinder shaft extended out a foot over the RH wheel, and a big cast iron block was affixed to the end of it with four holes in it, you could stick a big iron bar in there and roll the entire combine backwards to unplug the cylinder, and if you left the header in gear with the engine off it would turn the feederhouse and header backwards and roll the wad of vines right down the throat and out from under the auger and you could pull it out on the ground and get going again. NONE of the other combines of that era had that... Plus, Dad soon discovered that the Claas/Ford had the concave adjustment on a lever under the seat-- if he saw a wad of vines going into the feederhouse, or felt the cylinder start to pound on an incoming wad of vines, if he reached down and threw the concave lever to the floor, opening it up ALL THE WAY at that instant, the combine would growl and groan a bit but pound the wad of vines right on around and throw them onto the straw walkers, and on out the back of the machine... he could then pull the lever back up to the third or fourth notch (normal clearance setting in sorghum) and go right on combining til the next wad came in, and do it again. Deeres of that era had the concave adjustment on a little crank handle you had to sit and crank on for about five minutes to fully open the concave, and couldn't do this trick. IH had to adjust their concave clearance with wrenches from the ground under the sides of the machine, and Gleaner was similar but with their closed concaves right behind the header in the feederhouse... In 100 degree heat, with all those clog-ups, but early afternoon everybody else had QUIT and drove their machines on home... Dad and Grandpa got the ENTIRE job (several thousand acres) and combined for the guy for about a month or so straight and paid for the combine in ONE YEAR... More to come! OL J R: )
SO, I grew up running the farms with Grandma Mary... she did the driving and hauling hay between farms (when Dad didn't or couldn't) til I got my license. I did pretty much everything else. I remember well that STUPID IDIOT Jimmy Carter and his "Soviet grain embargo" that collapsed grain prices for most of a decade, precipitating the 80's farm crisis... Up til then grain prices had been really good, and most cotton farmers in our area rotated to grain sorghum or corn or a combination of the two, basically 50-50 with cotton. Then Carter's grain embargo ended up collapsing the grain prices and we ended up with huge surpluses that depressed prices for most of the next 10 years... Grandpa planted a few acres of grain sorghum in 80 or 81, which was the last grain crop on the farm til about the mid 90's... everybody including us pretty much went 100% cotton for the next 10-15 years, and corn and grain sorghum became a rarity in our area. Cotton at least was fairly stable in price... back when I was a little kid and everything was SO cheap comparatively speaking, cotton was about 60 cents a pound on average. Ginning was cheap back then and you normally got a pretty healthy seed check from the gin in the mail at the end of the season (for the seed they separated out of the cotton lint at the gin when they press it into bales, and sell the seed to be crushed for cottonseed oil, and then the leftover mash they sell as "cattle cake" for cow feed). The 80's weren't great, expenses were going up and cotton was still about 60 cents a pound on average. I graduated in '89 and went to mechanic's school on scholarship and kept farming... when I graduated mechanic's school in 91 we were in the middle of "it's the economy, stupid" old man George Bush's bad recession and sorry economy, plus tens of thousands of returning Gulf War vets who had first dibs on the nonexistent jobs... so I kept farming, since I didn't want to work on garbage trucks in Houma, Louisiana LOL:) (The only job listing on our tech school job board in the region). Things just kept going up... then in the mid-90's input prices SKYROCKETED, with the introduction of the first GMO "Roundup Ready" and "Bt" cottonseed, and a natural gas "crisis" due to an extremely cold winter in the northeast... fertilizer I HAD been paying $150-160 a ton doubled in price, cottonseed that had been $50-60 a bag for non-GMO went up to over $100 a bag for non-GMO in just a couple years, merger mania was on with the biotech giants Monsanto and Dow "buying up all the competition" where they bought basically 90% of the cotton seed company market share (split between Delta & Pine Land Company (DP&L, bought by Monsanto) and Stoneville Pedigree Seed (out of Stoneville, MS, bought by Du Pont), which together accounted for well over 90% of the cottonseed market. Soon basically their non-GMO seed selections languished and were overpriced to make their GMO and stacked-trait varieties more appealing... further inflating costs. Fuel of course had jumped by at least 50-100% in the leadup to the First Gulf War in early 91, and never came back down. Machinery and parts prices were through the roof. The one bright spot was chemicals were getting cheaper as a lot of stuff like Roundup was finally coming "off patent" and we could get generic Trifluralin and Roundup and other chemicals cheaper than we'd ever been able to, but it didn't make up for the huge increases in everything else. Cotton, however, was STILL selling for about 60 cents a pound on average. Then in the mid-90's we got the stupid Boll Weevil Eradication Program, where they state basically assumed dictatorial powers and force farmers to comply, by using a rigged election to get it passed where "ACRES counted NOT FARMERS-- IOW, I vote "no" but the BTO neighbor farming 10 times as much ground as I do votes "yes", his vote counts as 10 YES votes to my 1 NO vote... so the program people would come in and wine-n-dine the 3 biggest farmers in the community and KNEW it would pass just on the sheer volume of acres those guys farmed. The OVERWHELMING majority of farmers voted NO, but because they operated less ACRES than the bigshots voting "yes" they were stuck with a program they didn't want. The gubmint then delegated this dictatorial power to a PRIVATE FOUNDATION and gave them essentially the power to tax... they assessed a $20 per acre fee on every planted acre of cotton, and if you didn't pay, they'd place a lien on either your crop or your farm! Well, that got fought and the program got kicked out for a couple years, but they came back and did it again, this time retooling it so they couldn't place a lien on your land, BUT you couldn't sell your crop without their "letter of permission" that the buyers all had to get BEFORE they could buy your crop... Basically it was a letter they'd send you saying you were "paid in full" to the Foundation... So as to not p!ss off the cotton buyers, who make their money buying the cotton from the farmers and then selling shipload amounts to cotton mills or international buyers (well, no cotton mills anymore-- I toured one in South Carolina near my aunt's house as a kid, but that's another story). SO to not p!ss the buyers off, Oh, you COULD still sell your crop, BUT the buyers had STRICT ORDERS to ONLY make the checks for your crop payable to "Joe Farmer AND TBWEF" (TX Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation). Farmers would then take the check to the bank to deposit it in their accounts, only to be told they COULD NOT DEPOSIT THE CHECK *UNLESS* it was co-signed by the TBWEF representative... they'd have to go to the TBWEF offices and get it co-signed before they could have their money-- until then, it was just a scrap of paper! SO they'd go to the TBWEF office and be told they had to pay ALL the assessments, FINES, PENALTIES, and INTEREST *BEFORE* TBWEF would sign off on the check and allow the farmers to get the money for their crops... I refused to be a d@mn serf on my own fvcking land, so I quit farming cotton... basically it amounted to a 20% increase OVERNIGHT in the cost of growing a cotton crop; we were farming "dirt cheap" and it STILL cost us about $100 bucks an acre to put in a cotton crop, and a 20% increase in costs just ATE ALL CHANCE AT A PROFIT... Like Dad said at the time, "h3ll, if they'd give ME the $20 an acre, they could HAVE the whole d@mn crop for free!" So we started farming all grain sorghum, corn, and a new crop for our area, soybeans. We're not well adapted area for soybeans-- about 1 in 3 bean crops failed, due to having to plant group 10-11 beans in late June (HOT DRY weather) and not being ready to harvest until November, by which time we're in the "winter monsoon" with rain all the time and NO drying days to get our heavy clay soils dried out enough to support a combine, and pods splitting from continually being wetted by rains. An extension scientist came in and proved we could grow mid-group 4 beans SO LONG as we planted after 13:30 minutes of daylight (around late May) and they'd be ready for harvest about Labor Day... SO we started planting beans, which not needing fertilizer and having cheap seed was a cheap crop to grow, BUT we have to spray for stinkbugs and worms and our yields basically top out at about 25 bushels to the acre... if you could make 30 bushel beans your living right! So not much money there. Grain sorghum prices were pretty good for a few years, highest they'd been since the 70's before Carter's fiasco, but being inextricably tied to the price of corn (usually 4/5 the price of corn) when the corn market fell the sorghum market tanks too. Both sorghum and corn are much cheaper to grow than cotton (like half the price) and cotton is like half as expensive to grow as rice. Rice farmers in the mid-late 90s in our area were hurting too... basically due to gubmint program changes and "Freedom to Farm" program changes in the mid 90's on, rice prices fell at the same time their inputs were skyrocketing too... at one field day I attended I overheard a couple young rice guys saying they weren't planting a single grain of rice that year-- "I did the math and we're GUARANTEED to lose money on every acre we plant... We'll make more money leaving our drills parked in the barn!" He went on to comment his Grandpa was just "beside himself" because he'd NEVER *NOT* grown a rice crop! A bunch of grain and rice guys turned to cotton in the interim, and cotton wasn't really profitable either, as it was STILL the same LOUSY 60 CENTS A POUND that it had been for the previous THREE DECADES!!! MTC... OL J R :)
By the early 2000's, the writing was on the wall. I wasn't interested in getting into the "get big or get out" land battles the remaining entrenched BTO's were fighting tooth and nail, particularly in our suburban Houston county that officials were proclaiming an "urban county" with less land to farm every year and more houses and ranchettes popping up everywhere. I remember well the day in late 83 when Grandma paid off the last farm notes at the bank after Grandpa's death, she said, "Well, they're all paid off-- and the next time we have to borrow money to farm will be the day we quit farming!" We farmed "on our own nickel" and just the 87 acre home place at Needville, only 62 acres of which was in cropland, the rest being pasture and hay meadows, and even then using 30 or so year old equipment and cutting costs to the bone, it was still ridiculously expensive... grain sorghum prices were falling, bean prices were meh, and cotton was still the same LOUSY 60 cents a pound on average it had been since before I was born! When we quit row cropping, fertilizer was around $300-400 a ton, non-GMO cottonseed (I tried Bt one year and didn't care for it) was about $150 a bag, (GMO/stacked trait was like $350/bag), fuel was about $3/gallon for farm fuel, and everything else was just insane-- parts, supplies, etc. We had been running cow/calf operation on the Shiner farm and a few head at Needville all that time, and we were making MORE MONEY off the cattle than the crops, with about 1/5th the expense and 1/10th the work that the crops required... SO it was basically a no-brainer to quit the row crop "rich man's game" and go all cattle, which is what we did... 03 was our last crop year... We let the gubmint program payments projected for the next round of "freedom to Farm" program pay for fencing and cross-fencing the entire Needville place and put it in grass, and built our herd at Shiner by holding back heifers for a few years and moving them to Needville. First couple of years I didn't know what to do with myself, SO used to having to constantly work on machinery and work in the field to grow the crops, but I got over that. I started helping my BIL on his northern Indiana farm about 10 years later after his brother got killed, and I get to enjoy "playing with machinery in the dirt" on someone else's dime LOL:) and he gets some experienced help out of it too... :) Works good for us. I bale all our own hay and haul it and run the cattle on both places with my brother's help. We ran the farms for Grandma til she passed in 06 at age 92 in her bed, and then for my Dad til he passed in late 16, and then Mom until she passed May 7th this year... Now we're in probate with my sister divvying it all up 3 ways, and my brother and I plan to continue running things as we have more or less, but together. My sister just wants out, plans to sell her land at Needville (which is SO expensive we couldn't afford to buy her out anyway, so it'll go to developers, and honestly I'd just as soon sell mine out at Needville and buy TWICE AS MUCH farm ground up here around Shiner and be done with that rat-infested citiot STINKHOLE Fort Bend County once and for all-- it's not the same place I grew up-- it's a sh!thole now and I hate the stinking area anymore... BUT that's for the future... Dad told me a story once- his best friend in high school, Franklin, after he graduated in 64, he rented 20 acres right across the creek from the south end of our farm. He borrowed his Dad's Farmall Super C and planted a cotton crop. Borrowed a little money from the bank (probaby a couple hundred bucks) for seed and fertilizer and chemical and cultivated it a couple times, sprayed it, and borrowed his old man's one-row IH cotton picker and picked it, hauled it to the gin, and then sold his cotton. He paid off the bank, paid his old man for the fuel he'd burned and a little extra for "rent" on the machinery, paid the landowner his share of the crop, and then with what he had left went and bought a BRAND SPANKING NEW 1964 Ford F-100 pickup with a 390 V-8 big block... He and Dad went to see "Goldfinger" at the theater in it just a few days after he bought it... PLUS he had money left over to live on til the following year... ALL THAT off ONE 20 acre field of cotton!!! BUT, that was life in the mid-60's... When Grandma traded in Grandpa's old 77 Ford F-100 on an 85 F-150, Grandpa had traded his 71 International pickup on a 76 Dodge D-100 slant six four speed overdrive half-ton, which was a piece of crap, so he traded it in not quite a year later on a 77 F-100 six cylinder three-on-the-tree... He only paid like $1,000 bucks after trade in... and he'd only paid like $1,800 for the Dodge a year before... Grandma ended up paying $10,000 after trade-in on that 85, which was basically the exact same truck... The 91 we traded it in on was $16,000 cash after trade-in... that was the last NEW truck we ever bought... since then, all used-- can't AFFORD a new truck and won't eat that much loss in depreciation on one! So while EVERYTHING has increased in price at least 10 times since the 70's, cotton is STILL the same lousy 60 cents a pound average it was before I was born! Back in the early 70's, you could feed a family of 3 a modest fried chicken dinner for about a buck and some change! Even big burger basket with fries for 2 adults and a kid was less than $2, unless you wanted cokes or ice cream/shake, then it was maybe $2 and change. Now you can't get out of McDonald's with a bag of crap for less than $10 for mini-burgers and a lil order of fries to split. 60 cents won't even buy you a cup of coffee anymore! Dad bought his first double-row self=propelled cotton picker, a well-used IH 220A machine from the early 60's, back in about '75 or 76, and paid like $2,500 for it then, which was BIG MONEY even back then! A new 782 IH picker back then would have been about probably $30,000-- NO WAY they could EVER afford that. New cotton pickers now are well over $600,000, some even more, cool 3/4 of a million! Just insane-- all to grow the same lousy 60 cent cotton! Best I ever sold cotton for was a contract for 76 cents a pound. Worst I ever sold for was 25 cents a pound one year when EVERYBODY had 'high mike" (micronaire-- a measure of how coarse or fine the fibers are-- totally controlled by environment, heat, humidity, rainfall, etc TOTALLY out of the farmer's control) and we just had to give it away practically... I remember selling calves when Grandpa was alive for nearly $1 a pound (which was INSANE big money back then, back when we actually still had a 7 year "cattle price cycle") and remember a few years later selling calves for 30 cents a pound.... BUT, with calves, if they want to pay 30 cents, I can deliver 30 cent calves and still make money-- they'll be the sorriest, rangiest, pot bellied little varmints you ever saw, but I can keep costs down and still make money with 30 cent calves-- can't do it with cotton or row crops... not with inputs priced like they are NOW... Later! OL J R :)
Hey Grumpy, I'm 67 and wish I had the opportunity to "farm" the most important crop...the memories. Cherish this effort and keep up the GREAT Videos. Oh BTY Buck Fiden :))
I just seen this video and love it. Sure does make me miss talking with my dad. Thank you and your dad for sharing insight on past and present time. Damn! The prices 🤯
Just watched this 3 years late. Memories with dad very cool. I'm old enough to remember a 4020 was big iron. 66 retired in commie Michigan. U hang in there
very nice, I remember it all. we got ele about 1948, I was 8. still milked by hand til 49. first tractor was a pre war Farmall H, first tv in 55, last used horses in 62. seen a lot of changes, some for the good, many I do not like
Andy I enjoyed your father on the history of the passed of farming as ai am 92 and half years old. I milked cows till 1995 was 68 then. I kept on farming until I was 84 and my son took over I was helping him until my wife passed in Sept. 2019. I put tw tractors together in 1962 one of the first farmers with 1936 john deere A and 70 john deere. You gave me a idea to film a history of thhe past.. I remember when I purchase my first new combine allis 60 for $900 in 1948 . I still have s 1960 4010 John Deere and a 1970 4020 tractor. I still have a very good menory I could till a lot of the passed years.
I like talking to and listening to the old timers stories of when they where growing up. we can learn alot from them, thanks Grump for sharing your family story 👍
So much history to be remembered You told me I should make a video with my dad at 96 yrs. old. I think you are right I better get it done. My dad struggles to remember things too. Thanks for taking the time to do this, worth every minute!
came to watch this video after you recommended it for the new subscribers this was a very interesting video enjoyed listening to your father great video idea thanks for sharing
Daniel Costner Thanks for watching I enjoyed doing it he was in the hospital twice this winter with pneumonia we almost lost him but he’s actually doing pretty good now
The Grumpy Farmer I’m not a farmer but really enjoy watching how everything takes place and especially listening to the elderly I’m around the 50 age bracket and I know most of them have forgotten more than I’ll ever know hope he continues to do well
It's eye-opening to understand that he didn't grow up with a tv when he was a boy and his first car (I'm assuming that it was used) may not have had heat, or had an aftermarket heater, because it was an option on new cars. So much has changed to make life "easier" but I'm not so sure that it's made life better. Thanks for doing this and bless your dad for his willingness to sit and share on camera.
Brings back memories for me too. It was humorous to me that when my Grandpa went away from horses he also bought a 1950 John Deere B. My uncle Herb yo this day still uses it. I'm a child of the 1970's and 1980's. My Dad was brought along much the same way. I think my brother and I were brought as much as my parents could in the same way. Dad was saying my brother and I had totally too much. He then listed all of the things we had that he didn't. I guess that's why I appreciate the old time way as much as I do. Shoot our first big tractor was the Minneapolis Moline U. Later on it was was a John Deere 3020. The parallels of time are amazing.
Billy Joe Ekers yeah I try not to make my videos much over 20 minutes long because let’s face it people have short attention span’s I know I do but I could’ve made this one an hour long just listening to him he struggles with his memory these days but it’s still neat and it’s something that my daughter will be able to have the rest of her life also she’s 16
I really enjoyed this video been a sub for a couple of months. I'm 65 my dad grew up on a farm I did not. l did work on it during the summer as a kid. The family farm got sold in 09 when my uncle passed alot of memories were made there again great video. 👍 It was in middle Wisconsin.
Wow very touching makes me think of my grandfather who I grew up with on there farm raising pigs and corn hay etc . Always enjoyed those history lessons from the past thank you and your dad for sharing
Finally got around to watching this one. So much of history is lost and people regret not doing these types of things. Thanks for sharing. As our family farm days are nearing the end, I plan on making a series of videos while our historic buildings are still standing and not replaced by high density housing.
Thanks Dave and being this is an old video I’m not afraid to say this because probably no one will see it but I think he’s at the end of his life right now we brought him home from the hospital Friday and he’s to the point he won’t eat he won’t drink he won’t take his medicine he can’t talk we just had to pick him up out of a chair and put him in bed so I’m really glad I did that video last summer
Thanks for sharing this video it was a really good watch. It took me back to when my grandfather was farming and I would ride around in the tractor plowing and discing. I loved the farm growing up but grandpa was hard and never got to do all the cool stuff that I wanted to.
Great video. I have talked to several old timers including my Grand mother and the stories are very similar. They bought their farm In 1917. 140 acres for $70.00 per acre.
This is still a heart warming vid. I dont have my folks voice to hear. Believe me later you will be blessed to hear it down the road. Get your moms down you will be glad you did
Finally getting around to this one,...Awesome video!,...brings back memories of the stories both my grandpas told, luckily one of them is still around but i'll guarantee he'd never do an interview LOL I had many similar conversations with my father in law as well. Unfortunately we lost him way too early in life, he would have be 72 this coming fall so he hadn't seen as much as my grandparents but being the youngest in his family and almost 20 years between him and his older brother, there was a lot of history passed down from their father over the years. One thing I did notice watching this, no matter what part of the country you live in things were the same back in those days. Everyone raised some livestock as well as grain and hay to basically keep their livestock fed which in turn kept their family fed. I get the feeling your dad was a little apprehensive about doing the video but just like all those old guys once you get them going and reminiscing they'll talk all day!!....Thanks again for sharing it!
Weme Deeres yeah I think we could’ve went for an hour easily once we got started makes us complain a little less today with what we have compared to what they had thanks for watching Jeremy
@@TheGrumpyFarmer Another thing I forgot to mention was he couldn't believe how they have seen so much change and like you said they were the greatest generation which is so true. I just wonder what's there for us (other than all the negativity there seems to be now days) but they went from horses to tractors to tractors with heat and A/C, other than a tractor driving itself we don't have much to look forward to as far as advancement in the future LOL
My dad plowed with horses and mules during the depression. Their first tractor was a steel wheeled fordson. Making mollases was one thing they did. He lived like the depression could return at any time. He was a merchant marine in ww2. Always saved his money with my mom also working they retired in good shape financially. Both have passed now but not forgotten.
Great job! My parents started in that era too.as youngsters they got any job they could to help their parents out.i now own the farm my grandpa farmed on shares in the 1920s.my parents moved here in 1957,bought it in 1965.raised 6 kids on 35 cows and made money.when did your dad go to a bulk tank?
Gary Bridger thanks for watching and I think it was in the early maybe mid 60s right before I was born because I remember asking what the cement pad out in front of the barn was for and that’s where they used to put the old milk cans for the trucks to come and pick up and then he put in a tank and the old dump stations and then went from there to the stainless pipeline I do believe we will continue to see technology but nothing like that generation who has lived through the invention of electricity seeing a man on the moon and today’s modern technology
I think we went bulk in 1970.agway sold dad the tank and hired a company to build a new milk house.was a sunset that held 3500lbs.in 1984 we put in a new 600gal Mueller.1982 he put in a used starite/universal pipeline.my dad did pretty good for not graduating high school.but a pen and paper he would figure out next years input costs and prepay it if he could.he would tell story's like your dad.my mom was a farm girl her whole life too.she had just as interesting story's has dad did about growing up in the depression and living through WWII.
Gary Bridger When I sold my cows in 2011 I still had 625 gallon Sunset tank that my dad had I don’t think it was his first tank but it was the last one he ever had
Yes, I hit the like, but only because there is not a ❤️ button on my end. Subbed up way back at the beginning of the channel 😎😁 It is amazing how much it's changed, especially when you think about how commodity prices really aren't much different... You, a little emotional?? LOL. Damn allergies man!!! Again, Thank You very much Andy!!!
Gosselin Farms Ed Gosselin yeah I guess I didn’t realize that I did get a little choked up at the end but when I just watched it I did but I said I was going to keep it real 👍🏻
@@TheGrumpyFarmer Amen my friend!!! I've got a couple of videos, if you listen closely, I know you can tell.. It is real! I intend to keep it that way!😁
Jody Dennison they probably did walk to school didn’t they ? I know they went to a one room school house for a while that little shack across from Doug‘s house where Townsend used to store oats was the school house at one time and then didn’t they go to that old brick place in Meridian and then the school was built I can’t remember did uncle Lyle ever mention that stuff
That wasn’t boring at all. Would Love to hear more, stuff from n changes in fertilizer and herbicides. Water sources as well have always been interesting to me.
Thank you
Thanks to everyone who’s commented apparently this is bringing back memories for a lot of people I was texting with my cousins and we said it would’ve been nice to get my dad and his brother my uncle Lyle who passed away before Christmas together and done an interview like this it probably would’ve been long but boy it would’ve been interesting and I think it would’ve been cool but like I said my uncle passing gave me the idea to do this
nice . thank you cuz .
@@bobdennison207 thanks Bob
I really enjoy listening to older fellows talk about the past. Thanks for sharing this interview with your father. That dairy sale catalog is very similar to the way they print catalogs for registered cattle sales yet today. It looked like it was showing the pedigree of the cow on the sheet you showed. Nice video.
,I miss my dad so much thank you buddy
Thanks Terry 👍🏻
Always enjoyed sitting back and listening to my dad and uncle's talking about times they grew in the 30s
Yup Howard they were called the greatest generation for a reason
Great video Andy, I'm going through a very very similar situation with my father for the last months going through old pictures of the farm and my grandparents home all the down to the clock chime in the back ground 👍👍thanks for the idea of the video, May your father rest in peace 🙏🙏
Sorry for your loss Andy nice interview with your dad, cherish the time with him you will miss him when he's gone.
A true Pleasure listening to your father talk about the old days. Nothing better
Thanks Dennis
God bless your dad! God bless your whole family!
Thanks Frank he wound up passing away in July 2021 so I’m glad I did that interview video but he’s in a better place now
That was great, loved it
Thanks Daniel
Andy just found your channel, this was great, I love hearing about the old days, thanks for sharing! Cherish every moment with your Mom & Dad.
Rich Maniscalco thanks for watching yeah I could’ve interviewed dad for hours
You should be thankful that you still have him around,never knew either my grandfathers and my dad passed shortly after my return home from Vietnam so keep him close as you can and visit him as often as possible or you will regret it and it was a real good video really enjoyed it.
He passed away July of 21
Great Andy could listen to your dad all day loved it man
Thanks Brenda
I H POWER RULES WOW Took your advice and checked out this video and damn glad i did Im 65 now and lost my Dad back in 2016 Miss him everyday and wish i had the insight to do a video like this one This is priceless and his story would not be much different then your Dads Bless him and his memory He worked hard Asked for nothing but respect and raised a great family May God bless your Dads memory and all your viewers
👍🏻🇺🇸🍺
Beautiful interview with your dad. I enjoyed every minute of hearing him talk. My dad has been gone about 20 years now. I sure wish I’d have done something like this before he passed.
Thanks I enjoyed doing too
This was great listening to him
Thanks Craig
I'm happy to find a farmer from my old neck of the vast country. I'm from PA
Thanks Susan
Thanks for sharing. I miss my GPA’s. God Bless y’all
Thanks Chad
Man this video brought a tear to my eyes Andy listening to your dad reminds me of talking to my dad about farming back in his youth. My dad was a little younger than your dad as he was born in '39 and we lost him in '17 I sure wish we had made a video like this. Enjoy every minute with him and thanks for sharing this with us oh and by the way ur dad looks and sounds damn good!!
Mike Ryan Yeah one person commented that I was a little choked up at the end I guess I didn’t realize it until I watched it but it’s real life thanks for watching
I love all the old stories.
That was really nice to watch and hear
Thanks Jesus 👍🏻
Thank you Andy and Charles for sharing. So sorry you lost your father my father will turn 90 November 7th of this year 2024. And it’s hard seeing how he is slowing down but we still talk about the old days. Both when he was growing up in the 1930 40s and up to present day and then when I was growing up. We did attend the same old 1 room school house kindergarten - 8th grade In fact both my grand father and great grandfather attended there as well Deanville school located near Brown City Michigan it’s in the center of the thumb.
@@kalbfleisch61 thanks for watching this 👍🏻
Andy, I really enjoyed that video. I know it’s a three year old video but I just did see it today. I haven’t been a subscriber but maybe a year I lost my dad in 1996 when I was a young man. Luckily, I had an older brother to keep me in the right direction we farm together and still do today and I actually have a son that farms with us. I love farming. It is a great life and I do enjoy watching you and Jimmy. You may not see this, but I sure did like seeing your dad talk about the old days. It brought back a lot of memories.
thanks Jack
Great video! Thank you for sharing! 👍🏽😀❤️🇺🇸
Thanks Jeffry
I could set there all day listen to your dad talk about farming
Andy Gehring yup Even when he repeated himself a few times and he took a few moments to try and answer a question it’s still was great that’s why I didn’t edit any of it out
Thank you. My dad was born in '36 and farmed with his family growing up. Got indoor plumbing in the 50's . My how things change.
Robert Emory I think my dad was right no other generation will see the changes they’ve seen stop and think about it getting electricity going from using horses to machinery putting a man on the moon and now today’s technology
Wow, a great idea to interview your father! I enjoyed listening to him and how the country and farming had changed throughout the years.
A true hardworking gentleman / family man! I’m sorry u lost him. Thank u for sharing 😎👍
Thanks Steven
This was a very interesting post.
I like history.
Grew up in Denmark on a jersey Dari.
My dad and grandpa sold out in 1991 an went to cash crop and beef cattel.
I left my home stead and am living in North Eastern Montana.
Thanks Bo
Outstanding video, love seeing from his time farming to yours. It's always nice to hear how things had been. Thank you for sharing, your Father is pretty cool! You're pretty cool too Andy!
@@TruthAlways59 thanks for watching it
Thanks for sharing your interview with your Dad with us. It nice to hear how people got started in farming and the difference between then and now. No grandfather dairy farmed his hole farming career with jersey cattle. From 1933 to 1972 when he quit farming.
Monty Bussard glad you liked it I enjoyed doing it
I used to listen to my grandad talking about farming in the 30's-60's. Amazing how hard you had to work back then.
Thomas Williams yup especially compared to today
My first tractor was also a 3010 tricycle John Deer and i still have it today. Holding up and still doing its thing. 2nd tractor was a 4230 , my first diesel tractor and was a good tractor
Randy 👍🏻
Really enjoyed this video Andy. Thank you to your father and you for sharing. My grandfather (father’s father) was born in 1929 but we lost him in 2001; I miss him dearly. I just waxed his 4240 yesterday that he bought new in 1981 & I live in my grandparents house, so I fully understand emotions involved with family farming.
Thanks for watching sorry to take so long to get back to you I enjoyed doing this video
Brings back fond memories. Great video 👍
Appreciate it
THANK YOU SO MUCH. God-bless great video.
Thanks Tony
I love videos like this. I remember talking to my grandparents and mom and dad about farming in their era. Enjoyed this thank you.
Thanks for watching this is one of my favorite videos
the amount of innovation and progress this man has seen is amazing
Yeah probably no other generation will see what my dad has seen when you stop and think about it we will continue to see technology advances but he saw electricity motorized tractors and vehicles a man being put on the moon it was pretty cool doing that interview thanks for watching hope you subscribe and come along for the ride
Wow, just takes me back. Thank you! I could have listened to your dad for hours.
Yeah and I could’ve done it for hours and I’m glad I did do it because he passed away back in July so at least now we have this video forever
Andy I can not thank you enough!!! That video you made is priceless !!👍 The old times will come back but it's going to take time again thanks Andy for doing this I can tell you how much I appreciate you doing this thanks ❤️!👍😁👍
Shane Holst glad you liked it Shane I enjoyed making it
It’s so wonderful you have these memories from your Dad. It will be wonderful for Chelsea to have and appreciate as time goes by. Thank you for sharing these precious family memories. ❤️
Thanks Linda 👍🏻
Thank you for that video!
Thanks for watching it
Damn Andy was a great video!! Thanks for sharing it with us!
Thanks for watching
Love this video . Reminds me of talking with my dad and uncles about the good old days.
Thanks Randy i’m glad I did it before he passed away last year
You are Very blessed to still have your dad I lost my dad 25 years ago been farming by myself for 26 years I'm almost 50 i always in joyed listening to him talk about how he aquired the family farm while walking Bean's it could have been a minney a series on TV
Steve Fisher yeah I could’ve interviewed him for a lot longer it was cool so thanks for watching
Loved the video man. I’ll be the third generation of our family farm. Grandpa passed away March of 2017 and I wish I would have done a video like this with him! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching Trevor it was fun making this video
Thanks for sharing, I am a first time viewer , loved it. you was recommended by Harmless Farmer.
Thanks for coming along Greg 👍🏻
What a great and wonderful thing to be able to talk to your Father about things. That was very interesting. My dad passed at a young age. I was 19 and just started farming with him. I’d give anything to be able to talk to him like you did!! I’m 65 now and farm with my Son An Grandson. That’s very rewarding!!
Yeah i’ll always have this and so will my daughter
I could sit and listen to all the old timers talk about anything it is so interesting. That video will be great for a keep sake
Thanks for watching 👍🏻
Excellent video Andy. You had a great dad. Bet you learned a lot for him.
Thanks Richard yes I did learn a lot from him and sorry I missed your comment I found it because I occasionally go back and re-watch this video since he passed away last July
Thank you for sharing this precious time with your dad, jI admire these folks. My dad was born in 1930, lost him is 2014 wish I had a recording of him. I am just amazed of how farming has evolved. How many cows did you milk when you decided to get out of the dairy business? Ag is all hard work; Dairy is a tough business to be in.
We had 90-100 head and I’m glad I did it because we will always have the video to look back at
Thank You for doing the video with your dad. I wish I could have done on with my father. Just to hear his voice again would be rewarding. He started shucking by hand and just before he passed we picked him up with the loader and he shofled into the cab of a 12 row combine. If I had only taken a video or recording. My loss your gain with your dad Thank You Thank You for sharing this with us 😂😂😅
Glad you liked it David and now we’ll always have it
Very interesting thank you both. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸%
Thanks Robert
Thanks for sharing this cousin Grumpy , I really enjoyed watching!
Thanks cousin Scott
That's really cool... I miss hearing the stories of the old days... SO many good ones and most of that generation is now gone forever from this mortal sphere...
Oh, there was plenty about farming in the video... It's changed SO much in just MY lifetime, and I'm actually a couple years younger than you are Andy (born in 71). My great-grandpa Howard Bushnell moved down from Kansas around the turn of the century and bought his uncle's farm-- the family had originally been from upstate NY and had gradually moved south and westwards over the course of the 19th century, first to Hallsville, Missouri, then later to the area near Coffeeville, Kansas. His uncle had moved from upstate NY and bought the farm in Fort Bend County, Texas, near what was then known as Schendelville, which was later incorporated as Needville. His wife was ready to sell out and move back to NY, because the Great Hurricane of 1900 had killed 6,000 people just 70 miles away in Galveston. My grandmother was born on the Needville farm and passed away on it at age 92. She attended a one-room schoolhouse at "Marlow School" just across the creek from the south end of the farm. Grandpa B farmed cotton, hay, and cattle back then, and he got rich in WWI selling square bales of hay to the Army for their horses and mules for $1 a bale, which was BIG money back then! He eventually bought 7 more farms in the area and owned most of the downtown area of the next town over, Boling. He was something else... Grandma said he was very smart, could figure the cost of a load of lumber in his head, how many board feet were in it, etc. just by counting the ends of the boards, all to the penny. He was strict; the kids rotated through the job of bringing a bucket of water into the house to drink out of overnight, and if he got up and no bucket of water whomever's turn it was got rolled out of bed and had to go get it no matter what time of night it was. A neighbor once told me, "If he was owed a penny he'd ride all day to collect it, but if he owed a penny to someone else he'd ride all day to pay it!". He was a big man, and he carried a pair of pearl-handled .38 pistols on his hips, and he knew how to use them. I still have one; he was a lefty and the RH grip has a carved bulls head in the face of it with rubies set in the eyes. I had a big farm operator neighbor tell me one time, when he was growing up he and his parents/family worked for Grandpa Howard picking cotton and chopping cotton, and he'd be sitting on his horse watching everybody work and would tell him "take that apple crate to the end of the field and set it up by the fence" and so he'd carry it down there as he worked and set it up and once everyone was working on the next set of rows, great grandpa Howard would pull his .38's and shoot the nails through the apple crate... he was that good. Another neighbor, an elderly black man who was best friends and worked with my Grandpa Leon, who had worked for my Great-grandpa Howard when he was a kid, told the story that Howard would toss him a nickel and say, "Ernest, I want you to throw that nickel straight up in the air when I tell you to" and he would, and Howard could "slap leather" pull his gun and shoot the nickel before it hit the ground... Well, Howard was also a man of, shall we say, generous appetites... He had some sharecroppers that lived on the farm, one of them was a Bohemian woman who was basically "fresh off the boat" from Europe... she was older and didn't catch Howard's eye, but her 16 year old daughter Sophie did, so basically she threw the girl at Grandpa Bushnell figuring if he caught her they'd be fixed for life... Well, great grandpa Howard caught her alright, and soon set up housekeeping at the farm with her (by this time he'd built a big fine Mediterranean style white stucco house in town for Grandma B (his wife Louisa) and the girls. My Grandma, Mary, was just a girl but she stayed on the farm rather than in town most of the time in the big two-story farmhouse they had. Well, Grandma B divorced Grandpa B and he set up housekeeping with young Sophie on the farm, much to my Grandma Mary's displeasure... Well, this was back in the late 20's or early 30's and word spread, and the Ku Klux Klan, the self appointed "defenders of right and virtue" sent Grandpa B a threatening letter... I found it in his old safe and still have it... basically it said if he didn't stop messing around with that girl they would "cut his bollocks off" and threatened him not to think he could leave with her... Well, that didn't dissuade Howard in the least-- so the KKK decided to ride out to the farm one night to tar and feather him. He grabbed his pistols and a rifle and held them off all night, trading shot from the front door of the house with the KKK men he kept pinned down along the roadside in front of the farm. By sunrise they lost interest and all rode off back to town and their homes and farms, but Grandpa B reloaded, saddled up, and rode up town... Then he walked down main street in Needville with both his six-guns on his hips, cursing the KKK men as cowards and calling them out into the street for a "fair fight"... "Where are all you Ku Kluxers now??" He shouted as he walked down main street... but NOBODY would come out to face him in a gunfight. He didn't have any more trouble out of the KKK after that. MTC! OL J R :)
luke strawwalker yeah I was born in 67 that was a fun video to do I could’ve spent an hour talking with him he could’ve told stories about the one room school houses a lot of things but most peoples attention spans aren’t that long and it sounds like you’ve got quite the family history but trust me you don’t wanna come back to NY because the state is going to hell in a handbasket with the idiots we have running it i’m going to bed now it’s 11:30 PM I’m almost ready to turn into a pumpkin 🎃😁 take care
Well, anyway, Grandpa B finally moved off to Louisiana with Sophie and had several kids by her, and bought several farms over there around Iowa, Louisiana. Then he got tired of Sophie and left her and came back to Needville, wooed his ex-wife Louisa back and remarried her, and lived in town the rest of his life. He left the best farms to his sons, and my Grandma Mary and her sister Peg inherited the old home farm, splitting it between them. He had been retired and was renting the farm to someone else, but my Grandpa Leon (who married Grandma Mary in the 30's) finally talked him into letting him farm it in about '52. Grandpa B had bought the first tractor in Fort Bend County, a Fordson, and later replaced it with a Farmall F-12 and then an F-20. Grandpa Leon bought a pair of Fords, an NAA and an 8N Golden Jubilee, and started farming cotton on the home place. Grandma would never let him live down the fact that the Needville farm was "HER farm" and would "never be his" so in 56 or 57 he bought the 160 acre Shiner farm, and they moved up here in 58. He tried farming cotton on it for a couple years but Shiner is never more than 2 weeks away from a drought and he nearly lost the farm-- one year he made 7 bales on 70 acres of cotton. SO, he switched over to growing hay, and he and Dad paid for the farm by baling about 40,000 small squares a year off the 160 acres... the farm would grow up 6 feet tall in johnsongrass which makes GOOD hay if you know how to handle it. They sold a large amount of their hay to the Hagen's Auction Barn, which is now the Hallettsville Livestock Commission. They also drove down to Needville and farmed cotton and raise hay and a few cattle there as well. They bought a Dearborn cotton stripper to fit onto the 8N and did custom cotton stripping as well back then. Dad graduated in 65 right after they moved back to the Needville farm, and left the farm for about a year to live with his sister who's husband had moved them to Georgia. He didn't like it and returned home to farm with Grandpa. He rented some farms from his aunts and uncles and some other ground around and was farming when I was born in 71. He'd farm all spring and summer and get the plowing done in early fall, then go work for one of several IH dealers or a Deere dealership during the winter as a mechanic or parts man. Then in the spring he'd quit and go get his next crop in. Back in the 70's you could do that... you could quit one job before lunch and have another job by the time you got back from lunch! Not like now! Anyway, farming was getting tougher; they didn't have the money to pour into buying ever larger equipment and renting more land, and some of the local BTO's who'd jumped onto the "get big or get out" train with both feet had lured some of his aunts and uncles into renting their farms to them instead of Dad, so that made things harder-- the only land he could find was "problem ground" with lots of weeds or droughty sands or poor soil. In 76 Dad worked at the nuke plant that winter making $5 an hour driving a dump truck, which for '76 was about like making $30 bucks an hour or so now... He said he'd never seen so much money in his life and didn't have to work 1/3 as hard to get it as farming, so he basically kept the job and Grandpa helped him farm, but it was too much and he let the rented ground go over the next couple years. Dad helped Grandpa farm the Needville home place and the Shiner farm, which they had switched to cattle once they paid the farm off in the late 60's or early 70's. Grandpa got sick around Labor Day of 82 and went downhill SO fast that he passed away in early February of 83... I was 11 about to turn 12 at the time. Dad helped me a lot the first two years basically taught me how to farm the place and by the time I was 14 he turned the entire thing over to me and Grandma, as he was routinely working 60-80 hour weeks at the nuke plant getting all the overtime he could possibly get... More to come! OL J R :)
My earliest memories are riding STANDING UP between Dad and Mom in the front seat of Dad's 72 Chevy pickup... NO carseats back then, yet we managed to survive! LOL:) Anyway, we didn't really know how good farm life was in the early 70's... When I was a little kid, I remember we'd go check crops or Dad would be working in the field and get through, and we'd ride over in the pickup to Rosenberg (next big town over) and go to Ron's Chicken... you could get a two piece order of chicken an a roll and fries for 35 cents... if you wanted a coke or tea that was another 10-15 cents. The biggest cup they had was smaller than the small today! Or, we'd go to 2M's drive-in and get a burger basket for about 50 cents... Dad had bought the 72 Chevy pickup used, about a year old, but he only paid $1,200 for it NEARLY NEW! Those old Chevy's rusted badly back then and the door jamb was rusted away so he traded it in on a brand spanking new F-100 Ford pickup in 77 and he only paid $1,800 for that truck BRAND NEW after trade-in! I found some of Grandpa's old receipts for farm stuff back then-- fertilizer was only $60 per ton back then, a 50 pound bag of cottonseed was only $15 a bag, grain sorghum seed was $8 for a 50 pound bag, and corn wasn't a whole lot higher... fuel was cheap, but chemicals back then were fairly high and pretty rudimentary... nowhere near as many as available now. Grandpa had bought a Ford 5200 row crop new in '68 for $8,000. Dad went partners with Grandpa and traded in his Farmall M wide front for a Case David Brown 1710 (IIRC the number) in '75 for like $8,000 difference. Dad had bought an old Case combine someone had been doing custom cutting with and had run a bunch of sodium chlorate through, which some guys back then sprayed on the grain sorghum to kill the stalks and "desiccate" it so it would dry down faster (which isn't a problem anyway in our 100 degree plus mid-July harvesting temps) and that chlorate is just like salt-- drew in moisture and rusted that combine all to pieces... Dad spent the first winter he had it pop riveting and bondoing up holes in it and had to install roofing tin in it to replace the shaker pan under the straw walkers, they were SO rotted out! He did custom combining with it as well as harvesting our own grain sorghum crops and was doing well enough that he and Grandpa decided to sell the machine and buy a brand new Ford 640 combine (built in Germany by Claas-- their "Senator" model in Europe) and do custom work, mostly because a BTO from Boling, who was an elder in the church they attended, promised them "if you buy a combine, I'll buy a cart and yall can harvest my crop EVERY year!" Well, he bought a "Big 12" cart (which was like maybe 120 bushels tops) to pull behind his 4020 and Dad and Grandpa bought the combine, which was only $12,000 BRAND NEW in '74, WITH an 18 foot grain head on it... They started combining for the BTO and didn't get half done and the BTO reneged on his agreement-- a neighbor of his had contracted WAY more sorghum than he could deliver, so he offered to combine the BTO's grain for free, haul it to the elevator to fill his contract and pay him the going market rate across the scales just so he didn't have to "buy back" the contract. That left Dad and Grandpa in a lurch, as they couldn't make the payments without the custom work. Luckily another BTO from near Rosenberg had rented a bunch of river bottom ground to grow grain sorghum, which was selling for big money back then, and it got all ate up with morningglory vines and he couldn't combine it, so he put the word out anybody who could combine it would get all the work they wanted. Dad and Grandpa drove the machine 13 miles over to Rosenberg, through town, and out the other side and pulled into the field where every custom operator in the country had showed up... I remember that day though I was a little kid-- looked like a combine parking lot, or a farm show, all these new Deere, IH, Gleaners, White, Oliver, you name it, they were there. Everybody pulled into the field and didn't get 100 yards before clogging up, choking the machine on green, sticky morning glory vines... Then they'd spend an hour unplugging the machine with a pocketknife and a lot of swearing, because there were NO reversers on those machines back then! Dad clogged up two a couple times, BUT the Claas/Ford had a cool gadget to help-- the cylinder shaft extended out a foot over the RH wheel, and a big cast iron block was affixed to the end of it with four holes in it, you could stick a big iron bar in there and roll the entire combine backwards to unplug the cylinder, and if you left the header in gear with the engine off it would turn the feederhouse and header backwards and roll the wad of vines right down the throat and out from under the auger and you could pull it out on the ground and get going again. NONE of the other combines of that era had that... Plus, Dad soon discovered that the Claas/Ford had the concave adjustment on a lever under the seat-- if he saw a wad of vines going into the feederhouse, or felt the cylinder start to pound on an incoming wad of vines, if he reached down and threw the concave lever to the floor, opening it up ALL THE WAY at that instant, the combine would growl and groan a bit but pound the wad of vines right on around and throw them onto the straw walkers, and on out the back of the machine... he could then pull the lever back up to the third or fourth notch (normal clearance setting in sorghum) and go right on combining til the next wad came in, and do it again. Deeres of that era had the concave adjustment on a little crank handle you had to sit and crank on for about five minutes to fully open the concave, and couldn't do this trick. IH had to adjust their concave clearance with wrenches from the ground under the sides of the machine, and Gleaner was similar but with their closed concaves right behind the header in the feederhouse... In 100 degree heat, with all those clog-ups, but early afternoon everybody else had QUIT and drove their machines on home... Dad and Grandpa got the ENTIRE job (several thousand acres) and combined for the guy for about a month or so straight and paid for the combine in ONE YEAR... More to come! OL J R: )
SO, I grew up running the farms with Grandma Mary... she did the driving and hauling hay between farms (when Dad didn't or couldn't) til I got my license. I did pretty much everything else. I remember well that STUPID IDIOT Jimmy Carter and his "Soviet grain embargo" that collapsed grain prices for most of a decade, precipitating the 80's farm crisis... Up til then grain prices had been really good, and most cotton farmers in our area rotated to grain sorghum or corn or a combination of the two, basically 50-50 with cotton. Then Carter's grain embargo ended up collapsing the grain prices and we ended up with huge surpluses that depressed prices for most of the next 10 years... Grandpa planted a few acres of grain sorghum in 80 or 81, which was the last grain crop on the farm til about the mid 90's... everybody including us pretty much went 100% cotton for the next 10-15 years, and corn and grain sorghum became a rarity in our area. Cotton at least was fairly stable in price... back when I was a little kid and everything was SO cheap comparatively speaking, cotton was about 60 cents a pound on average. Ginning was cheap back then and you normally got a pretty healthy seed check from the gin in the mail at the end of the season (for the seed they separated out of the cotton lint at the gin when they press it into bales, and sell the seed to be crushed for cottonseed oil, and then the leftover mash they sell as "cattle cake" for cow feed). The 80's weren't great, expenses were going up and cotton was still about 60 cents a pound on average. I graduated in '89 and went to mechanic's school on scholarship and kept farming... when I graduated mechanic's school in 91 we were in the middle of "it's the economy, stupid" old man George Bush's bad recession and sorry economy, plus tens of thousands of returning Gulf War vets who had first dibs on the nonexistent jobs... so I kept farming, since I didn't want to work on garbage trucks in Houma, Louisiana LOL:) (The only job listing on our tech school job board in the region). Things just kept going up... then in the mid-90's input prices SKYROCKETED, with the introduction of the first GMO "Roundup Ready" and "Bt" cottonseed, and a natural gas "crisis" due to an extremely cold winter in the northeast... fertilizer I HAD been paying $150-160 a ton doubled in price, cottonseed that had been $50-60 a bag for non-GMO went up to over $100 a bag for non-GMO in just a couple years, merger mania was on with the biotech giants Monsanto and Dow "buying up all the competition" where they bought basically 90% of the cotton seed company market share (split between Delta & Pine Land Company (DP&L, bought by Monsanto) and Stoneville Pedigree Seed (out of Stoneville, MS, bought by Du Pont), which together accounted for well over 90% of the cottonseed market. Soon basically their non-GMO seed selections languished and were overpriced to make their GMO and stacked-trait varieties more appealing... further inflating costs. Fuel of course had jumped by at least 50-100% in the leadup to the First Gulf War in early 91, and never came back down. Machinery and parts prices were through the roof. The one bright spot was chemicals were getting cheaper as a lot of stuff like Roundup was finally coming "off patent" and we could get generic Trifluralin and Roundup and other chemicals cheaper than we'd ever been able to, but it didn't make up for the huge increases in everything else. Cotton, however, was STILL selling for about 60 cents a pound on average.
Then in the mid-90's we got the stupid Boll Weevil Eradication Program, where they state basically assumed dictatorial powers and force farmers to comply, by using a rigged election to get it passed where "ACRES counted NOT FARMERS-- IOW, I vote "no" but the BTO neighbor farming 10 times as much ground as I do votes "yes", his vote counts as 10 YES votes to my 1 NO vote... so the program people would come in and wine-n-dine the 3 biggest farmers in the community and KNEW it would pass just on the sheer volume of acres those guys farmed. The OVERWHELMING majority of farmers voted NO, but because they operated less ACRES than the bigshots voting "yes" they were stuck with a program they didn't want. The gubmint then delegated this dictatorial power to a PRIVATE FOUNDATION and gave them essentially the power to tax... they assessed a $20 per acre fee on every planted acre of cotton, and if you didn't pay, they'd place a lien on either your crop or your farm! Well, that got fought and the program got kicked out for a couple years, but they came back and did it again, this time retooling it so they couldn't place a lien on your land, BUT you couldn't sell your crop without their "letter of permission" that the buyers all had to get BEFORE they could buy your crop... Basically it was a letter they'd send you saying you were "paid in full" to the Foundation... So as to not p!ss off the cotton buyers, who make their money buying the cotton from the farmers and then selling shipload amounts to cotton mills or international buyers (well, no cotton mills anymore-- I toured one in South Carolina near my aunt's house as a kid, but that's another story). SO to not p!ss the buyers off, Oh, you COULD still sell your crop, BUT the buyers had STRICT ORDERS to ONLY make the checks for your crop payable to "Joe Farmer AND TBWEF" (TX Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation). Farmers would then take the check to the bank to deposit it in their accounts, only to be told they COULD NOT DEPOSIT THE CHECK *UNLESS* it was co-signed by the TBWEF representative... they'd have to go to the TBWEF offices and get it co-signed before they could have their money-- until then, it was just a scrap of paper! SO they'd go to the TBWEF office and be told they had to pay ALL the assessments, FINES, PENALTIES, and INTEREST *BEFORE* TBWEF would sign off on the check and allow the farmers to get the money for their crops... I refused to be a d@mn serf on my own fvcking land, so I quit farming cotton... basically it amounted to a 20% increase OVERNIGHT in the cost of growing a cotton crop; we were farming "dirt cheap" and it STILL cost us about $100 bucks an acre to put in a cotton crop, and a 20% increase in costs just ATE ALL CHANCE AT A PROFIT... Like Dad said at the time, "h3ll, if they'd give ME the $20 an acre, they could HAVE the whole d@mn crop for free!" So we started farming all grain sorghum, corn, and a new crop for our area, soybeans. We're not well adapted area for soybeans-- about 1 in 3 bean crops failed, due to having to plant group 10-11 beans in late June (HOT DRY weather) and not being ready to harvest until November, by which time we're in the "winter monsoon" with rain all the time and NO drying days to get our heavy clay soils dried out enough to support a combine, and pods splitting from continually being wetted by rains. An extension scientist came in and proved we could grow mid-group 4 beans SO LONG as we planted after 13:30 minutes of daylight (around late May) and they'd be ready for harvest about Labor Day... SO we started planting beans, which not needing fertilizer and having cheap seed was a cheap crop to grow, BUT we have to spray for stinkbugs and worms and our yields basically top out at about 25 bushels to the acre... if you could make 30 bushel beans your living right! So not much money there. Grain sorghum prices were pretty good for a few years, highest they'd been since the 70's before Carter's fiasco, but being inextricably tied to the price of corn (usually 4/5 the price of corn) when the corn market fell the sorghum market tanks too. Both sorghum and corn are much cheaper to grow than cotton (like half the price) and cotton is like half as expensive to grow as rice. Rice farmers in the mid-late 90s in our area were hurting too... basically due to gubmint program changes and "Freedom to Farm" program changes in the mid 90's on, rice prices fell at the same time their inputs were skyrocketing too... at one field day I attended I overheard a couple young rice guys saying they weren't planting a single grain of rice that year-- "I did the math and we're GUARANTEED to lose money on every acre we plant... We'll make more money leaving our drills parked in the barn!" He went on to comment his Grandpa was just "beside himself" because he'd NEVER *NOT* grown a rice crop! A bunch of grain and rice guys turned to cotton in the interim, and cotton wasn't really profitable either, as it was STILL the same LOUSY 60 CENTS A POUND that it had been for the previous THREE DECADES!!!
MTC... OL J R :)
By the early 2000's, the writing was on the wall. I wasn't interested in getting into the "get big or get out" land battles the remaining entrenched BTO's were fighting tooth and nail, particularly in our suburban Houston county that officials were proclaiming an "urban county" with less land to farm every year and more houses and ranchettes popping up everywhere. I remember well the day in late 83 when Grandma paid off the last farm notes at the bank after Grandpa's death, she said, "Well, they're all paid off-- and the next time we have to borrow money to farm will be the day we quit farming!" We farmed "on our own nickel" and just the 87 acre home place at Needville, only 62 acres of which was in cropland, the rest being pasture and hay meadows, and even then using 30 or so year old equipment and cutting costs to the bone, it was still ridiculously expensive... grain sorghum prices were falling, bean prices were meh, and cotton was still the same LOUSY 60 cents a pound on average it had been since before I was born! When we quit row cropping, fertilizer was around $300-400 a ton, non-GMO cottonseed (I tried Bt one year and didn't care for it) was about $150 a bag, (GMO/stacked trait was like $350/bag), fuel was about $3/gallon for farm fuel, and everything else was just insane-- parts, supplies, etc. We had been running cow/calf operation on the Shiner farm and a few head at Needville all that time, and we were making MORE MONEY off the cattle than the crops, with about 1/5th the expense and 1/10th the work that the crops required... SO it was basically a no-brainer to quit the row crop "rich man's game" and go all cattle, which is what we did... 03 was our last crop year... We let the gubmint program payments projected for the next round of "freedom to Farm" program pay for fencing and cross-fencing the entire Needville place and put it in grass, and built our herd at Shiner by holding back heifers for a few years and moving them to Needville. First couple of years I didn't know what to do with myself, SO used to having to constantly work on machinery and work in the field to grow the crops, but I got over that. I started helping my BIL on his northern Indiana farm about 10 years later after his brother got killed, and I get to enjoy "playing with machinery in the dirt" on someone else's dime LOL:) and he gets some experienced help out of it too... :) Works good for us. I bale all our own hay and haul it and run the cattle on both places with my brother's help. We ran the farms for Grandma til she passed in 06 at age 92 in her bed, and then for my Dad til he passed in late 16, and then Mom until she passed May 7th this year... Now we're in probate with my sister divvying it all up 3 ways, and my brother and I plan to continue running things as we have more or less, but together. My sister just wants out, plans to sell her land at Needville (which is SO expensive we couldn't afford to buy her out anyway, so it'll go to developers, and honestly I'd just as soon sell mine out at Needville and buy TWICE AS MUCH farm ground up here around Shiner and be done with that rat-infested citiot STINKHOLE Fort Bend County once and for all-- it's not the same place I grew up-- it's a sh!thole now and I hate the stinking area anymore... BUT that's for the future...
Dad told me a story once- his best friend in high school, Franklin, after he graduated in 64, he rented 20 acres right across the creek from the south end of our farm. He borrowed his Dad's Farmall Super C and planted a cotton crop. Borrowed a little money from the bank (probaby a couple hundred bucks) for seed and fertilizer and chemical and cultivated it a couple times, sprayed it, and borrowed his old man's one-row IH cotton picker and picked it, hauled it to the gin, and then sold his cotton. He paid off the bank, paid his old man for the fuel he'd burned and a little extra for "rent" on the machinery, paid the landowner his share of the crop, and then with what he had left went and bought a BRAND SPANKING NEW 1964 Ford F-100 pickup with a 390 V-8 big block... He and Dad went to see "Goldfinger" at the theater in it just a few days after he bought it... PLUS he had money left over to live on til the following year... ALL THAT off ONE 20 acre field of cotton!!! BUT, that was life in the mid-60's... When Grandma traded in Grandpa's old 77 Ford F-100 on an 85 F-150, Grandpa had traded his 71 International pickup on a 76 Dodge D-100 slant six four speed overdrive half-ton, which was a piece of crap, so he traded it in not quite a year later on a 77 F-100 six cylinder three-on-the-tree... He only paid like $1,000 bucks after trade in... and he'd only paid like $1,800 for the Dodge a year before... Grandma ended up paying $10,000 after trade-in on that 85, which was basically the exact same truck... The 91 we traded it in on was $16,000 cash after trade-in... that was the last NEW truck we ever bought... since then, all used-- can't AFFORD a new truck and won't eat that much loss in depreciation on one! So while EVERYTHING has increased in price at least 10 times since the 70's, cotton is STILL the same lousy 60 cents a pound average it was before I was born! Back in the early 70's, you could feed a family of 3 a modest fried chicken dinner for about a buck and some change! Even big burger basket with fries for 2 adults and a kid was less than $2, unless you wanted cokes or ice cream/shake, then it was maybe $2 and change. Now you can't get out of McDonald's with a bag of crap for less than $10 for mini-burgers and a lil order of fries to split. 60 cents won't even buy you a cup of coffee anymore! Dad bought his first double-row self=propelled cotton picker, a well-used IH 220A machine from the early 60's, back in about '75 or 76, and paid like $2,500 for it then, which was BIG MONEY even back then! A new 782 IH picker back then would have been about probably $30,000-- NO WAY they could EVER afford that. New cotton pickers now are well over $600,000, some even more, cool 3/4 of a million! Just insane-- all to grow the same lousy 60 cent cotton! Best I ever sold cotton for was a contract for 76 cents a pound. Worst I ever sold for was 25 cents a pound one year when EVERYBODY had 'high mike" (micronaire-- a measure of how coarse or fine the fibers are-- totally controlled by environment, heat, humidity, rainfall, etc TOTALLY out of the farmer's control) and we just had to give it away practically... I remember selling calves when Grandpa was alive for nearly $1 a pound (which was INSANE big money back then, back when we actually still had a 7 year "cattle price cycle") and remember a few years later selling calves for 30 cents a pound.... BUT, with calves, if they want to pay 30 cents, I can deliver 30 cent calves and still make money-- they'll be the sorriest, rangiest, pot bellied little varmints you ever saw, but I can keep costs down and still make money with 30 cent calves-- can't do it with cotton or row crops... not with inputs priced like they are NOW...
Later! OL J R :)
Hey Grumpy, I'm 67 and wish I had the opportunity to "farm" the most important crop...the memories. Cherish this effort and keep up the GREAT Videos. Oh BTY Buck Fiden :))
I just seen this video and love it. Sure does make me miss talking with my dad. Thank you and your dad for sharing insight on past and present time.
Damn! The prices 🤯
Thanks for watching it was neat to do it
Great video. I love listening to the old stories that these absolute treasures have.
Thanks for watching it was pretty neat making this video
Great video. Tell your dad thank you for sharing his thought's and memories with us. God bless him
Thanks Jim sorry so late getting back to your comment
Just watched this 3 years late. Memories with dad very cool. I'm old enough to remember a 4020 was big iron. 66 retired in commie Michigan. U hang in there
That was very cool some how I missed seeing this. Nice to leave a legacy to your daughter.
Yup glad I did it before he passed away last summer
I love history on your farm keep it up love it
very nice, I remember it all. we got ele about 1948, I was 8. still milked by hand til 49. first tractor was a pre war Farmall H, first tv in 55, last used horses in 62. seen a lot of changes, some for the good, many I do not like
Andy I enjoyed your father on the history of the passed of farming as ai am 92 and half years old. I milked cows till 1995 was 68 then.
I kept on farming until I was 84 and my son took over I was helping him until my wife passed in Sept. 2019. I put tw tractors together
in 1962 one of the first farmers with 1936 john deere A and 70 john deere. You gave me a idea to film a history of thhe past.. I remember
when I purchase my first new combine allis 60 for $900 in 1948 . I still have s 1960 4010 John Deere and a 1970 4020 tractor.
I still have a very good menory I could till a lot of the passed years.
That’s awesome and that would be a great video if you did it thanks for watching
I like talking to and listening to the old timers stories of when they where growing up. we can learn alot from them, thanks Grump for sharing your family story 👍
Thanks for watching
So much history to be remembered
You told me I should make a video with my dad at 96 yrs. old. I think you are right I better get it done.
My dad struggles to remember things too. Thanks for taking the time to do this, worth every minute!
Thanks Steve
came to watch this video after you recommended it for the new subscribers this was a very interesting video enjoyed listening to your father great video idea thanks for sharing
Daniel Costner Thanks for watching I enjoyed doing it he was in the hospital twice this winter with pneumonia we almost lost him but he’s actually doing pretty good now
The Grumpy Farmer I’m not a farmer but really enjoy watching how everything takes place and especially listening to the elderly I’m around the 50 age bracket and I know most of them have forgotten more than I’ll ever know hope he continues to do well
It's eye-opening to understand that he didn't grow up with a tv when he was a boy and his first car (I'm assuming that it was used) may not have had heat, or had an aftermarket heater, because it was an option on new cars. So much has changed to make life "easier" but I'm not so sure that it's made life better.
Thanks for doing this and bless your dad for his willingness to sit and share on camera.
Thanks for watching
Brings back memories for me too. It was humorous to me that when my Grandpa went away from horses he also bought a 1950 John Deere B. My uncle Herb yo this day still uses it. I'm a child of the 1970's and 1980's. My Dad was brought along much the same way. I think my brother and I were brought as much as my parents could in the same way. Dad was saying my brother and I had totally too much. He then listed all of the things we had that he didn't. I guess that's why I appreciate the old time way as much as I do. Shoot our first big tractor was the Minneapolis Moline U. Later on it was was a John Deere 3020. The parallels of time are amazing.
Yes they are Anthony
Just come across this it’s great to record memories thank you
Thanks Ron I’m glad I did it because he passed away in July 2021
That was great. Really enjoyed it.
Pretty cool, wish we could have done that with my grandpa and his brother.
Yeah, I’m glad I did it before he passed away in July 2021
Thanks for sharing that. I always like hearing the stories from where i grew up. Keep posting new videos.
Josh Forshee thanks for watching did you grow up around this area?
@@TheGrumpyFarmer Yes. I live on TX now.
Where was the back pasture up on the sledding hill maybe
Still my favorite video. Great video. You did well.
👍🏻 people keep watching it too
You will really enjoy this in the future. I know from experience. Thanks
pittman pittman thanks for watching it and I will and so will my 16-year-old daughter who is very close to her grandpa
Awesome video,great keepsake!
Billy Joe Ekers yeah I try not to make my videos much over 20 minutes long because let’s face it people have short attention span’s I know I do but I could’ve made this one an hour long just listening to him he struggles with his memory these days but it’s still neat and it’s something that my daughter will be able to have the rest of her life also she’s 16
You're a lucky man to have this video. I would love to have something like this with my dad
Yeah I’m glad
What a treasure you are a blessed spirit
Thank you for sharing
From Luther mi
Thanks Alan
Great video! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for watching Norman
Thank you!!!!! Awesome interview.
Thanks for watching I enjoyed doing this video
I really enjoyed this video been a sub for a couple of months. I'm 65 my dad grew up on a farm I did not. l did work on it during the summer as a kid. The family farm got sold in 09 when my uncle passed alot of memories were made there again great video. 👍 It was in middle Wisconsin.
Thanks appreciate it
Wow very touching makes me think of my grandfather who I grew up with on there farm raising pigs and corn hay etc . Always enjoyed those history lessons from the past thank you and your dad for sharing
vKeith Rice thanks for watching 😁
Finally got around to watching this one. So much of history is lost and people regret not doing these types of things. Thanks for sharing. As our family farm days are nearing the end, I plan on making a series of videos while our historic buildings are still standing and not replaced by high density housing.
Thanks Dave and being this is an old video I’m not afraid to say this because probably no one will see it but I think he’s at the end of his life right now we brought him home from the hospital Friday and he’s to the point he won’t eat he won’t drink he won’t take his medicine he can’t talk we just had to pick him up out of a chair and put him in bed so I’m really glad I did that video last summer
@@TheGrumpyFarmer sorry to hear that, hope all goes as well as it can. I’m guessing he’s had enough of not feeling well.
@@crazydave4455 thanks and yeah he’s ready for the next chapter we’ll say
Just an awesome video
Thanks John I appreciate that. This will probably always be my favorite video and the tribute video to buddy.
Thanks for sharing this video it was a really good watch. It took me back to when my grandfather was farming and I would ride around in the tractor plowing and discing. I loved the farm growing up but grandpa was hard and never got to do all the cool stuff that I wanted to.
Yeah I enjoyed doing this video plus my daughter will be able to look back on it in the future
Great interview !!
Thanks Mic
Great video. I have talked to several old timers including my Grand mother and the stories are very similar. They bought their farm In 1917. 140 acres for $70.00 per acre.
Jerry Hill thanks it was neat to do and probably could’ve talked with him for hours
This is still a heart warming vid. I dont have my folks voice to hear. Believe me later you will be blessed to hear it down the road. Get your moms down you will be glad you did
I just found this comment that’s weird 🤷♂️
Finally getting around to this one,...Awesome video!,...brings back memories of the stories both my grandpas told, luckily one of them is still around but i'll guarantee he'd never do an interview LOL I had many similar conversations with my father in law as well. Unfortunately we lost him way too early in life, he would have be 72 this coming fall so he hadn't seen as much as my grandparents but being the youngest in his family and almost 20 years between him and his older brother, there was a lot of history passed down from their father over the years.
One thing I did notice watching this, no matter what part of the country you live in things were the same back in those days. Everyone raised some livestock as well as grain and hay to basically keep their livestock fed which in turn kept their family fed. I get the feeling your dad was a little apprehensive about doing the video but just like all those old guys once you get them going and reminiscing they'll talk all day!!....Thanks again for sharing it!
Weme Deeres yeah I think we could’ve went for an hour easily once we got started makes us complain a little less today with what we have compared to what they had thanks for watching Jeremy
@@TheGrumpyFarmer Another thing I forgot to mention was he couldn't believe how they have seen so much change and like you said they were the greatest generation which is so true. I just wonder what's there for us (other than all the negativity there seems to be now days) but they went from horses to tractors to tractors with heat and A/C, other than a tractor driving itself we don't have much to look forward to as far as advancement in the future LOL
Weme Deeres exactly
My dad plowed with horses and mules during the depression. Their first tractor was a steel wheeled fordson. Making mollases was one thing they did. He lived like the depression could return at any time. He was a merchant marine in ww2. Always saved his money with my mom also working they retired in good shape financially. Both have passed now but not forgotten.
Yup never forget that generation John they were called the greatest generation for a reason
This is an awesome video abd it really makes me want to ask my grandparents
Midwest Allis Acres it was fun to do!!!
Awesome!
Thanks Kevin
Very Very cool seems a very nice man know you miss him thanks for that video
Thanks 👍🏻
Great job! My parents started in that era too.as youngsters they got any job they could to help their parents out.i now own the farm my grandpa farmed on shares in the 1920s.my parents moved here in 1957,bought it in 1965.raised 6 kids on 35 cows and made money.when did your dad go to a bulk tank?
Gary Bridger thanks for watching and I think it was in the early maybe mid 60s right before I was born because I remember asking what the cement pad out in front of the barn was for and that’s where they used to put the old milk cans for the trucks to come and pick up and then he put in a tank and the old dump stations and then went from there to the stainless pipeline I do believe we will continue to see technology but nothing like that generation who has lived through the invention of electricity seeing a man on the moon and today’s modern technology
I think we went bulk in 1970.agway sold dad the tank and hired a company to build a new milk house.was a sunset that held 3500lbs.in 1984 we put in a new 600gal Mueller.1982 he put in a used starite/universal pipeline.my dad did pretty good for not graduating high school.but a pen and paper he would figure out next years input costs and prepay it if he could.he would tell story's like your dad.my mom was a farm girl her whole life too.she had just as interesting story's has dad did about growing up in the depression and living through WWII.
Gary Bridger When I sold my cows in 2011 I still had 625 gallon Sunset tank that my dad had I don’t think it was his first tank but it was the last one he ever had
Yes, I hit the like, but only because there is not a ❤️ button on my end.
Subbed up way back at the beginning of the channel 😎😁
It is amazing how much it's changed, especially when you think about how commodity prices really aren't much different...
You, a little emotional?? LOL.
Damn allergies man!!!
Again, Thank You very much Andy!!!
Gosselin Farms Ed Gosselin yeah I guess I didn’t realize that I did get a little choked up at the end but when I just watched it I did but I said I was going to keep it real 👍🏻
@@TheGrumpyFarmer Amen my friend!!!
I've got a couple of videos, if you listen closely, I know you can tell..
It is real!
I intend to keep it that way!😁
Awesome video. How many generations is your farm ?
I’m 3rd generation
Those were the good old days
Yup Terry
Great video Andy !! I was waiting to hear the walked to school uphill both ways lol
Jody Dennison well actually they did and I think up until eighth grade they were in a one room school house I could’ve interviewed him for hours
Jody Dennison they probably did walk to school didn’t they ? I know they went to a one room school house for a while that little shack across from Doug‘s house where Townsend used to store oats was the school house at one time and then didn’t they go to that old brick place in Meridian and then the school was built I can’t remember did uncle Lyle ever mention that stuff
East central illinois here just watched again my dad was born in 1918 horses for him left the farm to be a fireman at the university of illinois
Well thanks Michael I’ve watched it again since dad passed last month
Nice job Andy! Looks like you dad's ready to go help you out with farm chores.
Tim Southard no those days are done but he still dresses like he’s ready 😁