Never got a wage from dad. He said the clothes on my back and food on the table was payment enough. He did however buy my first bow, shotgun and a few rifles. I had free reign with his truck for hunting and trapping. I could charge gas to him. Charge all my ammo from Coast to Coast to him. I made enough off trapping to have spending money all year. Those were the good old days!! Other than those rotten hay bales and pitching sh!t, I had a great life and loved it back then. You have a lot of character. I would assume the penny a bale had a lot to do with it in shaping the man you become. You just didn't realize the good the cheap farmer did for you as a kid.
My son helped throw bales up in the loft when we had horses, he vowed he would never date a girl that has horses. Just like you TJ my parents gave us a task to complete. Todays parents (not all) bargain with their kids to just work on their chores for an hour or a half hour. I am glad that I was raised that way.
I love reading these life stories. My first farm job was washing teets and shoveling silage on a converor belt. My first construction job was working for free raking gravel and black top for my father after mom passed. I was twelve and he did drive ways. By 13 he had me trained on the dozer and the backhoe. I'd move scrap for him that he'd cut and sell. I was raised, taught to work and we raised our kids the same way. Both had jobs while in high school. Also raised in 4H and scouts They are both in supervisory positions in their jobs. The work I did growing up was about the only blessing I had. Worked hard in and out of school and I wouldn't change that if given a redo.
That is impressive!! I was in my mid 20's before getting an opportunity to run a dozer and backhoe. Put a lot of hours on a backhoe burying rock piles, water lines and electrical wire. I enjoyed that. The farm I've work on for the last 34 years, we pretty much are self-reliant. You are a welder, plumber, electrician, cement worker, builder, fabricator, mechanic and run pretty big equipment. Besides the farming equipment... we have a dozer, track hoe, pay loader, side dump trailer, bottom dump trailer and an old gravel truck. We are the only farm in my area that has 120' crane that I know of. LOL
As a kid growing up... I've pulled calves, pulled lambs and helped the vet on a few C-sections. I've been smashed into walls/fences by p!ssed of bulls and cows. Smashed to the ground by a couple cows when ear tagging/banding their calves. Been bucked off a few horses. Been bite and kicked by a few. Milked cows the old-fashioned way. I have put up at least 30 miles of barbwire fence. I am a country boy who hates country music and cowboy hats ( rant to stay on subject ). Been a good life.
Thats great my father was a crane operator and my brother a welder. I went to night school for 2 years for welding after we got married. Hubby was doing his union journeyman construction classes at the time so he'd go to blueprint reading and I'd go to welding. The second year we were in welding together.. I had schematic reading at Raymond's where I worked. They also gave me electronic wiring courses because I was in the engineering trouble shooting department. We made fork lifts. I love learning and have taken many classes in different fields beside college for recreational land management. Also a few internships. One at a show kennel for grooming and kennel management. Lifes an adventure for sure.
So funny. Born and partly raised in the country. I don't wear cowboy hats, although it doesn't particularly annoy me if someone else does. I can't stand most country music. I don't mind some of it from the Cash, Hank Jr, Waylon era, but most of it actually makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up if I so much as hear it. I won't go into the Pop stuff they play on country stations these days. We ran about 70-80 cows on average, my dad, his two brothers, along with my grandpa. Always had a couple horses for working cattle. Rounded up a lot of cattle on horseback, put up a lot of hay. Collected eggs from the chickens, mended a lot of fence, bottle fed rejected/orphaned calves. When I was old enough to start helping with working calves we just had a corral with a post in the center for working them. Rope them, buck and hog tie. I kept the fire stoked for the 3 irons in rotation and brought them to my dad/uncles at the beginning. I was probably 13 or so when we added on to the corral and put in a squeeze chute finally, we really thought we were livin' large with that setup. Was in my twenties before we went to a generator and electric iron. We pastured them on two different spots through the summer, so halfway through the summer we rounded them up and pushed them to the 2nd mountain pasture, a miniature cattle drive that took most of a day. Learned to drive a clutch as soon as I could reach the pedals. Within a few years of that I was driving a 2 ton hay truck with split rear end on steep hay ground. Hay pastures were in rattlesnake country, always looked under a bale before picking it up. Always supplemented food for the table with hunting, deer, grouse, pheasant. My cousins and I spent every free minute we had pheasant and grouse hunting once we were 12 years old and it was open. Never with a dog, I often wonder how many miles we walked and how many birds we walked over. I was in the 8th grade when mom and dad divorced. I moved to a city 30 miles away that was about 30k population, the "big city" to me (I still live in that town). I took Driver's Ed in the 9th grade, the Driving Instructor accused me of illegally practicing driving when we had to drive the little 5 speed Ford Tempo to learn a clutch, he couldn't understand why I had no trouble with it. He actually called my mom about it that evening. I can still hear my mom laughing while explaining how it was for kids raised outside of a "city". I still of course helped dad a lot on weekends and during summer breaks. I got an after school job that first year while still in the 8th grade, have had one ever since.
The reverse is also concerning...Seems like the last few times I assembled IKEA pieces I ended up with extra parts...
Kinda reminds me of last year assembling the grandson's toy tractor, my wife said do you have to curse so much. The next week she was putting another tractor together swearing like a sailor.
If all kids could have such memories to look back on our world wouldn't be the steaming pile it has become.
I have faith in rural America my grandson's play is doing cattle chores, and shoveling anything from snow to dirt to shat.
We never did any branding. One of the most painful jobs I had involved a cow that kept bloating up on us. We had to put a tube down her mouth, throat and into her first stomach until she released gas back out the tube. My God did it stink. Dad called the vet. She told him the cow 's gut was plug with probably a hairball. Give her a gallon of mineral oil to break it down so she could pass it. It worked and she passed it but still kept bloating up. Dad called the vet again. She forgot to mention that after the cow passed it, we needed to get another cow and put her in a head chute. Feed her lush green grass and when she regurgitates it back up to chew her cud, to reach in her mouth with your hand and grab the cud. Cud contains bacteria which breaks up the food so they can process it since they have 4 stomachs. Due to the hair ball, the bacteria died in the first stomach of the bloating cow. We caught a cow and started feeding her grass. When she regurgitated and started chewing her cud, dad hollers, reach in and grab it. I found out cows don't like it at all when you reach in and try stealing their cud. While it hurt like hEll when she was biting down on my hand, it was my arm that felt like it was going to bust off from her violently shaking and throwing her head up and down. I've got dad screaming in my ear I better come out with cud cause the next time she would be ready for it and it would be a lot worse. I was able to grab some cud. Dad looks at me and says, now go shove it down the mouth of the bloating cow so she swallows it. Thank GOD that cow was use to us shoving the tube down her. She was pretty good about it. It did the trick and she quit bloating up. Sure glad cows don't have top front teeth.
You all see these companies buying up huge amounts of space to have "cultured meat" businesses? Lab grown meat. I want to puke.
