My quad thread got me thinking

[Hamloc]

1964 here. Raised pigs for 25 years now have a cow calf operation and grain. I got out of pigs in 2007.

[ajl]

'69 model here so 51 years. Like that AC305 furrow. Have a 36 year old AC8070 myself. Still see tractors from the 60's around here making hay in the summer. This area is an ag museum.

[blackpowder]

Horse.
I apologise. I mistook your post about hauling grain in a pick-up as a nostalgic desire for our grain industry's way of doing business in the past. Not as a comment on lifestyle.

[LEP]

I am 58 years old. I cut my teeth at harvest by hauling with a 3 ton from three 5542 co ckshutt combines when I was 14. Square bins with wires and shovelled the corners full in the bins and the corners empty on the truck each load.

Direct seeding opened up the opportunities in this country. We used to summerfallow half the acres , then chemfallow and have now been continuous cropping for more than 2 decades.

So it looks like our average age is about the same as the average age of a Canadian farmer...55.

[blackpowder]

Turned 56 this fall.
Things i notice. Bad habits hit me way harder. Dealing with stress properly more imperative. My affect on others more on my mind.
What bothers me the most. I still find mid 40s ladies the most attractive but I get more attention from late 50s early 60s. Oh well, the crosses we bear.

[LQQKY]

I'll be 63 and married 42 years in February. The older I get the more interested in others stories I am.

[SASKFARMER]

Like I said earlier I am a 1963 model, we had cows, chickens ducks pigs and grain land. Dad expanded quite a bit so started young running equipment. First tractor was a 4010 with a water cooler for cold air in cab doing smf with a 16 ft. Our big tractor was a G1000 then in 1971 the first 7020 Deere 4x4 in our district. It didn’t arrive right away as the boys drive it into the dealership and broke the muffler off as the door didn’t open high enough. Big tractor

Picked roots with my brothers every summer god I hated that but you make it a game.

Square bins we had a row I hated summer as we cleaned them up. Wires all over and the first aluminum shovel was a god send from the steel shovels.

Dad decided when we sold the cows to fill the barn right full of grain a real big bin. Yea los of shoveling.

First steel was a 2400 bin.

Lots of fun life was different back then.

A party line what fun.

Did visit a lot more with neighbours and family on a regular basis.

Did go with my parents and gramma ad aunt and uncle to our relatives in Florida and Chicago and Milwaukee in 1966. Interesting times.

This is fun.

[makar]

Quote from a friend in his 70s, you know when your old when old women start looking good.

[GDR]

43 here. Trying to bring the average on you old farts down a bit. Couple old farmer fellows that visit me almost daily can see it in there eyes they wish they were still in the game.

[Sheepwheat]

Ok so guys are telling some tales and I’m liking it. 😂

1976er here. Dad was more a cow guy than a grain guy. Wasn’t big on expansion or being very aggressive with farming. He just did a good job on a small and diverse farm, and that was good enough for him. 40 bushel canola at 13 bucks was decent dollars in the 70’s and 80’s, why would you need more land? Lol There are good and bad things about that. I always felt loved, he always had time for me. But it kept this farm in the dark ages and left behind, on the other, negative hand. Not so much with machinery, he was pretty fair at keeping up that way, but when land was cheap, he could have bought lots more, but didn’t. Why, when you're making good money already? Lol And of course, being second generation, raised by depression era German peasants who came to Canada with fifty dollars, he learned frugality in the first order.

Our farm was a throwback to a different era. We were a 1940’s like farm in the 1980’s. At the time I felt embarrassed. Milking cows, separating milk, taking cream cans to town, collecting eggs, slopping pigs, HUGE garden. No one in my class did that . At this time I am thankful because it has allowed for some cool ideas and income stabilization options, because I know how to raise animals, butcher them, etc. There is a huge opportunity in niche markets these days as people shift to wanting to know where and how their food is raised, are more likely to be supportive of smaller, local farms, etc. It opened up a whole new option to me, as land is an impossibility to get your hands on around here, unless you have relatives, are crooked, or won the lotto of genes. Just the way it is. No problem.

My dad died when I was 13. It was obviously a life changing thing. Short term and long term. But I had him long enough to pick up a lot of his ideas and attributes which I value. I never saw him chasing dollars. I knew that life to him was not about that.

Pails to fill the press drill, 11-52 in bags, (hundreds of them), the old 95 combine, 14 foot cultivator, having one short seven inch auger that needed blocks under the tires to reach the top of the HUGE 2911 behlen, rows of wooden bins, spraying with a pool sprayer with a no cab tractor at 25 acres a tank, swather with no steering wheel, picking square bales by hand, spread the 46, spray the treflan, cultivate it twice, harrow with diamond harrows, then seed, all with the same tractor, losing the drill into a steep ditch when it slipped off the transport, butcher a couple hundred chickens, dig an acre of potatoes, somehow I got it done. Somehow I hunted fished, and trapped all the time too! I could no way do that today. It was the passion and the hope of naive youthfulness that gave me the energy.

Along the way, the passion and the hope fizzled, along with the youthful naïveté. Closing elevators, no semi, no control over grades, moisture, when shipping occurs, poor prices in high yield years, great prices in low or no yield years, lack of technological interests, naturally risk averse. Marriage and kids bring a whole new thing, life isn’t so economical, one must make a living in earnest. Lol

Too many bad weather years, losing interest in how it’s all gone, getting left so far behind.... doing it for close to thirty years, mostly ALONE, with less than ideal tools, and far too much physical labor due to affordability issues; it all takes its toll. Having land plucked out from under you by richer neighbors, and the stretch of wet years from hell itself sealed the deal. It was quit altogether, or do something differently. Grain farming alone wasn’t cutting it.

So thanks to the at the time, silly little 1940’s farm we had on the go in the eighties, I was able to adapt and change my farm. We are still on the land, we are doing pretty well for the first time in a very long time, my attitude of defeatism went away, my envy/negative attitude got more under control, stress is far and away lessened, my care about what others may think of me disappeared. I am a better me than I used to be.

Thanks dad.

[makar]

Ok so guys are telling some tales and I’m liking it. 😂

1976er here. Dad was more a cow guy than a grain guy. Wasn’t big on expansion or being very aggressive with farming. He just did a good job on a small and diverse farm, and that was good enough for him. 40 bushel canola at 13 bucks was decent dollars in the 70’s and 80’s, why would you need more land? Lol There are good and bad things about that. I always felt loved, he always had time for me. But it kept this farm in the dark ages and left behind, on the other, negative hand. Not so much with machinery, he was pretty fair at keeping up that way, but when land was cheap, he could have bought lots more, but didn’t. Why, when you're making good money already? Lol And of course, being second generation, raised by depression era German peasants who came to Canada with fifty dollars, he learned frugality in the first order.

Our farm was a throwback to a different era. We were a 1940’s like farm in the 1980’s. At the time I felt embarrassed. Milking cows, separating milk, taking cream cans to town, collecting eggs, slopping pigs, HUGE garden. No one in my class did that . At this time I am thankful because it has allowed for some cool ideas and income stabilization options, because I know how to raise animals, butcher them, etc. There is a huge opportunity in niche markets these days as people shift to wanting to know where and how their food is raised, are more likely to be supportive of smaller, local farms, etc. It opened up a whole new option to me, as land is an impossibility to get your hands on around here, unless you have relatives, are crooked, or won the lotto of genes. Just the way it is. No problem.

My dad died when I was 13. It was obviously a life changing thing. Short term and long term. But I had him long enough to pick up a lot of his ideas and attributes which I value. I never saw him chasing dollars. I knew that life to him was not about that.

Pails to fill the press drill, 11-52 in bags, (hundreds of them), the old 95 combine, 14 foot cultivator, having one short seven inch auger that needed blocks under the tires to reach the top of the HUGE 2911 behlen, rows of wooden bins, spraying with a pool sprayer with a no cab tractor at 25 acres a tank, swather with no steering wheel, picking square bales by hand, spread the 46, spray the treflan, cultivate it twice, harrow with diamond harrows, then seed, all with the same tractor, losing the drill into a steep ditch when it slipped off the transport, butcher a couple hundred chickens, dig an acre of potatoes, somehow I got it done. Somehow I hunted fished, and trapped all the time too! I could no way do that today. It was the passion and the hope of naive youthfulness that gave me the energy.

Along the way, the passion and the hope fizzled, along with the youthful naïveté. Closing elevators, no semi, no control over grades, moisture, when shipping occurs, poor prices in high yield years, great prices in low or no yield years, lack of technological interests, naturally risk averse. Marriage and kids bring a whole new thing, life isn’t so economical, one must make a living in earnest. Lol

Too many bad weather years, losing interest in how it’s all gone, getting left so far behind.... doing it for close to thirty years, mostly ALONE, with less than ideal tools, and far too much physical labor due to affordability issues; it all takes its toll. Having land plucked out from under you by richer neighbors, and the stretch of wet years from hell itself sealed the deal. It was quit altogether, or do something differently. Grain farming alone wasn’t cutting it.

So thanks to the at the time, silly little 1940’s farm we had on the go in the eighties, I was able to adapt and change my farm. We are still on the land, we are doing pretty well for the first time in a very long time, my attitude of defeatism went away, my envy/negative attitude got more under control, stress is far and away lessened, my care about what others may think of me disappeared. I am a better me than I used to be.

Thanks dad.

Our lives are so similar in lots of ways.

[abeorike]

1943 model Done almost everything that i read about on this thread the one thing that no one mentioned was gathering crows and magpie eggs and taking them to the reeve 2 miles down the road and getting 60 cents a dozen Pissed my mother off as she got 24 cents a dozen and had to wash them all and take to the creamery in town. also got 3 cents for a gopher tail. Those were the good old day.

[Kevinglyfos]

I can’t believe the names I never seen on here replying I love it ! awesome to read old stories keep it up guys good thread !!!!

[SASKFARMER]

I love this all these new names and people.

Keep it going this is great.

[wheatsnowcanola]

58 years old, rarely contribute, often read. You know the old saying “Better to be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”
There is no doubt with some on here.
Seems easier to keep the peace with family members these days if I keep my thoughts quiet. As polorized as the population.