Paid for farm work while growing up? Yeah, right! Topic never came up, can"t imagine it if it had. Allowance? Not in the vocabulary. In the 50s, that was not an issue. Getting an animal to raise and sell? No. Never had a chance to earn any money by working for a neighbor- most had plenty of kids, and if they didn"t, I couldn"t help anyway, with my only brother 9 years older, and gone from home, so I was always the choreboy. I had one classmate who when we were Seniors, talked about working for his neighbor, shoveling shxx into a spreader, for 50 cents a load.
After HS graduation, 17 yrs old, I worked at home, the balance of the year, for an oats crop on 17 acres on a recently purchased 320 acre farm. I was the push behind buying that farm, and they sold it a year later for 5 grand more. (1962) I got $65 for that crop...then 7 months later I turned 18, and worked for 3 years at $125 per month, plus room and board. Dairy farm, 7 days a week. Paid mileage to use the car to go anywhere, except to church. At age 20 I got the same story about working for parents for another 3 years, and could take over the farm. Enlisted in the army paratroopers, volunteered for Green Berets, served overseas, went to college, and started farming from scratch on my own. Best thing I ever did was to leave home.
When we raised our 6 kids, they didn"t get an allowance. Mrs, raised in town, mentioned it, but we couldn"t afford it, so it got dropped. But, when each were in high school, last two years, I came up with a plan, like an FFA gilt ring, where they each had 4 sows, and got all of the pigs from them. We paid for sow and litter feed, and they could sell them as feeders, or feed them out, and repay the feed cost. Each had to give 4 bred gilts to the next sibling. Each left home with about $5000 for college money. With youngest daughter, we were out of raising hogs, so I sold equivalent bucks of dairy animals in her name.