why did you start in farming

what are the reasons you started farming,In 1960 I was told more
than once, If you want lots of money, go to town. But farming has
so many hidden secerts, only Farmers know, The birth of baby pigs,
new born calves in the spring, fresh air, able to be with family, plan
your work day. Being able to construct buildings, The satisfaction to
be proud to be a farmer. I think today is such a great time to be a
farmer, It is many hours, lots of stress, but all in control, it is a
privilige. maybe the rural sciene has changed, to more of a row
crop,

Just never considered anything else. Nothing romantic about it. I just knew it from birth.

Just what u said, new babies in the spring, chicks, foals, calves, ect. Starting a garden, mowing hay, mowing pastures, Makin firewood, harvesting the veggies and preserving them, the changing of the seasons, the wildlife, the color of the fall leaves, I can't imagine life without farming.

Granddad was a vet, G-Gdad was a farmer. I grew up around animals and helped on local farms during the summer. I planted my first 6 acres of corn up at Gdads farm when I was 13. Later, the Navy gave me an engineering education, and then I worked for the phone company by day and started to farm at night. It just kept building, and when I retired 11 years ago it was a business. I only wish I had started full time and told the phone company to take a hike 20 years earlier. Not that retirement bennies aren't nice, but I missed so much by having to work there when I wanted to be here. An I ain't looking back or going back.....

Just plain stupid I guess.
Walt

Baby chicks, ducks, etc. Being outside all the time. Probably one of the few on here that doesnt have cable/satellite, don't need it, don't have the time. Plus PBS isnt that bad.

All day at desk job makes getting outside all the more valuable. Night and weekends on trees. Retirement should come right about the same time the tree farm gets too big to be part time hobby.

And I guess, I am a glutton for punishment. I don't need the trees for income, I do it to be outside, tilling, working the tractor, etc.

Rick

All the reasons mentioned, plus some. One part I love is that I get to do a bit of everything. Trucking, wrenching, operating, carpentry, forestry, and to top it all off, I spend most every day outside. And a love for the land and animals. No stock yet, but I am hoping to start build a herd of cattle by next summer.

Ok, this is the short, short, short, SHORT, version. I've always wanted to farm since I was old enough to follow the tractor tracks. The cheveron pattern in the ground interested me for whatever reason & once I figured out where it came from, I was hooked. My Grandparents on my Ma's side still farmed 'till I was about 5 or 6. There was many a ride, for me, on the machines that made those neat tracks. The interest eventually switched over to the equipment & the rest of the farm. It was then that I learned how to use hand tools, cut the lawn on a riding mower & drive a tractor(8N) for the first time. This all came to fruition after they retired from farming, so I always had hopes of continuing where they left off. I paid plenty of attention to agriculture as I grew up & did what I could to learn what I could on the few small farms around here through work. Somewhere around high school, interest if farming began to subside. My Grandparents passed when I was 16 so the positive reinforcement no longer existed to ease me into farming. Also, stupid kid things like partying began to sound like fun.

Once out of high school, I went with a factory job vs farm work. One dosen't get a lot of time to drink & socalize while farming & it was pretty easy to do a bunch of brain-dead BS all week & get a paycheck to liquify. I went that route for about 10 years. One day, I went out behind the pines & noticed my thresher was rotting away at an alarming speed. Could have sworn I had just parked it there a few months ago, when I realised that it had been "temporarilly" parked outside for about 8 years. By this time, the outbuildings on my Grandparents (now Aunt & Uncle) farm were in serious disrepair. So was my life.

That discovery is what led me to quit drinking. Breaking my back & not being able to drink at all on my med's cemented sobriety in place. After a couple years of healing, I came to the conclusion that the only thing that was keeping me down & my back from not healing was my being static. Once I realised labor in moderation is helping my back, I became a lot more physically active. My big break to operate a little corner of the farm came when our septic mound had to be put in the field adjacent to the house. The rest is current history.

Mike

Dad purchased the farm in 72 when I was a raw city kid and we moved in. I planted a 20 acres field with buck wheat for a farmer a week later. A acouple of weeks after that I was stacking bales on a wagon for another farmer who became my sisters father in law. Then I fell in looove......got married and we had a baby. We were not farming so I joined the Army. After all I had a wife a baby to support. Came home on leaves and helped dad out, milking, haying and what ever else needed doing. Mom signed the place over to me in 98 and I started renting the crop land out. Then we decided we would raise a beef for our table......then my youngest daughter married a guy who's dad raised pigs (now a dairy) He gave us a couple of feeders.....then the wife wanted chickens.....still in the start up process but we decided that we may as well try to turn a few bucks on it.

Rick

I have a bit of a different take.
I started farming because I was forced to.
My dad bought a small farm, but he worked full time in a factory, so that
left a lot of the work to me.
We had a few cattle, a handful of horses and several pens full of pigs.
We grew corn, wheat, barley and of course hay on a varying schedule on roughly 200 acres.
Some of it rented 20 miles away.
We started with only one tractor, a JD 50 and eventually added a Farmall A,
so you can imagine the speed at which we farmed.
A 2/14 plow and single row corn picker.
I worked on a fairly large dairy farm for a while, milking 4 and 4 going to school in between.
Worked on a produce farm too, growing watermelon, musk melon, tomatoes, sweet corn, etc.
Owner sold them to local stores and had his own farmer's market.
I knew that factory job took WAY to many hours away that my dad wanted to spend
farming, so I never wanted to go that route for a living.
I joined the Navy shortly after high school, taught school after that, then switched to my current career.
I never went back to farming.
Maybe when I retire...........

I only do a hobby type farm thing but have done it since July of 1980 but the land has been in the family since 1976. I was told back when I was 10 give or take a year or 2 I would never be able to afford to be a farmer by a teacher when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Can not say I make $$ but then I can not say I loose $$ either. I enjoy being out doors and working the land and do so as organically as I can

My mother dropped me on my head.
Or, cause when my mother's dad died, no one in the family was interested in the place... or in paying the lawyer to settle the estate. My father had enough to cover fees and bills, so lawyer said it's all yours.... it all went downhill from there...

I grew up in it,as an 8 year old i begged to learn to milk cows
I loved the smell of the barn and time spend in the pasture listening to the sounds of cows grazing and the birds singing
I could not imagine doing anything but farming.
I even moved across the pond to make it happen.
So here i am 54 years later still at it and loving it.
It was an hard life but the rewards were/are worth it.
I'll do it again in a heartbeat,.but i would try to avoid the mistakes.

I ate lead based paint as a child...


the only reason I can think of to defend my career choice.


Ever run a tractor on a spring day with the wind blowing against you? smell the diesel, the open ground behind you, feel the sun shining down? Did you ever think that you could get paid to feel like that? I did it from a farmall cub, farmall c, allt eh way up to tractors with cabs as new as 2001.


How can you ever get tired of the feeling that you are creating new life, letting it grow until it's natural life cycle is over, and then harvesting it in the hopes that the next year will bring new life for you to enjoy?


It doesn't matter if it is gmo, bt, triple stack, round-up ready, certified naturally grown, open pollinated, or taken straight from satan's hands...

You reap what you sow.


You give a crop all the love you can give and you watch it. You hope that God will provide the rain, and you hope that anything that happens, you can overcome.

When the time comes to harvest, you have that knowledge of a preharvest yeild. You know you did your best, as always, but you know that next year begins just a few months away. You swear that next year will be the year when the rain comes, the soil is dry on time for planting, and that no equipment will break down.


The next year of hope is what drives you. The bounty of the current year inspires you.







To answer your question...

I was 3 years old in 1981. I rode on the fender with my dad and watched him plow, plant, harvest and I just knew that there was nothing else in life that would suit me. I am my father's son. He knew when he was my age at the time that when he sat on the cultivator with the horses in front, he would never be more fulfilled in life than when he was farming. My dad went from horses to climate controlled cabs. He went from 1 row farming to 6 row farming. He went from 50 bushels per acre to 300. In his life time, he never thought his son could break out of a tradition of gleaning with horses. He never thought that a time would come when atrazine would be a 30 year old invention.

What he knows now is that anything is possible and what I do is the cutting edge of farming. He knows now that the cutting edge could lend a paycheck to even the smallest of farmers. Let us little guys still compete without loosing. To him, I am forever grateful. He will be, and forever has been my hero. Before I was born into this world, he was my hero. He gave me so much and continues to give. Although his tone is often harsh I know that every year he is more proud of me and happy to see what I have done than what his father could have ever imagined.

It's a legacy. It's family tradition. It's 238 years of farming the same ground with better equipment adn better techniques. We have been here forever. The one thing that isn't lost is our "never die" spirit. We won't let a brief moment in time stop us from carrying on a way that existed long before our birth, but was instilled in us long before we lived.



I just hope everyone who has a passion for farming knows what it means to live a legacy and tries to continue a legacy of learning and happiness. The minute you think you know it all is the minute you fail. Lucky for me I am never all-knowing. For that is the reason I can keep farming and making my family proud.

God Bless.

Because nobody in their right mind would ever hire me.

Grew up on a more or less hard luck farm. Dad came right out of high school and ran the place for his stepmother, grandfather having passed away. He took care of his stepmother, and married late, he was forty when I was born. He was much more a logger and sugar maker than dairyman and crop farmer. the dairy herd was never very big, and he couldn't swing the change to bulk tanks,etc, in the early fifties.

By the time I started working with him, he was raising dairy heifers, logging and making syrup. By the time I got into high school ,I couldn't wait to get away. I went to a high pressure engineering school, couldn't make the grade, transferred to a state teacher's college, graduated, but my student teaching experience cured me of any thought of teaching.

Along the way I did some stupid things, drank too much, and hung out with less than reputable companions. I came home after college, camped out for the summer, and went in the woods with my Dad and my brother in law that winter. Continued to drink and do all little as possible, lived in a few places around, but never worked very much, anywhere except the farm. Bought my brother in law's trailer on the farm when he and my sister left, met my current wife a couple years later, she moved in with me, and suddenly I found myself not drinking, and actually enjoying the work.

Mother and Dad did less, I did more, they finally passed away in 2000, and I am still here. My boys are off to college, and may not come back, but I hope to hold the opportunity available to them for as long as possible.

I think John said it all "I was 3 years old in 1981. I rode on the fender with my dad and watched him plow, plant, harvest and I just knew that there was nothing else in life that would suit me. I am my father's son" For me that would have been 1957 but the story is the same. I never thought I wanted to work for someone else. (Not even Dad)

It's a disease, I went broke in 1984 in cattle, I worked until 2001 and bought a Chicken farm 2 weeks after 9/11. I sold it 3 years ago and now I'm back on the farm that's been in the family since 1906. I'm back raising cattle and working off the farm part time. I haven't had a day off in over 2 years and haven't had a vacation in 12 years. Yep anybody that would do this has got to be sick.....I can't think of anything else I'd rather do.

I never wanted to farm,sixty years later i still dont want to! my grandad who had a little dairy selling cream,and later raised cattle,would get mad if you called him a farmer. my dad was the farmer,mainly to feed us kids i believe. i have about 20 acres to get planted back to grass (if it ever rains enough) and i will finaly be out of the farming buisness.

Didn't have a choice; my dad was the most controlling person I've ever known. When we graduated from HS in '62, most of my friends headed off to college. I was told....in effect....to put my butt in the tractor/cotton picker/combine, etc seat. One would think that at 18 years old, one could make their own decisions, but I was too conditioned/accustomed to obeying. The concept had been RIGIDLY enforced for 18 years. I worked for him for a few years, before I finally got it through my head that I was never gonna be a partner, just essentially slave labor. By then, I thought it was too late to do anything else. A neighbor asked if I was interested in buying a half-interest in his cattle and renting his 320 acres; another 330 acres in the community was also for rent. I approached the president at the locally owned bank, to see if they would back me; in retrospect, I can't believe that they did, but they gave me a $75,000 line of credit. Eventually, I was farming 1,000 acres of row crop and running almost 300 head of (commercial) mama beef cows. I'm since retired; it was a good, though VERY stressful life; if I had it to do over, knowing what I know now, I might do something else.

it's got to be i ones blood and you can't get it out,three generations both sides of the family before me were farmers, daddy didn't want us to farm because he had been at it about all his life and was good at it,he knew well of the adversity that one could encounter having been born in 1920 and growing up through the 30's then being involved in war times of the 40's, even though he didn't won't us to farm all three son's still farm and hold a public job, there long gone but my granddaddy's and daddy's farming back ground still lengers on today and hopefully in the future through my son and grandson who enjoy farming

well to me farming is more than a business its a passion and a way of life, I have always wanted to farm since I was born, it is in my blood, My father and grandpa farmed, I just do it as a hobby now with cattle and sheep and hay ground, I am looking at a acreage with tillable and pasture now hoping to get started with more cattle and crops, but there isnt alot of chances for young guy like me to get funding, but still hoping, It would just be better if there were more small farmers instead of these BTO guys, till I get my break I will still be working on JD equipment and even after to help with the bills,
Those other guys are right too that there is nothing in the world more satisfying as seeing crops grow and calves and lambs be born and raise them up

Zach

We won a million dollars in 1972, decided to farm till it was all gone. Made it 20 years. :0)

Gene

for me its about a hundred reasons but the ones that come to mind right now are like this

i am a career Army officer i've spent the last ten years fighting the war and will probably spend the next ten either getting ready to fight the next on or actually fighting it. The wife and I bought the farm to give our kids a real home and a way of life that was away from the Army. When the Army is done with me I want to work for myself with my family

other less complicated reasons

-seat time on the tractor or combine i about as peaceful for me as any thing
-i like wrenching on things older than i am
-i like the reward of producing something

paul licata