My father farmed most of his life and is now almost 89. I was forced to drive a tractor at age 10, and I turned it over more than once when my foot would slip off one of the brakes and then run into a ditch. The tractor had two brake pedals that could be locked together, but if not, then one brake was for the right back wheel and the other was for the left back wheel. I should not have been driving that young. When my father was that age, they drove mules, which I think were less dangerous. Lately, my father had only been growing oats/wheat in the winter because there was not enough rain in the summer, and most of what he grew in the later years was used as livestock feed. When I was very young, he used to grow cotton, which made pretty flowers but was also very thorny. Fortunately, my allergies kept me out of the cotton fields.

I'm sure farming is drastically different in Iowa from what it is in Texas.

Lars

LindaC, we just had two boys killed here last summer, they were cleaning out a silo and the feed residue fermented from the extreme heat. The fumes killed them, they were 17 and 18. I cringe every time I see a small kid riding on a tractor with someone. I did it, but I rode all the way to Canada in the back of a pick up too and I don't let my kids or grandkids do it today. Sigh.

Lars, I think farming is pretty much the dsame everywhere. I was also driving a tractor by the time I was 10, and I was the smallest in the family. Dad put blocks on the pedals so I could reach them, but I still had to stand up. I tipped the old Farmall over more than once, ours had that narrow "tricycle" type front end and they were tippy.

I broke my arm when I was 12 starting the tractor, it had a crank in front and it would "kick back" if you didn't watch out. After that, Dad rigged up an electric start for it. I broke my leg the same summer, falling off the top of a load of hay coming in front the hayfield, and got several stitches in my head besides.

Dad always told me to stay away from the PTO, it would catch your clothes and suck you right in, the same with the auger to drill fence post holes. It probably wasn't the best idea for me to stand in the bucket of the backhoe with a chainsaw pruning apple trees while Dad raised and lowered it either.

Farming is the 5th most dangerous profession in America, behind logging, fishing, airline pilot, etc. Between the large animals and the large equipment, the animals are more dangerous because they are living creatures and you can't predict how they will react. Every farmer I knew who got hurt by livestock got hurt by a "tame bull" or "family cow" or "old horse". Pigs will not only kill you, they'll eat you.

Add standing in a hay feeder at 20 below zero, or the top of a hay mow at 95F and it's just hot/cold/dirty/hard dangerous work. That's why I love it!

Drop that seed in the dirt and watch it come to life. Clean the nostrils of a new calf and see it take its first breaths. Watch the horses run just for the joy of it, and say a prayer that when your time here is up you'll spend your last minutes sitting on a porch facing west and looking over those fields or even better, on the back on one of those horses.

Oh, and did I mention that farmers are self-employed, so not only is it dangerous, they don't have any insurance other than that which they purchase themselves. No retirement plan either...

Annie

You can add to your list of problems the Parkinson's Disease related to use of some pesticide or herbicide. There's a whole cluster of these cases in Fresno County where Jim's family raised grapes that went to Sunmaid raisins. Both his aunt and uncle who lived at the ranch died of Parkinson's.

Lindac, we heard on the news that a young person had lost his life in a farm accident. So sad how these things happen. Many of our relatives are farmers and we always worry about their safety.

Gee, we all romanticize the life of getting back to the earth. Guess it's not so glamorous. Why don't tractors have a better design so they don't tip over?

Annie, when I said that farming was drastically different in Texas, I meant that in Texas no one was ever in a hurry to get something planted or harvested because the growing season was so long, and in fact the winter was the growing season for oats and wheat. I've heard that farmers in the Midwest have to follow a rigid schedule of planting and harvesting, and that kind of schedule is unknown in Texas, at least where I lived. The farmers I knew were very lackadasical, due to the weather. The Puritan work ethic is much stronger in the Midwest than it is in Texas, I think, but then I've never been to the Midwest and am only going by what people I've met from there have told me. Southerners in general are more relaxed than Northerners, I think, and this affects their style of farming. Otherwise the techniques may be the same, but the time doing the tasks is different. I don't think anyone in the U.S. plows fields with mules any more, but I did see that being done the last time I was in Oaxaca, Mexico. Farming was torture to me partly because of the heat, which would drain all of my energy.

I think tractor design might be improving so that they are less like tricycles. In Texas, you really need an enclosed cab with air conditioning, and we had neither. When I drove a tractor, I wore long sleeved shirts, gloves, and a huge Mexican sombrero to protect myself from the sun, even though it would be 106 degrees outside. I'm very glad today that I stayed out of the sun during my childhood and teenage years.

Lars

Because a tractor has to be tall, have big wheels to drive and small wheels to fit between the rows....and that makes it unstable.
Also tractors pull mowers in hilly hay fields.
Farming is dirty drudgery. And dairy farmers have the worst of it because cows HAVE to be milked twice a day. Grain farmers and beef or hog farmers have a down time when they can, but I know dairy farmers who have been 10 years or more without a day off

My mom grew up down the road from a dairy farm. We used to visit and play in the barn. I loved patting the cows heads and putting hay in the feed trough (or whatever it's called). Many years later the farmer got too old to keep it up and none of the kids wanted to take over. He had to get rid if his herd. He had to go somewhere else the day the cows left because he could not bear to watch them go. He loved those cows just like family.

He also had chickens, rabbits, dogs and barn cats. We loved to play with the babies. We'd take them to my grandmother's house and beg to keep them but of course they all went back, except some fancy chickens once.

The family turned the barn into a sort of gift shop and nursery. It was so weird to go back and see it filled with frou-frou instead of cows. I fell out of the hayloft once, but landed in more hay.

Lars, you're right in that there are strict time limits to farming in the midwest. When you have a 90-120 day growing season you'd better get that corn planted or the hay in or whatever.

I still wouldn't take your Texas heat, though. I remember getting out of an air conditioned vehicle in Shamrock, Texas, and the heat was like hitting a wall. I can't imagine trying to do physical labor in that heat, I'll take the 20 below any day. I can put on a lot more clothes to stay warm!

dedtired, today's more modern tractors are a bit more stable, with wider front ends and now many have 4 wheel drive. Some even have air conditioned cabs and radios, windshield wipers and headlights. The one we used when I was a kid, though, was a circa 1924 Farmall and it wasn't fancy, we had to crank it to start it.

My brother still has that tractor and it still runs, so at least they were built to last...

Annie

Well the advent of the corn dryer has maded a lot of difference in the timing of getting the corn out of the firld. I remember early on when an unseasonable big snow would prevent the farmer from harvesting and the corn would stay in the field lots longer....with the stalks falling making it harder to harvest and some or in some cases it would spoil.
Newer varieties are faster to dry down and, of course can be dried in a corn dryer.
The fuel saved in minimum till is often spent at the dryer.

I grew up on a farm in Mass. We raised 2000 chickens a year to supplement income. Sold eggs and the chickens at 6 weeks. We had a huge 1 acre veggie garden and large orchard. Never ending work from planting to harvesting to canning everything. My dad had to travel for his job so it was my mom and the 5 kids that took care of it. I still have a small garden and fruit trees because I learned to love to garden by growing up on a farm. I will never have chickens though. LOL
Clare

There are row crops like blackberries that require tractors with a narrow "footprint." The bigger models with air-conditioned cabs aren't suitable for intensive small-scale farming. In fact, in the Willamette Valley an old Farmall or Massey-Ferguson would bring a premium used simply because it's so well-suited for the purpose.

But on a hillside tipping is common and I've known it to happen. The worst involved a neighbor who rolled into the river on his tractor.

I once got my leg caught on the hydraulic lift on the back of the tractor. Fortunately my father heard me screaming and stopped in time to avoid total crushing. Once while he was running the sprayer his friend on the sprayer was caught in the auger. It was a freak accident which literally tore him out of his shoes but he somehow escaped the worst injury.

Only late in life did my father become fully aware of the health issues present with all the chemicals, particularly the pesticides and herbicides. He greatly regretted using them.

We have access to incredibly cheap and abundant food, but it comes with other costs.

Carol

Saw this article today and I thought of this thread. Poor child. Imagine the parents' heartbreak.

Here is a link that might be useful: accident

This is enlightening. I've been on a farm probably a handful of times in my life, and I didn't really know all the bad parts about farm life. In my head, it was all sunshine, fresh veggies, and chicken fried steak :-).