Posted by JDseller on August 22, 2012 at 16:42:18 from (208.126.196.144):
Saw the post down below. Made me remember when we where starting out. I can remember that my first wife and I where glad when we could afford some of the Kraft Mac & cheese. Many nights that, a can of Spam, and a few fried potatoes was the evening meal. Fed the little kids and us for less then $2. We drank water.
I was working to get started farming and going to college at night. Milked cows on the weekends for an Uncle. Money was real tight. I can remember cutting and fitting a piece of an old flat belt in the bottom of my work shoes to cover a hole. It was school time and the kids needed school cloths and shoes. I wore that pair of shoes until it started snowing.
We had a large garden but by spring things would get tough. Never could justify keeping an fat hog or steer back then. They where too much of our income. Eat a lot of chicken. LOL I can remember paying the spring rents and inputs in 1981. I had less than $45 dollars to my name left in the checking and savings account. We talked about asking my family for some help but decided to pray and see what would happen. We borrowed zero money for operating. We both worried about having loans with the high interest.
God provided. I got a part time third shift job. I worked three days a week. The job was bagging fed for the morning delivery trucks at the local feed mill. I would do 20-25 ton each night by myself. That is 800-1000 50LBS bags each night I worked. I was the only guy in the bagging end of mill. On the days I worked I only got 3-4 hours of sleep in two short naps morning and evening. I did that for two years. I can still remember how it hurt your shoulders at the end of a long night when the bag would drop off the bagging scale. You had to catch it or the rollers on the conveyor under it would bust the paper bag. Then roll it through the sewing machine. Then stack the finished bag on a pallet. I got paid $3.50 an hour.
I remember stopping and getting a case of Kraft Mac & cheese and a bunch of other canned food stuff with my first pay check. The wife about cried when she saw that she would have plenty to feed everyone.
We survived. After that spring there never was any less that 4 figures in our savings. I worked and made darn sure of that. My wife made sure that the pantry was always stuffed with enough to eat on for weeks on end. That always included a case of Mac & cheese. She would doctor it up some and made it work. The kids loved it when she would cut up hot dogs in it for them.
Before she passed in 1995 she got to help burn the farm mortgage. We had everything paid for and money saved. She said it was a load off her mind while she was sick. She no longer had to worry about paying debt.
I know that many had it much harder. Really hard in the Depression. I still remember those times when ever I see a box of Mac & cheese. God has blessed my family. None of them have those kind of worries today.
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Today's Featured Article - Harvestin Hay: The Early Years (Part 2) - by Pat Browning. The summer of 1950 was the start of a new era in farming for our family. I was thirteen, and Kathy (my oldest sister) was seven. At this age, I believed tractor farming was the only way, hot stuff -- and given a chance I probably would have used the tractor, Dad's first, a 1936 Model "A" John Deere, to go bring in the cows! And I think Dad was ready for some automation too. And so it was that we acquired a good, used J. I. Case, wire tie hay baler. In addition to a person to drive th
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