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What is your idea of work?

M

MSFARMALL

Member
I grew up around old people in a rural area where life was hard for them in their earlier years. Most everything was done by hand; manual labor, with the aid of the limited equipment that was available at the time. They cut all their wood used for heating and cooking by hand with a saw or axe so it was a very work oriented living. Most everything that was grown and harvested was also done by hand as the old horse or mule was the only powered equipment available. I am sure if you asked them if they worked hard, the answer would have been an emphatic yes.
Approximately, thirty years ago, I bought land on which the timber had been cut and it was a terrible mess. Skidder ruts and brush piles everywhere but I finally got the land cleared and replanted, using tractors and chain saws, etc. I have told everyone I put a lot of work into clearing the brush piles, building roads and filling in ruts to get it where it is today. But, again, most of this work was done by tractors and other mechanical equipment.
So, I am almost ashamed to use the word work to describe what I have done in comparison to what the old folks had to do just to stay alive.
What do you folks think? Is it fair to actually call what we do today with all the automated equipment that we have available work?
 
I know what you are saying sir, but what you did at the time was work too. You were still working with your hands and doing it on your own. Yes,You did use tractors. That is working smarter and with what is available. At least you did not have someone else do it and then tell people that it took a lot of work.
 
Of course it is still work. By using machines, you get much more done in the same amount of time with less physical energy spent. As stated before, its working smarter.
 
Work comes in many forms. It can be very physical in nature or more sedentary. Running automated equipment is work.
 
Work is showing up and doing what you were hired to do, whether it's physical or mental. I'm almost 66 and I'd still rather do physical work than mental work, but that's just how I am. It doesn't have to do with ambition, it's just my nature. I hated sitting in a classroom when I was in school. All I wanted to do was be outside working or doing something. I really don't envy anybody who has to sit and think all day.

You talk about people either not working or wanting to though, we had a tractor club meeting last week and the club president said that a decades old local show might not happen this year because they couldn't even get volunteers to work the show. Our club and another one here had been asked if we wanted to do some kind of a joint one day show or something in its place, said we would have free use of the grounds if we wanted to do it. The organizers of the other event were going to meet this week to make a final decision about whether or not the show would happen this year. If it doesn't, RayP might have to be shopping for a combine to get his oats cut.

Anybody who thinks this country will ever be what it once was isn't paying attention. We're past the wax ring when it comes to lazy worthless Americans ever wanting to do the work it took to get to where we are.
 
Well yes there are varying degrees of work . Is it as hard as it was 150 years ago no but its probably more hectic today
 
When you are young, work is what you do to support your family.
Retirement work is what you do and not get paid for it.
 
I always hated sitting in the classroom watching tractors and drills and spray rigs go by the window all day
 

Referencing the OP, there's a big difference between subsistence "work" and what you describe on your property. The older rural folks HAD to cut wood, HAD to turn the garden by hand, HAD to pump or carry water, HAD to do this and that. You chose to work on your land and build what you did. That makes a difference in my mind. I don't HAVE to work my farm, such as it is, I choose to. So I don't put that in the same class as wood cutting where I HAVE to have wood to keep the place warm.

Kind of a yes and no answer I guess, just my 2 cents.
 
A hundred years ago life in the USA was very different from what it is today. Back then average life expectancy was only around 50 years.
 
I think it relative to what you have and know.

The people a few generations ago didn't have or know about the modern amenities we have now. So yes, it was harder work, but they felt the same accomplishment we do with what we have to work with.

What would be hard would be going back to the old ways. Not by choice or as a hobby, but truly having to revert as a matter of survival.
 
work was being stuck in factory all winter when snow started to melt I was about to go stir crazy.
didnt help next to parking lot was a big field when soil was right there a farmerr making dirt fly.
I found a different job called in and said I won't be back there to Iwas told you will never work here again. I was thinking how dang dumb are you I just told you I will never be back.
working in factory was work.
 
40 years ago my grandmother's well pump quit working. Granny said that she thought about hooking onto the city water line that went down driveway to Business she and a uncle owned where a cousin and I worked. Cousin and I dug the 100 foot ditch for water line with shovels as my uncle was going to get water line. She had city water that afternoon .....Today I would have to get a mini excavator. We were tired of working on that well pump.
 
Work is a 4 letter word around here. We never worked with horses, but I have done many things on the farm with primitive equipment, by comparison to what we have today. Milked cows with bucket milkers, cleaned stables with a shovel and wheel barrow, handled thousands of square bales. Just to achieve the same end result as I get now with more modern equipment. Big difference then wass as I supplied more of the muscle, at low dollar cost, just like things were 100 years before. Now we must produce much more to pay for the convenience of mechanical muscle. It just different work, with different problems, much the same results
 
Great story and thread, MSFARMALL!

Similar background for my grandparents. Daddy and mama had more mechanization and electricity, and better medical care... but still worked hard all their lives.

My husband is a welder - over the years this has become running a robotic welder and just touching up bad/missed spots.

Me, I just sit on my deadbutt and play on the computer all day... doing secretarial work. LOL! Not physically demanding at all - but I am still tired at night (and more-so with every passing year). I like to go out and walk a mile or two at night at least several nights per week... just to compensate for setting around all day, every day (it helps my back and legs too - 'cuz sitting all day is kind of hard on the body).
 
I worked 31 years in a high output foundry, 21 of those years on the melt deck producing ductile iron for Detroit. Weekends were spent relining those furnaces for the next week which was mostly done by hand. Pretty rough years. In a different foundry now, but I do lab work so the only time I need to leave my lab is to collect the samples, maybe a little, maybe a lot but its still work to me.
 
I spent 10 years in a call center working claims on vehicle service contracts. Same scene.

Guys half my age would comment on how their wives and girlfriends wouldn't understand how they could be so exhausted in the evening after sitting at a computer all day. Plus, you were matching wits with every scam artist in the automotive business.

We did have a Claims Manager who insisted everyone walk at least a mile a day on company time. That helped.
 
My dumptruck,,and two pt tiller did some work today!
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My idea of work?
On the farm from the evidence of it I see:
1. Thousands of feet of hand dug tiles.
2. Shovels, slip scrapers with a horse or mule digging down several feet for the foundation of a basement barn.
3. Then levering in big pieces of rock for the foundation that will hold up a towering rock or stone wall.
4. Hand digging millions of post holes and tamping in hand sawed and wedge splint tree boles for posts.
5. Hand digging and axe chopping a tree stump to clear the land to make a field.
6. Chipping, pit sawing,chisel cutting mortise and tenons in hand hewed logs to build a barn.
7. Raising a big garden, harvesting, cooking, canning, filling crocks with food to last the winter and enough to feed a big family when birth control was not practiced.
8. Hand washing clothes, drying, folding, ironing, starching, mending, constantly.
9. Digging and moving rocks, a never ending job, again hand shoveling and horse/mule pulling.

I missed most of that heavy physical labor. Sampled a bit of it in the 1940-50 small farm experience. Spent most of my career managing a pencil, desk and filing cabinets. Leo
 
Mines quite similar to Bruces, thousands of square bales a year, shovelling grain into a wheelbarrow and feeding with a scoop. Forking and wheeling silage ,same with manure. But if given the chance at a younger age Id do it all over again.
 
(quoted from post at 12:48:47 05/25/21) I grew up around old people in a rural area where life was hard for them in their earlier years. Most everything was done by hand; manual labor, with the aid of the limited equipment that was available at the time. They cut all their wood used for heating and cooking by hand with a saw or axe so it was a very work oriented living. Most everything that was grown and harvested was also done by hand as the old horse or mule was the only powered equipment available. I am sure if you asked them if they worked hard, the answer would have been an emphatic yes.
Approximately, thirty years ago, I bought land on which the timber had been cut and it was a terrible mess. Skidder ruts and brush piles everywhere but I finally got the land cleared and replanted, using tractors and chain saws, etc. I have told everyone I put a lot of work into clearing the brush piles, building roads and filling in ruts to get it where it is today. But, again, most of this work was done by tractors and other mechanical equipment.
So, I am almost ashamed to use the word work to describe what I have done in comparison to what the old folks had to do just to stay alive.
What do you folks think? Is it fair to actually call what we do today with all the automated equipment that we have available work?
Click to expand...
I want to reply to MSFARMALL and to everyone else here about the work you all have produced, if you dug a ditch with your hands and a stick and did that all day every day until the ditch was done, you did work. Then if you decided to dig another ditch, this time with a shovel and dug all day every day until the ditch was finished you did work,, and other people did some work too,to make the shovel,which was possible because someone provided wood for the handle, metal for the blade, a store to sell the shovel, a building for the store, homes for all the people who did all that work,and on and on. Then after you finished that ditch and decided you needed another ditch, but this time you used a tractor with a loader, teamed with a trencher and a dump truck, then hired a helper, then when you finished that ditch and sold that used tractor to me and I bought new tires, a little paint, and took pics to post on YT, well we all did some work, and I hope everyone ate well, slept well and was proud they did all that work.
So yes your work however primitive or big time, adds up, means something to someone, and all the work that is done is real, and by gosh Larry on the corner is tops in my book, The End
 
Thanks everyone for your comments. I sure am glad that we have the technology and equipment that we have today. I just dont think I could compete with the older generation.
 
Im a carpenter. Yes the tools and equipment make it quite a bit easier than when I started but in the end its still physically demanding work. Like Bruce stated the results are the same

Vito
 
Vito,

Decided to frame my own house, with a hammer! First weekend I started driving nails, and woke up Monday morning and couldn't move my hand! Went to the Doctor, and the Doctor prescribed and air nailer! Went to Lowes and filled my prescription!
 
Goose,

Interesting that they encouraged you to walk on company time. Where my husband works, they all gather and do 15 minutes of stretches after everyone has clocked-in.
 
At random times, usually in the afternoon, the Claims Manager would walk up to your desk and ask, Have you walked yet?

If you answered No, he'd point to the door and say, Then get out there. You need to get your brains aired out.

It was effective.
 
(quoted from post at 22:05:59 05/25/21) Thanks everyone for your comments. I sure am glad that we have the technology and equipment that we have today.[b:6877ca1b6c] I just dont think I could compete with the older generation.[/b:6877ca1b6c]
Click to expand...

Very few today could.

Back then what had to be done got done the hard way because there was no other way.

Then someone went to work, (Get it?), and invented tractors and other machinery to make work easier which in turn created more work in maintaining and repairing this machinery etc.

I grew up on a small family farm run by my grandparents. My father and my uncle had both left the farm for other work. I've milked cows by hand into a bucket, hand cranked a separator and a turnip pulper, cleaned the gutters with a shovel into a manure carrier on an overhead track which was dumped into a spreader in summer/fall or into a pile in winter/spring which was then loaded by hand into the spreader when the ground firmed up enough to spread it without tearing the fields up. I'm sure many here have done the same or similar.

That's a lot of work. My grandfather retired when I was 16 and I finished high school and went to work at various jobs mostly in the construction industry, poured a lot of concrete on many jobs.

Finally got into auto and machinery repair and worked at that until I retired two years ago. I've done enough work.

It's all work, some easier, some just as hard and maybe some harder. A lot of work these days is very hard mentally on some people, others not so much.

It's all work, anyone who says different is a liar.
 

Hello MS. It only gets worse. When you sell the land you spent all that work clearing, it will probably only net you about a penny an hour.
 
I think what's happening here is a confusion about terminology. Everybody is confusing work and labor. Hard physical labor is work, but not all work is hard physical labor.
 
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