Smith Something New Every Day

A farm family that: dreamed; worked; laughed; cried; & prayed together
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4835-9661-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 404 Seiten

Reflection of our family farm and how we; dreamed, planned, worked, laughed, cried, and prayed together.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Richard

Leseproben

My lifelong dream to farm began when I was just a kid. I would listen to my dad talk about his upraising on the family farm and all the good things he got to do. I was born in a rural setting on what in those days was called a “gentlemen’s farm.” The owner of the farm was a national political leader who happened to own the farm, which he had operated as merely a self-sufficient estate, meaning his farmer (my dad) grew the crops that were needed to feed the livestock that produced the milk and meat that the farm’s families needed. My dad was the farmer or overseer of the farm for several years. By the time I came along, my parents had three sons living. They had the misfortune of losing my older brother when he was only 18 months of age. Dad, being the good farmer, would raise and keep all the animals born on the farm. Normally, these animals either went for meat or were raised to produce the milk and other dairy products needed by the folks who lived in the main house. The four or so dairy cows Dad started with soon grew to some 18 cows, at which time the estate owner began to worry that perhaps my father was going to pursue dairying on his farm. He had had a previous experience that turned sour, and he wasn’t about to entertain any such activity again. He suggested that my dad look elsewhere to farm because he wanted only enough animals to provide for his estate farm and did not want to enter into production agriculture. So, off the farm our family went, only to end up living in a tenant house on a farm where my dad continued to work mornings milking, after which he would drive off to a town job. Youngsters were not always welcome visitors on the farm where we lived then, so we got only brief opportunities to visit or work. These limited opportunities to work on a farm, sparing though they were, only served to intensify my drive to want to farm and to be much more involved in agriculture. My ancestors were all farmers, and in fact, my earliest ancestors cleared and cultivated the lands of northern Westchester County, New York. I speak of the early 1700s when many early Americans still were living in the general area. In fact my great-great grandmother herself was of Native American descent. Farming was the occupation of most of my ancestors up to and into the early 1900s. My grandfather purchased his own farm in Mahopac Falls in 1913. His father-in-law (my great-grandpa Shear) joined him in this operation, which pushed the family up into what is Putnam County, New York. In 1928, my grandfather was seriously injured in a tractor roll overturn. In those days, this was known as being “wrecked by a tractor.” What should have been a life-ending accident, however, was averted by local neighbor farmers and friends. Claude Swanson, who now is 99 years old, remembers this well: he and his father ran to the scene with others to free their friend and neighbor from beneath this old Fordson iron-wheel tractor. As even my father remembers, wet conditions caused the tractor to keep getting stuck in certain areas of the field. My grandfather was never one to quit and tried to “plank the tractor out of the mud” (which means chaining a plank to the steel wheels and attempting to drive up out of the hole). Well, the tractor axles rotated the tractor over, not out. According to Claude, “we were pretty smart to use long poles made from trees to make a fulcrum point to lift the tractor enough so others could pull Grandpa Smith from under the overturned tractor.” The damp conditions allowed the tractor to push him into the soft ground and only crush him, without perhaps killing him. Putnam County did not have an ambulance or a hospital in those days. Friends placed him in the back of a car and drove him some 20-plus miles to a hospital in Danbury Connecticut, which was actually the next state over from where my grandfather’s farm was in New York. It was the closest hospital to the location of the farm, however, and those folks were familiar with the area. After that event, the town folks not only began to organize the beginnings of an ambulance corps but also made strides in acquiring an emergency vehicle. Despite this near-fatal injury, which for the longest time my grandfather thought he wouldn’t survive, he did survive. It was well over a year before he was able to begin to live a normal life again. Unfortunately, during those days when he doubted the outcome, my grandfather made the tough and hard decision to sell the farm. During my grandfather’s hospital stay, the work of the farm fell onto my dad who was just 15 years old and who quit school to tend the farm. He was helped by my great grandfather Simon Shear, who was an elderly man and had farmed all his life. Shear knew the struggles that would be faced by this youngster who didn’t lack desire or ambition but perhaps lacked the total understanding of hardships yet to come. Even by the time my grandfather healed from his injuries, the drive to farm had returned (or more likely had never left). In a bold move, which was more than likely very encouraging to my dad, my grandfather rented back his farm from the new owners with the hopes to once again purchase it back. We are talking the year 1929, and by fall, the banks had failed and Americans were suffering through the Great Depression. Well, Grandpa never was able to financially secure the farm back, and he entered a new venture in life operating the town’s start-up incinerator plant and landfill. My father worked on many farms over the years until literally no farms were left where he lived. He always had worked two jobs most of his life. If he wasn’t farming with his father on the home farm or on other area farms, he worked at the incinerator plant and landfill. For many years, he helped on farms in the morning and evenings after a full day of work. My life has been dedicated to reestablishing a family farm with the hopes that my dad would be able to work and enjoy it much like he did as a young man. I worked on farms and raised some heifers on a couple of rented farms during high school. Upon graduating high school, I went to college, where I studied dairy science, graduating in 1967. On Christmas Eve 1967, I was drafted into the armed services. After my military service, in 1970, I married my best friend Deborah Ballard from Pawling in Dutchess County. We had met several years earlier and developed a love that grew stronger during my college and service years. Together, we finally got our chance to farm in 1972, and experienced a variety of events that gave us “something new every day.” Brud Soukup and I went to college together and became close friends. In fact, each of us stood up for the other at our weddings. The fact that I had taken on a herdsman job at Bos-Haven Farm Inc., a large farm not too far from Brud’s farm, enabled us to keep in contact often. Fully aware of my desire to start farming on my own, Brud was willing to help and kept his eye out for good farms to rent in the general area. One day, he called to tell me that a longtime friend of his family was purchasing his own farm, and the one he was renting would be available. This was great news, but inwardly I was still licking my wounds from being told by various farm-lending institutions that they couldn’t lend me money to go into farming. Their policy for lending was based on a 20 percent borrower’s equity in the project. This meant that if I wanted to borrow $30,000, I had to be able to provide $6,000 of our own money. We didn’t have $60 let alone $6,000. The Farm Credit Bank, commonly referred to as Production Credit Association (PCA), was impressed with my resume and did offer me several jobs as a farm manager on farms they financed. In the meantime, I had applied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Home Administration (USDA-FmHA). Being considered the lender of last resort, it was going to be them or nobody was going to finance us. With our strong resume and having completed all the necessary paperwork as well as having presented our proposal to the agency, we were told the likelihood was good that we would receive funding, but we had to wait. Having submitted the necessary applications for a loan and meeting with bank representatives didn’t exactly mean that I had a secured a loan, but this didn’t dampen my interest. Not being in a position to enter into rental agreements, I was a bit hesitant to move forward. Brud kept repeating that he knew of a farm to rent. It was a good farm and that his friend had improved it and done very well on it. He suggested that I go visit with the people and said that he would have his buddy put in a good word for me. I was nervous, to say the least, when I called the two elderly women who owned the farm to ask about making an appointment to discuss the possibility of renting their farm. Dr. Bird (Skillie, as she like to be referred to) answered the phone. I was encouraged by Brud’s prior coaching and asked about the likelihood of getting an appointment to visit with her and her sister concerning renting their farm. She told me that she had a long list of potential renters, but I could come around 10 a.m. on Saturday. I was excited, anxious, and scared all at the same time. Each day waiting for Saturday was consumed with dreams, plans, and great ideas of what I was going to do with this farm. I only could imagine and dream about what this farm looked like. Saturday came, and Deborah and I made the trip to the Bird Farm. It was magnificent. The house where the two owners lived was a grand old Greek Revival home with the big pillars. Modestly, we approached the door and knocked. Mary, the older of the two never-married owners, opened the door and invited...