WEBVTT 00:00:38.530 --> 00:00:55.277 - I wish for reincarnation, reincarnation. Wouldn't it be a sensation to come back to reincarnation? I 00:00:55.277 --> 00:01:06.718 - love you and don't you know I always will. You're a girl, I'm a boy. 00:01:10.594 --> 00:01:24.679 - a bird and you was a fish what would we do i guess we'd wish for reincarnation reincarnation wouldn't 00:01:24.679 --> 00:01:31.998 - it be a sensation to come back to like reincarnation 00:01:45.954 --> 00:01:51.211 - Maple Grove Road lies northwest of Bloomington in two branches, one running north to south, another 00:01:51.211 --> 00:01:56.626 - east to west. Once upon a time, when almost anyone who lived outside of town farmed, the people living 00:01:56.626 --> 00:02:01.989 - along say a road or across several roads within three or four miles called themselves a neighborhood. 00:02:01.989 --> 00:02:07.509 - Neighborhood is a name for a community. These people joined together to share labor, share tools, trade, 00:02:07.509 --> 00:02:13.292 - build schools, and build churches. Maple Grove Road was one of the earliest areas of Euro-American settlement 00:02:13.292 --> 00:02:14.238 - in Monroe County. 00:02:14.626 --> 00:02:20.455 - It follows Bean Blossom Creek while Bean Blossom further west joins the White River. In the spring floods, 00:02:20.455 --> 00:02:26.066 - farmers shipped pork, corn, wheat, and flour down Bean Blossom on Flatbottom Rast. Near Westerly Maple 00:02:26.066 --> 00:02:31.568 - Grove Road at Mount Tabor, John Burton built, in 1819, a gristmill and a sawmill in the area's first 00:02:31.568 --> 00:02:37.178 - commercial center. Corey Elkhorn reports, in these early days, farmers slaughtered 5,000 hogs one year 00:02:37.178 --> 00:02:42.680 - at Mount Tabor for the trade. As people from Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Maryland moved initially 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:44.478 - to the area of Maple Grove Road, 00:02:44.642 --> 00:02:50.452 - They settled at high areas near streams and springs. By the 1840s, men and families owned nearly all 00:02:50.452 --> 00:02:56.205 - of the land. Farming proceeded from the highlands into the hollers and bottoms. By this time, Maple 00:02:56.205 --> 00:03:02.361 - Grove Road lay too between the towns Bloomington and Ellitsville. Over the next 20 years, the neighborhood 00:03:02.361 --> 00:03:08.574 - settled comfortably into improved horsepower farming. Agriculture became a significant means to prosperity. 00:03:08.706 --> 00:03:14.180 - A farm was made of redtop and clover and Timothy pastures, of fields of giant Indian corn, oats, wheat, 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:19.601 - and barley, of big Belgian and Persian horses, of Durek and China hogs, of Jersey and Hereford cattle, 00:03:19.601 --> 00:03:24.970 - of chickens and turkeys, of sorghum and cider. Like other farmers in this era, these Hoosiers further 00:03:24.970 --> 00:03:30.391 - entrenched two distinctive tendencies of American agriculture. They adopted more and more labor-saving 00:03:30.391 --> 00:03:33.918 - machinery, the mower, the reaper, the chilled iron and steel plow, 00:03:34.050 --> 00:03:39.729 - They intensified also a tendency to work the land as miners while simultaneously and contradictorily 00:03:39.729 --> 00:03:45.803 - becoming better agriculturalists in some things and for example crop rotation, maneuvering and fertilizing. 00:03:45.803 --> 00:03:51.482 - Farming probably reached its height during the three decades following 1880 and this time mechanical 00:03:51.482 --> 00:03:56.318 - changes in farm work grew apace. The age of power farming arrived in Maple Grove Road 00:03:56.418 --> 00:04:14.995 - in the 20s and 30s. This video proceeds with pieces of interviews by farmers of Maple Grove Road who 00:04:14.995 --> 00:04:26.398 - made the transition from horsepower to tractor power farming. 00:04:27.106 --> 00:04:34.981 - symptoms of being cold, and you hear them breathing hard. A couple of them got too cold when it rains 00:04:34.981 --> 00:04:42.933 - that hit them, and they're hot. Right now, it'd be like taking a cold shower. Well, I'm Joe Peden, and 00:04:42.933 --> 00:04:50.731 - I'm discussing agriculture in the Maple Grove neighborhood with Mark today. My parents moved here to 00:04:50.731 --> 00:04:56.830 - this farm, the Peden farm, in 1941 when I was two years old. And at that time, 00:04:58.082 --> 00:05:06.666 - That's been about 51 years ago. A lot of changes have occurred since that time. At that time, there 00:05:06.666 --> 00:05:15.421 - was no water and no real water supply and no electricity in this whole neighborhood. So when we moved 00:05:15.421 --> 00:05:24.606 - down here from Greenwood, my folks had heated wood and coal and had kerosene lamps for light in the house. 00:05:25.186 --> 00:05:31.821 - And they had a wood cook stove, as did most of the other people in this neighborhood. And then in a 00:05:31.821 --> 00:05:38.655 - few years, the REMC came here and put in the electric current. The REMC said turn on the lights in the 00:05:38.655 --> 00:05:45.422 - country. So then we had electricity. And once you get electricity, then you can have a grill well and 00:05:45.422 --> 00:05:52.057 - have an electric pump to pump water or build a cistern, catch rainwater off the roof, and then pump 00:05:52.057 --> 00:05:54.910 - that into the house with an electric pump. 00:05:55.746 --> 00:06:03.979 - When my folks first moved here to keep the milk and things cool, they had a hole down here in the ground 00:06:03.979 --> 00:06:11.977 - which was a spring. And they kept the things cool in that spring house, as did a lot of people, a lot 00:06:11.977 --> 00:06:19.896 - of farmers. People in the rural areas used spring houses for water supply and to keep their products 00:06:19.896 --> 00:06:25.150 - cool. So the developments in agriculture in the 51 years that I've 00:06:25.506 --> 00:06:33.223 - kind of remembering some things. It's been really tremendous. When we first moved here, there was a 00:06:33.223 --> 00:06:41.402 - few steel wheel tractors and very few rubber tire tractors that had been in the late 1930 model tractors. 00:06:41.402 --> 00:06:49.427 - And most farmers had one or two teams of horses that they supplemented their farm power with the teams. 00:06:49.427 --> 00:06:53.054 - And then the changes in tractors, we went from 00:06:54.338 --> 00:07:03.044 - steel wheel tractors to rubber tire tractors up into the base tractor which is of course rubber tire 00:07:03.044 --> 00:07:11.749 - diesel tractors, turbo diesel motors with cabs and air conditioning and power steering and FM stereo 00:07:11.749 --> 00:07:21.058 - radio systems and many farm tractors today have a radio system in which they can talk to the other tractors 00:07:21.058 --> 00:07:22.782 - in the field or out 00:07:22.882 --> 00:07:30.318 - or to pickups or other farm headquarters so that you can keep in touch with the tractors and the operators 00:07:30.318 --> 00:07:37.476 - and the drivers. When we first came here, of course, the corn yields were low. This was a badly eroded 00:07:37.476 --> 00:07:44.564 - farm. Probably a corn yields 35, 40 bush-foot to acre. And with new technology and the no-till method 00:07:44.564 --> 00:07:51.166 - of farming and good fertility programs, we've had as high as 175 bush-foot to acre corn yield. 00:07:52.546 --> 00:08:00.499 - When we moved here, of course, people picked corn by hand with a team of horses. And they'd walk along 00:08:00.499 --> 00:08:08.374 - on each side of the wagon and pick corn and toss the ears into the wagon. And then now, you know, the 00:08:08.374 --> 00:08:16.095 - farmers have corn pickers and picker shellers that they shell the corn and combine the soybeans. In 00:08:16.095 --> 00:08:18.334 - the old days, what they had, 00:08:22.850 --> 00:08:29.490 - machines that were driven by either a large tractor or a steam engine, and they'd put those steam engines 00:08:29.490 --> 00:08:35.942 - to a farm and they'd thrash wheat. And everybody in the neighborhood would get it together on one farm 00:08:35.942 --> 00:08:42.331 - and pitch in and help do all that work. And then they'd thrash the wheat and move on to the next farm 00:08:42.331 --> 00:08:48.658 - and thrash that wheat. But then when the combines came along with that and enabled one man to do the 00:08:48.658 --> 00:08:52.542 - combining for several people, it took a lot less men to run a 00:08:52.994 --> 00:08:59.639 - combine crew to get a trashing crew. Used to everyone in the neighborhood filled silo and so we had 00:08:59.639 --> 00:09:06.351 - big groups of people get together to fill silo. That took a lot of people and a lot of tractors. Now 00:09:06.351 --> 00:09:13.328 - in the early days they cut the corn with the corn binder in the field and threw it on a wagon and hauled 00:09:13.328 --> 00:09:20.239 - it into the field and threw it off into the cutter is what they called it, a cutter that set it to silo 00:09:20.239 --> 00:09:21.502 - and would blow the 00:09:21.730 --> 00:09:27.632 - silage up in the air into the silo. And then later on, we went to field choppers, one-row field choppers 00:09:27.632 --> 00:09:33.477 - that were pulled by a tractor. And they'd chop the corn in the field and load it in the wagon. And then 00:09:33.477 --> 00:09:39.210 - you had wagons running continuously to the barn to haul in the silage. And then you had a crew in the 00:09:39.210 --> 00:09:45.168 - barn at the silo that would unload the wagons. And now they've got two- and three- and four-row choppers. 00:09:45.168 --> 00:09:51.070 - No four-rows or three-rows in this neighborhood. But they do chop the corn in the field and bring it in. 00:09:51.170 --> 00:09:59.253 - mechanically unloaded, instead of having to shovel it out or rake it out of the wagons as they did in 00:09:59.253 --> 00:10:07.654 - the past. We've gone from one row planting to six and eight row planters in this community, which enables 00:10:07.654 --> 00:10:15.579 - the farmers to farm a lot more land with a larger planter and get the crop in quicker than they did 00:10:15.579 --> 00:10:16.926 - in the old days. 00:10:17.474 --> 00:10:24.248 - went to high fertility programs, went to no-till farming, which doesn't disturb the soil. It just plants 00:10:24.248 --> 00:10:30.699 - the seed in the ground and then you control the weeds with herbicides. Early on in no-till, it took 00:10:30.699 --> 00:10:37.151 - a lot of herbicides, but as people become more acquainted with no-till farming, they've learned how 00:10:37.151 --> 00:10:41.086 - to reduce the number and amount of herbicides that they use. 00:10:54.178 --> 00:11:19.742 - Stubbornly but gently, the land rolls in hills. 00:11:20.002 --> 00:11:25.721 - At creek beds, springs, and hilltops, limestone outcroppings climb out from the earth. The landscape 00:11:25.721 --> 00:11:31.553 - urges the use of a lot of pasture, and therefore, daring or raising beef. Grain for all the livestock, 00:11:31.553 --> 00:11:37.555 - the horses, and the market grew on the farm. The farmers changed their harvest as machines for thrashing, 00:11:37.555 --> 00:11:43.670 - reaping, and binding grain arrived. Thrashing with a separator needed a large crew. For this, the neighbors 00:11:43.670 --> 00:11:48.030 - made a ritual of their custom of swapping work, and from about 1870 to 1940, 00:11:48.290 --> 00:11:53.475 - They had thrashing days at each farm. Everyone went from one farm to the other and thrashed out the 00:11:53.475 --> 00:11:58.764 - grain. Some pitched the shocks, others unloaded the wagons, handled the grain, and stacked the straw. 00:11:58.764 --> 00:12:03.950 - People remember these times as something special, and memories of the thrashing days today stand as 00:12:03.950 --> 00:12:09.135 - a counterpoint to the weakening of the community and its agrarian aesthetics by suburbanization and 00:12:09.135 --> 00:12:10.846 - over-businessization of farming. 00:12:22.978 --> 00:12:29.843 - Do you know why they went in together to buy the separator? Why they went in together? Well, just to 00:12:29.843 --> 00:12:36.844 - have it in the neighborhood to do their own trashing. See, back in them days, you had to have somebody 00:12:36.844 --> 00:12:43.710 - that was in the trashing business come through, and they didn't always come through at the time your 00:12:43.710 --> 00:12:50.575 - grain was ready. This is the way they could trash their own grain and get it done when it should be, 00:12:50.575 --> 00:12:52.478 - so it wouldn't go to waste. 00:12:52.866 --> 00:13:00.479 - grain to grain. Was this a new type of separator they're using? No, it's just a regular trashing machine. 00:13:00.479 --> 00:13:07.662 - It's a smaller one than the big steam rigs used to come through. First the steam rigs come through, 00:13:07.662 --> 00:13:15.563 - you know, with a steam engine. Pulled in a day with big ones. You'd feed it from both sides of the separator. 00:13:15.563 --> 00:13:20.734 - This year he drove on one side and finished. Didn't need as much grain. 00:13:25.634 --> 00:13:34.035 - How did they work the finances? Was that them all putting their money in together? I don't really know, 00:13:34.035 --> 00:13:42.193 - but I just imagine they went in, all of them the same amount. Just bought it and then they worked it 00:13:42.193 --> 00:13:50.352 - together. My brother pulled it with his tractor. Your brother Ray. Was that Warren's dad? Yeah, that 00:13:50.352 --> 00:13:51.806 - was Warren's dad. 00:13:57.538 --> 00:14:05.795 - now, McKean, that farm down there. Do you know if the people in the neighborhood considered buying other 00:14:05.795 --> 00:14:13.737 - pieces of equipment together? I don't know if they had anything else. Yes, they did, too. They had a 00:14:13.737 --> 00:14:21.994 - silo filler rig to fill the silos like we got over here at the barn. They bought a silo filler together, 00:14:21.994 --> 00:14:26.398 - and they'd go from one place to the other and swap work 00:14:26.786 --> 00:14:38.066 - They cut the wheat and oats with binders and then shocked it. Then the threshing machine made a tour 00:14:38.066 --> 00:14:49.346 - of the neighborhood and go from one farm to another and each of the farmers contributed help to help 00:14:49.346 --> 00:14:56.606 - do the threshing. And they hauled the bundles into the threshing 00:14:56.770 --> 00:15:08.236 - with teams of horses and wagons. And I was real young, I'm not sure, maybe six, seven years old. And 00:15:08.236 --> 00:15:19.929 - my father had an old mare and I took a sled and hauled bundles into the thrashing machine with it. And 00:15:19.929 --> 00:15:23.902 - I threw my bundles up on the wagon 00:15:24.066 --> 00:15:33.402 - of whoever happened to be in there unloading, and then they would put them on the thrashing machine 00:15:33.402 --> 00:15:43.019 - for me. And I'd go get another load, and I thought I was pretty important with the thrashing crew that 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:52.542 - way. I don't remember what kind it was. That's when we all get together and cook a big meal for them. 00:15:53.442 --> 00:16:02.268 - For this type of threshing with a separator? Yeah. They'd all come in at noon and eat. The whole neighbor 00:16:02.268 --> 00:16:10.678 - could help each place they went to dry. They'd all swap one and go to the other place and help them. 00:16:10.678 --> 00:16:19.254 - We'd make 10 gallon of iced tea in a big 10 gallon container. And it usually was about all gone by the 00:16:19.254 --> 00:16:21.502 - time they got done eating. 00:16:21.826 --> 00:16:30.401 - And you had 20 or some people? Oh, how many would they be, really? Oh, 18 or 20, I expected. They crowd. 00:16:30.401 --> 00:16:38.650 - I imagine. That big table froze, stretched out as long as you get them in the dining rooms. And then 00:16:38.650 --> 00:16:46.980 - it could rain, and we had it all to be over again. No, no, I just, I told you about our big threshing 00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:51.390 - dinners we'd get ready for. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. 00:16:52.002 --> 00:17:01.951 - We had to dress our own chickens and make our own pies and pastries and everything the day before. Then 00:17:01.951 --> 00:17:11.995 - it'd come a big rain, then we'd have it all to do again. We'd have a big table full. We'd make 10-gallon 00:17:11.995 --> 00:17:20.318 - of iced tea in a very big jug, you know, earthen jar. Freeze ice cream for them. Yeah. 00:17:20.706 --> 00:17:29.951 - Two freezers, ice cream. We enjoyed it. And when we'd go to the field to take the boys' water, they'd 00:17:29.951 --> 00:17:39.105 - just work as hard as they could work and they'd see us coming. Especially him. Did you do that after 00:17:39.105 --> 00:17:48.441 - you got her? I got her. Yeah, you got her. They were cutting corn, you know. They'd really like to cut 00:17:48.441 --> 00:17:49.438 - that corn. 00:17:50.306 --> 00:18:00.219 - that after you married or just before? No that's when she was trying to get us in. That's when they're 00:18:00.219 --> 00:18:10.613 - coming out. Was that just nervousness? I don't think we'd even gone together then. 1930 my father purchased 00:18:10.613 --> 00:18:14.174 - a Fordson tractor and he farmed with 00:18:21.346 --> 00:18:39.449 - later, I think about 1940, traded that off for a John Deere General Purpose Tracker. From fresh machines 00:18:39.449 --> 00:18:48.414 - and binders to comb-binds and stationary haybillers 00:18:49.570 --> 00:18:59.203 - or you pull one field and I unbale them. That's just the progress on up through the year that's been 00:18:59.203 --> 00:19:08.836 - made for us equipment-wise. But I don't feel that, you know, some of it's good and some of it's bad. 00:19:08.836 --> 00:19:19.518 - Some of the rotation of crops has decreased with continuous cropping and it takes more herbicides and chemicals 00:19:21.602 --> 00:19:29.551 - flavor of too much. It's replaced organic form, which is crop rotation. And your animal, we always had 00:19:29.551 --> 00:19:37.499 - livestock, cows and horses and such as that, and used that to fertilize the manure. So in that aspect, 00:19:37.499 --> 00:19:45.293 - I don't think it's, and the fellowship of the neighborhood is dwindled. It goes back during a period 00:19:45.293 --> 00:19:50.078 - when you had the thrashing and silo felling and such as that. 00:19:50.946 --> 00:20:00.610 - All the neighborhoods gathered together and did each other's. I really miss that part of it. You took 00:20:00.610 --> 00:20:10.843 - place in the silo fillings and thrashing days? Yes, I did. When you're doing that, how did the neighborhood 00:20:10.843 --> 00:20:20.318 - adapt to the changes, the different speeds at which farmers mechanized? For example, Russell's dad. 00:20:20.866 --> 00:20:31.575 - had tractors all the way back to around the First World War. Other people like Carl Stenger didn't have 00:20:31.575 --> 00:20:42.077 - a tractor until 1940. Well, no, we didn't have one until I'd say like around 1930. They always farmed 00:20:42.077 --> 00:20:46.814 - with maybe six horses or something like that. 00:20:47.074 --> 00:20:55.244 - But the old tractors weren't successful back in that period of time either. They just, they weren't 00:20:55.244 --> 00:21:03.741 - built well and they always broke down. They weren't, the horses would go on the tractor, see it. That's 00:21:03.741 --> 00:21:12.075 - the way it was back then. They hadn't perfected mechanized equipment to the point where it was really 00:21:12.075 --> 00:21:14.526 - any better than what you had. 00:22:42.146 --> 00:22:48.004 - North American farmers turned to mechanical implements almost immediately. It was a practical endeavor. 00:22:48.004 --> 00:22:53.750 - They had an abundance of land and a scarcity of labor. First came the iron plow, then the steel plow, 00:22:53.750 --> 00:22:59.665 - and Bailey's mowing machine of 1822. In 1833 and 1834, Obed Hussey and Cyrus McCormick invented a reaper 00:22:59.665 --> 00:23:05.467 - with a reciprocating knife system still used today. After the Civil War, the manufacture of mechanical 00:23:05.467 --> 00:23:07.326 - implements rose in great bounds. 00:23:07.650 --> 00:23:13.245 - McCormick Deering, John Deere, and other implement makers introduced riding machines of all kinds. Riding 00:23:13.245 --> 00:23:18.629 - plows, cultivators, grain drills, hay rakes, mowers, hay loaders, and grain binders greatly increased 00:23:18.629 --> 00:23:24.065 - the work done by one man. Not only work in the field, but all phases of farming, machinery changed the 00:23:24.065 --> 00:23:29.396 - pace of nature. Corn shellers and silage cutters, hay tracks, hay presses, and water pumps made work 00:23:29.396 --> 00:23:34.833 - on the farm quicker and more profitable. Big steam-driven threshing rigs replaced machines belt-driven 00:23:34.833 --> 00:23:37.630 - by horsepower. As well, combustion engines appeared. 00:23:37.922 --> 00:23:43.337 - farmers began to use one-cylinder engines first. Supplied with kerosene or gasoline, indefinitely these 00:23:43.337 --> 00:23:48.648 - ground corn, pumped water or cider, or did a sundry other jobs. After 1905, companies regularly began 00:23:48.648 --> 00:23:53.906 - to manufacture tractors. While tractors appeared at all in the Maple Grove Road neighborhood only in 00:23:53.906 --> 00:23:59.425 - the time of the First World War, by this time IH and other companies had available too thrashing machines 00:23:59.425 --> 00:24:03.070 - and silage cutters, balers, to run from the belt pulley of a tractor. 00:24:04.418 --> 00:24:10.256 - Levi Fife and Ray Fife experimented with a poly parrot in the IH 816 in the late teens and early 20s. 00:24:10.256 --> 00:24:15.979 - The Fordson, however, brought the tractor to Maple Grove Road. Within a few years toward the end of 00:24:15.979 --> 00:24:21.816 - the 20s, a few people, among them Earl Stanger and Ray Fife, purchased Fordson tractors. The tractor, 00:24:21.816 --> 00:24:27.597 - however, which really brought the neighborhood into the age of power farming, was the IH Farmall and 00:24:27.597 --> 00:24:32.862 - its followers, the John Deere GP, the Dewald Oliver Row Crop, the Advanced Rumley All Crop, 00:24:33.346 --> 00:24:39.169 - These tractors combined the power sufficient to pull a plow in a machine like a motor cultivator. All 00:24:39.169 --> 00:24:44.878 - the jobs in raising a grain crop before the harvest, the dual-purpose tractor did, thereby making a 00:24:44.878 --> 00:24:51.043 - tractor a much better buy. In 1819, International Harvester introduced a power takeoff on its International 00:24:51.043 --> 00:24:56.924 - 816. Initially, PTO was an extension of the drive shaft. This device greatly increased the work of the 00:24:56.924 --> 00:25:01.662 - tractor. It finished power with the tractor idle or in gear, but the farm all then 00:25:01.762 --> 00:25:07.695 - the small farmer could run his old washing machine or a state-of-the-art pickup baler. It also gave 00:25:07.695 --> 00:25:13.746 - the farmer closer control of machinery like mowers, rakes, and binders. In 1930, Alice Charmers began 00:25:13.746 --> 00:25:19.976 - working on a PTO-powered harvester-thrasher combine for the farmers of the Midwest. Russell Fife brought 00:25:19.976 --> 00:25:26.384 - an all-crop combine into Maple Grove Road in 1936. The machine does the job of the binder and the thrashing 00:25:26.384 --> 00:25:28.638 - machine and thus changes the harvest. 00:25:29.090 --> 00:25:35.792 - With this combine, Russell put an end to the big thrashing days. But this change did not disrupt the 00:25:35.792 --> 00:25:42.826 - community. The negative effects of mechanization accumulate on a larger scale. And the cost of increasing 00:25:42.826 --> 00:25:49.462 - production becomes affordable to most farmers. The value of farm products plummets. And this drives 00:25:49.462 --> 00:25:55.102 - most farmers out of farming. When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head at it. 00:26:27.458 --> 00:26:37.721 - You straddle the row. Your row is in here. And that covalates the soil around your plant to make it 00:26:37.721 --> 00:26:48.087 - keep the weeds down and make it take water for the plant. So the working shovel scoops around those. 00:26:48.087 --> 00:26:57.118 - Yeah. And it's just a matter of lowering it down. Yeah. This lever, of course, it's got 00:26:57.826 --> 00:27:07.458 - Right, it's up there now. But that lets it down. And then that'll plow your weeds and what have you. 00:27:07.458 --> 00:27:17.280 - And this seat, it has this chain that goes from each side. And your seat rocks. It slides on this bar. 00:27:17.280 --> 00:27:27.198 - You can't tell too much about it. But when you move that, you can put your feet in those stirrups like. 00:27:27.522 --> 00:27:37.387 - That shifts each side of those shovels around your plants as you go through there. You can sort of guide 00:27:37.387 --> 00:27:47.251 - it with your feet there to make it cultivate where you want. That's a horse-drawn cultivator. They maybe 00:27:47.251 --> 00:27:57.022 - had one around the turn of the century or before, but it would be probably just wooden beams with pegs. 00:27:57.186 --> 00:28:10.195 - bikes, which were a little more crude. Maybe it wouldn't even have wheels on it, you know, like these 00:28:10.195 --> 00:28:23.204 - do have. What do those two hand grip things do on the plow? Is it a lever and then two? That controls 00:28:23.204 --> 00:28:24.734 - your depth. 00:28:26.946 --> 00:28:37.305 - how deep your plow goes in the ground. This adjusts this wheel, which lets it down. Is that for running 00:28:37.305 --> 00:28:47.465 - the furrow? Yes, uh-huh. Well, actually, no, I'm sorry. That one over there is the one that goes into 00:28:47.465 --> 00:28:54.238 - the furrow. Okay. And this one runs on the land up on your... Okay. 00:28:54.370 --> 00:29:03.586 - unplowed ground and it's made so this will adjust to let the plow down. You lift this wheel up, see? 00:29:03.586 --> 00:29:12.984 - It'll come up off the ground, which will let that plow, the chair, go down in the ground that way. And 00:29:12.984 --> 00:29:22.292 - then this one, it works similar. You can adjust it to level the bottom of your furrow to get it even. 00:29:22.292 --> 00:29:23.934 - That other level. 00:29:28.002 --> 00:29:36.828 - It works the same way. See, that'll let your plow go down when it's... If this wheel in the furrow, 00:29:36.828 --> 00:29:46.008 - of course it has to be in operation before you can really tell it because it's sitting on a board there 00:29:46.008 --> 00:29:55.099 - now and it'd have to be moved so that'd be under the ground in order to let this up, see? Right, okay. 00:29:55.099 --> 00:29:56.158 - Your wheel. 00:29:57.506 --> 00:30:11.411 - Do these devices move the wheel sideways? Yes, your town or your hitch. So you put your hook to this 00:30:11.411 --> 00:30:26.142 - and this lever controls the guide and the back wheel here which makes this wheel that runs into the furrow 00:30:27.170 --> 00:30:36.876 - to keep it straight with the, keep your plow adjusted straight with the length. But when your horses 00:30:36.876 --> 00:30:46.582 - turn, that moves this lever and that keeps the wheel running right against the edge of the furrow to 00:30:46.582 --> 00:30:54.750 - make it plow the same width. This is a 1935 general purpose John Deere that has been 00:30:55.938 --> 00:31:04.985 - put up in running condition. This tractor was one that I plowed, or one like this, I plowed 200 acres 00:31:04.985 --> 00:31:14.121 - of ground on when I was nine years old. I'm 62 years old now. These are two cellar tractor. They start 00:31:14.121 --> 00:31:23.257 - on fuel oil and run on gasoline. After you got them started, they pulled two 12 inch plows. So it took 00:31:23.257 --> 00:31:25.918 - quite a few hours to plow 900 00:31:26.210 --> 00:31:36.421 - or 200 acres. The two-cylinder tractors were very much in use up until the middle of 50s. And then they 00:31:36.421 --> 00:31:46.337 - stopped making two-cylinder and went to six-cylinder on the John Deere equipment. Back prior to this 00:31:46.337 --> 00:31:53.406 - and during the time this tractor was used, there was using horses also. 00:31:53.634 --> 00:32:01.098 - The time come along that you could use this tractor, then you begin to get enough production that some 00:32:01.098 --> 00:32:08.708 - of the swapping back and forth of the farmers stopped. And each man could do a lot more work, obviously, 00:32:08.708 --> 00:32:15.955 - with the tractor than he could with the horses. Therefore, he could handle more acres. This went on 00:32:15.955 --> 00:32:20.158 - very good up until the 40s sometime, when during the war, 00:32:21.058 --> 00:32:30.283 - The economics after the war got so bad that the farmer really had a lot of trouble making a full living 00:32:30.283 --> 00:32:39.596 - off the farm. So he began to migrate to public jobs. And most of the farmers in this area would do their 00:32:39.596 --> 00:32:47.934 - farming of an evening and work at public work in the daytime. The farming ratio has got to... 00:32:48.450 --> 00:32:55.957 - in this day and age when you need the real large tractors and a lot of acres because the amount of money 00:32:55.957 --> 00:33:03.178 - you can make per acre is a good deal smaller than it was back in the 30s when these was running. I'm 00:33:03.178 --> 00:33:10.828 - holding in my hand a piston out of a tractor that John Deere made back in the 30s, a two cylinder tractor. 00:33:10.828 --> 00:33:17.406 - And this is out of an A John Deere. As you can see, it's about the size of a gallon bucket. 00:33:18.178 --> 00:33:27.447 - were two of these running side-by-side. The John Deere G that we showed you last, they've got pistons 00:33:27.447 --> 00:33:36.807 - in it a little larger than this. The diesel 4020, which we just saw, is a six-cylinder diesel tractor, 00:33:36.807 --> 00:33:46.622 - and all six cylinders are about this size. The rest of these things have got that dog-gone Russell 5 in it. 00:33:48.642 --> 00:34:00.374 - We're really pressing our luck having two images of Russell. This is a combine. I bought it in 1936 00:34:00.374 --> 00:34:11.988 - and had my John Deere tractor then, my first farm tractor. It was an all-purpose, general-purpose? 00:34:11.988 --> 00:34:16.446 - General-purpose John Deere, 36 model. 00:34:18.850 --> 00:34:27.253 - and that done away with the thrashing machine. I went thrashing for all of my neighbors with that, with 00:34:27.253 --> 00:34:35.494 - the combine. I'd run for a month. That first year I got it, thrashing neighbors and my own and so on. 00:34:35.494 --> 00:34:43.736 - What did people around here think of the combine? They liked it. They didn't have to run their binder 00:34:43.736 --> 00:34:47.614 - and shock their wheat. I just went in there and 00:34:48.194 --> 00:34:55.792 - cut the wheat and thrash it for them. And you had a wagon? The wagon? You had a wagon next to the combine, 00:34:55.792 --> 00:35:03.178 - right? You mean to dump the grain in? Yeah. Well, they'd furnish their own wagons and haul their grain. 00:35:03.178 --> 00:35:10.350 - I'd just thrash it in the field and dump it in the wagon for them. Tell them about this corner field 00:35:10.350 --> 00:35:16.670 - here on Carhead and Barley. Yeah, it was right there in the middle, honey, of this farm. 00:35:17.634 --> 00:35:27.467 - The car had a barley over there, and it made, what was it, 60 bushels an acre? About 60 bushels an acre, 00:35:27.467 --> 00:35:37.113 - and the car had to run with his horses in a trot to go to the barn to unload in order to get back, get 00:35:37.113 --> 00:35:45.822 - more grain. So the tank held 18 bushel on the combine, and he could not keep the grain away. 00:35:47.970 --> 00:35:55.552 - by making as much per acre. The car didn't go to tractors till kind of late. Well, he went to tractors 00:35:55.552 --> 00:36:02.987 - about the same time all the rest of them did. Not quite as soon as Dad did, but Dad and Ray had that 00:36:02.987 --> 00:36:10.422 - old polypare that they lost their marbles on because it was so big and awkward and break them gears. 00:36:10.422 --> 00:36:17.342 - They'd get on a rock in the field and spin, and that would bust them big gears in the wheels. 00:36:17.826 --> 00:36:26.923 - They'd have to replace them, and they were high priced. In the years 1942, that was the John Deere Combine, 00:36:26.923 --> 00:36:35.935 - and that's my youngest boy on there with me. And that combine, what grains could you do with that combine? 00:36:35.935 --> 00:36:44.190 - Same as the other, wheat grain and oats and barley and anything other with a grain. Small grains. 00:37:26.658 --> 00:37:35.288 - their A-36s, one of them, like I used to have on the farm, but it's now in their antiques. That was 00:37:35.288 --> 00:37:44.091 - a cultivating? Yeah, it was a cultivating plow and all, no purpose. Your dad and brother had tractors 00:37:44.091 --> 00:37:53.067 - before they were all-purpose? Oh yeah, just four-wheeled. All you could do was plow with them and disc. 00:37:53.067 --> 00:37:55.742 - Plow and get the ground ready. 00:37:57.474 --> 00:38:07.018 - Did they ever have a motor cultivator? No, we calivated with horses. And calivators... Mules. Horses 00:38:07.018 --> 00:38:16.752 - and mules. We rode them, rode the calivators. They were riding calivators. You'd sit on there and work 00:38:16.752 --> 00:38:25.918 - your feet back and forth to guide the calivator with a corn rope. What did you, did you have any 00:38:27.458 --> 00:38:33.471 - Was it news when they came out with the farm oil, the tractors, sort of combined the motor cultivator 00:38:33.471 --> 00:38:39.602 - with the larger tractors? Yeah, it was about in 35 or 36 when they came out with them. That's what they 00:38:39.602 --> 00:38:45.733 - called general purpose tractors. Farm oil and John Deere and all of them had them. The cultivators went 00:38:45.733 --> 00:38:51.806 - on the front of them, and then at first they were hand lifted. I mean, at a big hand leverage you pull 00:38:51.806 --> 00:38:55.166 - back to raise the cultivators and get them in the field. 00:38:56.770 --> 00:39:05.467 - And in a few years they got hydraulic on the tractors and had a hydraulic lift on them. Tractors work 00:39:05.467 --> 00:39:14.078 - on the farm constantly inspires innovations. Tractors began big and grew small enough to reach every 00:39:14.078 --> 00:39:22.774 - farm, growing larger again as small farms withered. Over the years the industry has experimented with 00:39:22.774 --> 00:39:26.270 - fuels like kerosene, diesel, and LP gas. 00:39:26.722 --> 00:39:32.576 - They tried different types of drive systems, beginning with direct friction, to chain and open gear 00:39:32.576 --> 00:39:38.606 - drive, to closed gear, and around a hydrostatic friction drive. A lot of effort was made to bring more 00:39:38.606 --> 00:39:44.635 - power to the farmer, with, for example, the PTO, its improvements, and the hydraulic power system. The 00:39:44.635 --> 00:39:50.899 - tractor's longevity stands out as one of its most important features. Farmers in Maple Grove Road actively 00:39:50.899 --> 00:39:53.182 - use tractors 20, 40, and 50 years old. 00:40:29.570 --> 00:40:43.712 - kept increasing, got up to about 40 young cows. At the same time, we'd have about 40 young stock. The 00:40:43.712 --> 00:40:54.942 - machinery we used was 1932 farm oil and a team of horses built it with terraces. 00:40:58.626 --> 00:41:10.230 - We used a team of horses and a slip scraper to fill in the low spots. That's what the terraces were 00:41:10.230 --> 00:41:22.065 - built with. And we bought a corn picker that year, I guess, a one-row pull type corn picker. I picked 00:41:22.065 --> 00:41:23.806 - the corn with. 00:41:28.034 --> 00:41:40.188 - A few years we traded and got a two roll mallet paper. We got a field chopper to chop the hay and chop 00:41:40.188 --> 00:41:51.988 - the silage. Cut the silage and hay right out in the field and blew it into the whitens. Had to blow 00:41:51.988 --> 00:41:55.646 - up the barn silo to unload it. 00:41:58.370 --> 00:42:16.282 - In 1967, I guess, we got our first combine. In 1974, we had a two-row combine. In 1974, we got a first 00:42:16.282 --> 00:42:27.934 - four-row combine, which I still have. That was a combine for corn? 00:42:29.218 --> 00:42:58.206 - I bought my first new tractor in 1951 and I still got it, still use it. 00:42:59.362 --> 00:43:15.272 - 33 horse tractor. I got another old tractor, about 50 horse, 1958 tractor. And the last one I purchased 00:43:15.272 --> 00:43:27.358 - new was a 1972 100 horse tractor. By 1982, I was kind of retired from farming. 00:43:29.282 --> 00:43:39.431 - Just been doing it. Far more part-time since then. Rent most of the ground out. What kind of tractors 00:43:39.431 --> 00:43:49.580 - have 100 horsepower? This dollar. All of them. All of them are all of them. OK. They call them lights 00:43:49.580 --> 00:43:55.550 - now, I guess. When I purchased them, they were all of them. 00:44:01.890 --> 00:44:14.605 - Why do you use Oliver tractors? Well, I had a good digger close by. Was that the most important thing? 00:44:14.605 --> 00:44:27.691 - I had good service close by. Who was that? Well, it was Harold Gifford to start with. Another main reason 00:44:27.691 --> 00:44:29.790 - I purchased that 00:44:29.922 --> 00:44:38.828 - We didn't do all of them in 1951 because it had a live power takeoff. A live power takeoff? That's the 00:44:38.828 --> 00:44:47.906 - P2 at the back, isn't it? Usually it's had a clutch that turned the power takeoff on and off. You didn't 00:44:47.906 --> 00:44:56.812 - have to use your foot clutch. John Deere and International and several others didn't have a live power 00:44:56.812 --> 00:44:59.838 - takeoff in 1951. Co-op and Oliver. 00:45:00.322 --> 00:45:07.954 - had a live tire takeoff. So you could push a clutch in and stop your tractor. But your machinery is 00:45:07.954 --> 00:45:15.662 - going to the tire takeoff, turn a bit, and go ahead and turn. That was helpful in using a particular 00:45:15.662 --> 00:45:23.446 - type of baler? Well, a baler, a combine, a field chopper, anything. Otherwise, you'd have to put your 00:45:23.446 --> 00:45:28.254 - clutch in and shove it out of gear right quick, if you wanted. 00:45:29.794 --> 00:45:36.346 - piece she was using to keep turning. It was a live-fire takeoff, all you had to do was shove in your 00:45:36.346 --> 00:45:41.406 - foot flat, and your tractor would stop, and your machinery would go head run. 00:46:22.178 --> 00:46:31.088 - Farming changed significantly in the fact that 40 years ago, every piece of property out here was owned 00:46:31.088 --> 00:46:39.827 - by a farmer that was in some way farming it himself. And then with the introduction of farm tractors, 00:46:39.827 --> 00:46:48.737 - a man that could farm 80 acres by himself could build a tractor and maybe farm 140 by himself. And then 00:46:48.737 --> 00:46:50.622 - as the tractors grew, 00:46:51.138 --> 00:46:59.752 - in size and different types of machinery came along where maybe one farmer in his family could farm 00:46:59.752 --> 00:47:08.366 - 1,000, 1,200, 1,500 acres. Many farmers, great farmers, they're children, son or two, and maybe one 00:47:08.366 --> 00:47:14.654 - employee that works for them full-time while the children are in school. 00:47:23.778 --> 00:47:33.856 - I was in the school and agriculture class and I built one of the first terraces in the county here on 00:47:33.856 --> 00:47:43.934 - this farm. The old Fordson tractor and the plow. Combustion power allowed farmers to do more for soil 00:47:43.934 --> 00:47:51.838 - and water conservation. With a tractor, terraced building became a one-man job. 00:47:52.290 --> 00:47:58.477 - In the 40s, almost all the farms in Maple Grove Road were redesigned for better conservation. Everyone 00:47:58.477 --> 00:48:04.725 - became involved with the Soil and Water Conservation District and Service and the Cooperative Extension 00:48:04.725 --> 00:48:10.732 - and its offshoots like the 4-H. This man, Kenneth Freeman, became an expert terrace builder and did 00:48:10.732 --> 00:48:16.799 - a lot of terracing as custom work. In the 40s, the erosion of this country was pretty rampant. There 00:48:16.799 --> 00:48:22.206 - was just lots of erosion and Soil and Water Conservation Districts were organized to help 00:48:22.658 --> 00:48:29.460 - educate the farmers on how to control erosion on their farm. And on this farm, we put in five and a 00:48:29.460 --> 00:48:36.534 - half miles of terraces to control erosion. And then we build a pond that's up here back of us. It slows 00:48:36.534 --> 00:48:43.336 - down the water. Many farmers did contouring and strip cropping. Lots of farmers today practice some 00:48:43.336 --> 00:48:50.750 - form of conservation tillage. And on this farm, we use no till. My dad was a member of the Salt Conservation 00:48:50.750 --> 00:48:51.838 - District board. 00:48:52.226 --> 00:49:00.437 - He helped organize the soil conservation district in Meno County. And the soil conservation district 00:49:00.437 --> 00:49:08.893 - along with the soil conservation service helped laid farmers to do more conservation methods of farming 00:49:08.893 --> 00:49:17.104 - and help reduce erosion and improve their farm and to build up their fertility and get higher yields 00:49:17.104 --> 00:49:21.982 - and overall try to keep pace with the changing agriculture. 00:49:22.114 --> 00:49:30.912 - Extension Service, Agriculture Extension Service has also played a vital role in helping educate the 00:49:30.912 --> 00:49:40.232 - farmers, not only in this county, but all over the state, in adapting new and improved methods of farming. 00:49:40.232 --> 00:49:49.726 - For the soil conservation service, all my career, I worked in around 10 or 12 different counties in Indiana. 00:49:49.858 --> 00:49:56.722 - been able to influence some of the farmers in the building erosion control practices such as ponds and 00:49:56.722 --> 00:50:03.519 - waterways and terraces and diversions and water and control dams. One of the big things that we do in 00:50:03.519 --> 00:50:10.649 - Monroe County, as you notice, is a lot of agriculture here is devoted to raising the livestock and getting 00:50:10.649 --> 00:50:17.513 - a good water system for livestock is important in Monroe County. We develop a lot of springs that give 00:50:17.513 --> 00:50:18.846 - a continual flowing 00:50:19.138 --> 00:50:27.226 - good clear water for cow herds and we have four of those spring developments on our farm and plan on 00:50:27.226 --> 00:50:35.554 - putting in the fifth one next week. Our farm here, the original farm is 120 acres and then we were able 00:50:35.554 --> 00:50:43.802 - to buy another 110 acres and then we bought another 95 acres. All of it joins and we raise beef cattle 00:50:43.802 --> 00:50:47.486 - and calves and have around 80 cows and calves 00:50:48.642 --> 00:50:55.218 - And we raised some dairy calves on the back of it. Then I went to farm and rented the farm. We went 00:50:55.218 --> 00:51:01.795 - down to the flat woods and rented the farm for a year. And then they come along and sold it. Didn't 00:51:01.795 --> 00:51:08.700 - stay there long. They come back up here to dad's place and rented it for a year or so. And then we moved 00:51:08.700 --> 00:51:15.408 - up north of Prattigan. The war came, and I was in the draft, but I didn't ever have to go to the war. 00:51:15.408 --> 00:51:18.302 - We farmed up there for a year, and that man 00:51:19.042 --> 00:51:27.126 - come back, he was in the Senas Island, and he came back carrying a butcher knife in his head pocket. 00:51:27.126 --> 00:51:35.129 - I wasn't too proud of that. So I sold out, divided that partnership with him, went to Martinsville, 00:51:35.129 --> 00:51:43.373 - went to work for Maxwell Hardware, the John Deere business. I put in pumps for farmers, worked on farm 00:51:43.373 --> 00:51:45.214 - equipment, and then we 00:51:46.242 --> 00:51:54.094 - Stayed there two or three years and come back to Bloomington to come back to this place, right here 00:51:54.094 --> 00:52:02.024 - where we're at now. And I went to work for John Deere man here and worked pretty near the rest of my 00:52:02.024 --> 00:52:10.033 - life there up until the later part. And then I went to Indiana University for 14 years. All that time 00:52:10.033 --> 00:52:16.158 - I farmed out here with that chattel, milk, made in the hoax. Dairy sold milk. 00:52:16.706 --> 00:52:25.437 - Dairy at Blooming Johnson's. And that's just part of my history. Well, after you got rid of the dairy, 00:52:25.437 --> 00:52:33.999 - you went into beef cattle. Yeah, I did have some beef cattle a while. What's the first thing you did 00:52:33.999 --> 00:52:42.476 - farming here at this farm? Well, I would just raise some corn and fill the silo, put up hay. That's 00:52:42.476 --> 00:52:46.206 - about all I've done because I work in town. 00:52:46.722 --> 00:52:55.574 - And I had to take off a little work to do part of it. Built your own milk house? Yeah, I built a milk 00:52:55.574 --> 00:53:04.252 - house on vacation. Weeks time I laid the blocks and one day I laid 300 blocks and mixed my own mud. 00:53:04.252 --> 00:53:13.278 - I laid the blocks. And I was about ready for my coffin at the end of the week. But I laid it all right. 00:53:15.778 --> 00:53:27.019 - You plowed all through the time that you put in crops? Yeah, I did. I plowed the ground, worked it down, 00:53:27.019 --> 00:53:37.725 - come big rain, and washed it about half of the way. I'd go right down the creek. Is the soil on the 00:53:37.725 --> 00:53:43.934 - farm now worse than it was 60 years ago? Better, I think. 00:53:45.026 --> 00:53:52.230 - You used to have this field up here, but back in the barn, that was ditches you could bury the tractor 00:53:52.230 --> 00:53:59.783 - in up there. Now there ain't no ditches up there. We've got them all filled in in grass. We've got terraces 00:53:59.783 --> 00:54:06.777 - around the field that let the water go off and down over in the old roadbed and don't wash down the 00:54:06.777 --> 00:54:13.841 - hill, don't tear the field up. When I moved here, that had, Robert pretty much turned to Farm Oil 20 00:54:13.841 --> 00:54:14.750 - over in that 00:54:15.522 --> 00:54:30.959 - We had terraces built after that. Yeah. I've got that field terrace, and it ain't any worse at all since 00:54:30.959 --> 00:54:44.190 - then. Ruth, what was the soil in the land like when your grandfather Elmsley farmed here? 00:54:45.474 --> 00:54:55.439 - Well, it was pretty good when Grandpa formed it. He raised old China hawks, red-stripped ones. Was the 00:54:55.439 --> 00:55:05.404 - plowing with the tractor causing more soil erosion than with the other? Yeah, because they plowed more 00:55:05.404 --> 00:55:13.918 - with that. And I think it did cause more erosion. But then eventually, people got wise. 00:55:14.978 --> 00:55:24.384 - put in terraces and stuff, and tended them. My father was one of the first to put in terraces over on 00:55:24.384 --> 00:55:33.882 - one of Larry Joel's homes now. Larry Joel's singer, my nephew. And that was when we first married. I'd 00:55:33.882 --> 00:55:43.934 - go over and help him. He had a crater. We'd dig the old horse crater, pulled a tractor to make the terraces. 00:55:47.426 --> 00:55:54.224 - problems that we have here in this county is the rolling terrain which you're seeing some photos of 00:55:54.224 --> 00:56:01.090 - now. It washes quite bad when you plow the ground it and rains the water will carry off the top soil 00:56:01.090 --> 00:56:08.160 - down as deep as you plow. If you plow five or six inches deep it'll wash it off that deep and the field 00:56:08.160 --> 00:56:15.230 - above the barn which you might want to swing around to your right a little bit that field up there when 00:56:16.866 --> 00:56:24.993 - moved back on this farm in the late 40s, had ditches in it large enough to drive a tractor up the bottom 00:56:24.993 --> 00:56:33.121 - of the ditches, the tractor the size you saw out there for erosion. So the ditches were plowed in, there 00:56:33.121 --> 00:56:41.325 - was terraces made to control the water, and then we went to grass farming rather than some grain farming. 00:56:41.325 --> 00:56:45.118 - The grass farming in this part of the country is 00:56:45.762 --> 00:56:53.526 - done so much for soil conservation. The people who are still grain farming, some of them are using what 00:56:53.526 --> 00:57:01.291 - they call a no-till system. This is where you go in and the seed is actually planted without disturbing 00:57:01.291 --> 00:57:09.055 - the soil other than a very small track. Soil is packed down around the seed and they use chemicals then 00:57:09.055 --> 00:57:14.878 - to kill the weeds. The field is sprayed and heavily fertilized and there's no 00:57:15.266 --> 00:57:22.816 - tilling of the topsoil. Therefore, we have a lot less grass or a lot less topsoil washing off because 00:57:22.816 --> 00:57:30.662 - of the grass roots. Even though you kill the grass, the roots are still there. And that keeps the topsoil 00:57:30.662 --> 00:57:38.064 - from washing. They feel that beyond the cattle that you're looking at now has been, in my lifetime, 00:57:38.064 --> 00:57:43.838 - in trees, corn trees mostly, been cleared off and put back into pasture land. 00:57:44.834 --> 00:57:52.102 - In that field, there's a number of sinkholes in this part of the country. A lot of water goes down those 00:57:52.102 --> 00:57:59.024 - sinkholes. And that also helps with the washing. But a few days ago, we had a very heavy rain here. 00:57:59.024 --> 00:58:06.015 - And this whole valley that you're looking at was running better than two foot deep with water. So we 00:58:06.015 --> 00:58:13.214 - still have, during heavy rain seasons, a problem with the water running off and washing of the topsoil. 00:58:13.890 --> 00:58:22.938 - So that is another reason that there's been a lot of conservation done and probably less farming as 00:58:22.938 --> 00:58:32.439 - far as grain farming is concerned in this part of the country than you have in some of the flat country. 00:58:32.439 --> 00:58:39.678 - Well, we moved here in 1948, March 1948. And the farm was pretty well run down. 00:58:43.074 --> 00:58:51.724 - a lot of ditches in it. I think it was right here above the house. It had corn rows up down the hill, 00:58:51.724 --> 00:59:00.459 - and there was a ditch in between the other corn rows. And so I had soil conservation boys come out and 00:59:00.459 --> 00:59:09.278 - lay out terraces. So we terraced the 30 acres right up here above the house the first year I came here. 00:59:15.074 --> 00:59:26.452 - up most of that washing because we found everything on the contour in between the terraces. It had very 00:59:26.452 --> 00:59:37.393 - little grass on the farm. Most of it had been cropped. Some of it had gone away. It wasn't cropping 00:59:37.393 --> 00:59:44.286 - at all. It was too far gone. So we plowed in a lot of ditches. 00:59:45.794 --> 00:59:56.833 - So a lot of alfalfa and orchard grass that first year. And the second year, 1949, we laid out the back 00:59:56.833 --> 01:00:07.766 - part of the farm. It was about 90 acres back there. And they laid out the strip crops. We had a strip 01:00:07.766 --> 01:00:13.982 - of hay and strip of corn, strip of hay and strip of corn. 01:00:15.298 --> 01:00:16.862 - all laid out on the contour. 01:01:03.234 --> 01:01:08.738 - The other people speaking in this video obviously belong to one community, a community which spreads 01:01:08.738 --> 01:01:14.351 - over several miles of joined farms, one which lives in a common experience in agriculture. History and 01:01:14.351 --> 01:01:20.019 - tradition thicken and strengthen it. The ancestors of some of the families here homesteaded these farms 01:01:20.019 --> 01:01:25.468 - and stories about them, their sayings and ways of farming remain part of the life of the community. 01:01:25.468 --> 01:01:31.136 - Since the founding of the community, farming changed ceaselessly. Machinery for farming especially grew 01:01:31.136 --> 01:01:32.062 - into new things. 01:01:32.450 --> 01:01:38.174 - Combustion engine tractors created a revolution in farming. This technology changed the source of power 01:01:38.174 --> 01:01:43.733 - on the farm. Replacing horses is the basic instrument of work. A tractor needs no rest, and its fuel 01:01:43.733 --> 01:01:49.401 - comes from the depths of the earth, not the surface. The tractor allows the farmer to port more of his 01:01:49.401 --> 01:01:54.905 - land and crops, and it gives him all the hours he needs to till his extra acres. Changing the power 01:01:54.905 --> 01:01:57.822 - source brought far-reaching consequences to farming. 01:01:58.274 --> 01:02:03.838 - Instead of allowing small farmers to compete with the large farmers, mechanized farming produced an 01:02:03.838 --> 01:02:09.458 - excess. Profit from farm products fell, and the acreage needed to make a living grew. With this came 01:02:09.458 --> 01:02:15.134 - a tendency to specialize. People no longer raised cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens, and oats, wheat, 01:02:15.134 --> 01:02:20.699 - barley, and corn. Corn and soybeans and beef or dairy cattle took over the farm. The revolution the 01:02:20.699 --> 01:02:26.430 - tractor wrought was a long time coming. North American farmers led the world in mechanical innovation. 01:02:26.978 --> 01:02:32.399 - Most of the machines emblematic of modern farming first appeared during the 19th century powered by 01:02:32.399 --> 01:02:37.873 - horses. The idea of the combustion engine even spans back several centuries. Putting a plow behind a 01:02:37.873 --> 01:02:43.294 - tractor changes little about the idea of farming. But the new power source consummated, in a sense, 01:02:43.294 --> 01:02:48.985 - the mechanical development to that point and began the true age of mechanized farming. How mechanization 01:02:48.985 --> 01:02:54.568 - damaged Maple Grove Road seems unrelated to the machinery and rather a part of the modern forces which 01:02:54.568 --> 01:02:56.574 - can improve and erode the community. 01:02:57.026 --> 01:03:02.639 - Farming with combustion engines certainly makes the work noisier. But adding a farm all or a John Deere 01:03:02.639 --> 01:03:07.605 - A to the farm changes the farm in no dramatic way. For the individual farmer, machines make 01:03:07.605 --> 01:03:13.057 - a good investment. They make work easier and raise profits. For the collective, however, they create 01:03:13.057 --> 01:03:18.562 - a trap. Individual success repeated 1,000 times becomes individual loss. To stay competitive, farmers 01:03:18.562 --> 01:03:23.582 - need to invest more and more in machines to run the larger operations, which allow a profit. 01:03:24.482 --> 01:03:29.960 - The consequences of mechanization are not the only forces which push on the community. New development 01:03:29.960 --> 01:03:35.279 - takes part the community year by year. Developers pay a higher price for land than what farmers can 01:03:35.279 --> 01:03:40.704 - afford. Lack of profit closes farms, but development actively pushes farmers off the land. Farmers in 01:03:40.704 --> 01:03:46.023 - Maple Grove Road see a day of reckoning coming in this county and this country as the land left for 01:03:46.023 --> 01:03:51.661 - farming shrinks to less and less. In some sense, the community is a victim of its own logic. The settlers 01:03:51.661 --> 01:03:53.150 - came in following the army. 01:03:53.314 --> 01:03:58.869 - buying conquered land from the United States. Violence won the land and money entitled ownership. Through 01:03:58.869 --> 01:04:04.319 - the years those able to pay for farms and make them profitable bought them and kept them. In the steady 01:04:04.319 --> 01:04:09.612 - rural exodus during the 20th century hired hands and tenant farmers preceded the farm owners off the 01:04:09.612 --> 01:04:14.905 - land. People who failed to make a profit lost their farms. New people always came into the community 01:04:14.905 --> 01:04:17.054 - eager to bring an old farm into blossom. 01:04:27.682 --> 01:04:34.279 - Perhaps it is time to break these customs. Attitudes about farmland and rural communities need to change 01:04:34.279 --> 01:04:40.812 - in this county, state, and country. Small farms are worth saving and indeed will play an important role 01:04:40.812 --> 01:04:47.221 - in the future. We must confess and affirm our dependence upon the fruits of the earth God created for 01:04:47.221 --> 01:04:53.566 - our living and make sacrifice in our immediate rewards to build a more stable and spiritual society. 01:05:12.546 --> 01:05:19.709 - country just the other day to see my Uncle Bill and sort of pass the time away. I asked him how he'd 01:05:19.709 --> 01:05:27.014 - been since last it passed his way and he rubbed his chin and here's what he had to say. My wife's been 01:05:27.014 --> 01:05:34.318 - sick and the young'uns too and I'm darn near down with the flu. The cow's gone dry and them hens won't 01:05:34.318 --> 01:05:41.694 - lay but we're still a-livin' so everything's okay. The hawks took the collar and they've all done died. 01:05:41.954 --> 01:05:50.057 - The bees got mad and they left the hive. The weevils got the corn and the rain rotted the hay, but we're 01:05:50.057 --> 01:05:57.929 - still a-livin' so everything's okay. The porch rotted down, that's more expense. The darned old mule, 01:05:57.929 --> 01:06:05.801 - he tore down the fence. The mortgage is due and I can't pay, but we're still a-livin' so everything's 01:06:05.801 --> 01:06:10.046 - okay. The cow broke in the field and eat up the beans. 01:06:10.370 --> 01:06:17.848 - And during rabbits, they got their turnip greens. And my maw-in-law just moved in to stay, but we're 01:06:17.848 --> 01:06:25.252 - still a-livin', so everything's okay. My land's so poor, it's a hardened yeller, you have to set on 01:06:25.252 --> 01:06:33.323 - a sack of fertilizer to raise an umbrella. And it rains out here nearly every day, but we're still a-livin', 01:06:33.323 --> 01:06:38.654 - so everything's okay. The well's gone dry and I have to tote the water, 01:06:39.106 --> 01:06:47.477 - up from the spring about a mile and a quarter. My helper, he quit for the lack of pay, but we're still 01:06:47.477 --> 01:06:56.174 - a-livin', so everything's okay. The house, it leaks, it needs a new top. When it rains, it wets everything 01:06:56.174 --> 01:07:05.033 - we got. The chimney fell down just yesterday, but we're still a-livin', so everything's okay. The cornmeal's 01:07:05.033 --> 01:07:07.390 - gone and the meat's run out, 01:07:07.778 --> 01:07:15.820 - Got nothing to kill to put in the smokehouse. The preacher's coming Sunday to spend the day. But we're 01:07:15.820 --> 01:07:23.784 - still a-living, so everything's OK. The canned stuff spoiled, else the jars got broke. And all we got 01:07:23.784 --> 01:07:32.294 - left is one old billy goat. We're going to have a new baby about the first of May. But we're still a-living, 01:07:32.294 --> 01:07:36.510 - so everything's OK. My crop, it rotted in the ground. 01:07:37.058 --> 01:07:42.823 - I asked for another loan, but the banker turned me down. But we're still a-living and we're praying 01:07:42.823 --> 01:07:46.686 - for a better day, so after all, everything's in pretty good shape. 01:08:12.322 --> 01:08:16.446 - Pull that step up to 42 tire.