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Old 11-19-2009, 08:59 AM
 
479 posts, read 1,552,115 times
Reputation: 573

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I met someone from a larger southern city last night. As we sat at supper I told him I grew up in the very same small town we were in (population 120). He smiled and looked at me and said, 'So I suppose you LOVE to hunt?' I said, 'No I don't hunt at all'. He looked shocked and said 'What did you do growing up then'. I didn't have time to explain, but I would have this way:

1) Dirt clod fights
2) Rotten apple fights
3) Backyard football
4) Sandlot baseball
5) Worked for dad
6) Worked for a farmer cleaning hog barns
7) Learned music
8) Bike races
9) Bike fights
10) Cops and Robbers/Cowboys and Indians
11) Kick the can
12) Adventuring in abandoned houses
13) BB gun fights
14) Trackers (tracking someone in a cornfield)
15) Flood (building a huge mini-city in the dirt, only to turn the hose on it to have a flood)
16) Rode motorcycle
17) Worked on above motorcycle
18) Played with cats
19) Picked potato bugs (horrible job)
20) Played all sports

That's just off the top of my head. What else would I have time for?
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Old 11-19-2009, 03:40 PM
 
1,297 posts, read 3,511,569 times
Reputation: 1524
I was sort of asked the same thing. I was at a birthday party for a cousin and my Uncle asked me what I was doing in my free time. I laughed and said I was farming. He scoffed and said, "I know you aren't that busy", in a very derogatory way!

Well I actually keep track of my time everyday and keep a running list of other statistics off the farm. I figure I am allowed 8 hours of sleep a night, so that gives me 16 hours per day of available time. In 322 days so far this year (11/19/09) I have spent 3452 hours farming in one capacity of the other. That is 66% of my available time. In contrast a person with a "real job" only spends about 2000 hours working. I am nearly double that and I got another month and a half to go!

Of course that 75 hours per week is only for the farm, the other 44 hours are spent being a foster parent for abused and neglected foster children. Jeesh I need a hobby to keep me occupied!
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Old 11-19-2009, 08:05 PM
 
Location: CasaMo
15,972 posts, read 9,359,408 times
Reputation: 18547
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrokenTap View Post
I was sort of asked the same thing. I was at a birthday party for a cousin and my Uncle asked me what I was doing in my free time. I laughed and said I was farming. He scoffed and said, "I know you aren't that busy", in a very derogatory way!
Invite him up for 5 days and put him to work!!


I was thinking just today on the drive home seeing so much corn still standing because its been too wet to harvest. By the time they get all that in, it will be time to spread the anhydrous ammonia for next growing season!! Lots of work.
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Old 11-20-2009, 10:05 AM
 
Location: South Coast of Nebraska
252 posts, read 731,287 times
Reputation: 192
I was just saying on another thread, there are only a very few differences between city and country dwellers in internet times.

But, yeah, that perception about what constitutes stress is really different: Getting to work, on time, in beaucoup traffic--or--getting tons of grain in before the weather gets it.

You gotta' experience both, as I have, to appreciate the frustration with arrogance on both sides of the issue.

Last edited by roots'nbulbs; 11-20-2009 at 10:27 AM..
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Old 11-20-2009, 10:33 AM
 
1,297 posts, read 3,511,569 times
Reputation: 1524
Quote:
Originally Posted by MoNative34 View Post
Invite him up for 5 days and put him to work!!


I was thinking just today on the drive home seeing so much corn still standing because its been too wet to harvest. By the time they get all that in, it will be time to spread the anhydrous ammonia for next growing season!! Lots of work.
I hear you on that one.

We often squabble anyway because we see things so different. Last year I cut 10 cord of wood and he wanted to buy it. I told him 60 bucks a cord tree length right next to his house but hauled across the property line from my place. He got upset because this is the truck price. That was true, a truck will buy tree length firewood off me for 60 bucks a cord, but then they charge whomever buys the firewood another 30 bucks a cord to deliver it...$90 dollars a cord in all.

He had two choices:

1. But it off me for $60 dollars a cord and placed right next to his house with my tractor

or

2. Buy it for $90 dollars a cord off a truck and have it delivered to the same spot.

He bought it off the truck because he did not think it was right for me to sell my wood at the same price as a trucker. He didn't get the fact that he was still paying $90 dollars a cord for the same quality of wood to be at the same spot he could get wood for $60 dollars a cord. In other words he was counting my money and paid an additional $300 dollars for his winters firewood "out of principal".

I sure the heck wasn't going down on my price...there is a lot of work involved in logging him being my Uncle or not! A honest days work for an honest days pay...that is how I roll.
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Old 11-22-2009, 06:26 AM
 
Location: Nebraska
4,176 posts, read 10,667,898 times
Reputation: 9645
"Pride tastes awfully good - especially if you put meringue on it!" You should consider yourself lucky he spent the extra money 'on principle', BT - otherwise he probably would have spent the whole winter telling you about how you sold him greenies and they wouldn't burn, they clogged his chimney with creosote, there were BUGS in your wood, etc etc etc... Folks like that are better off spending their money elsewhere rather than bothering others.
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Old 11-22-2009, 08:53 PM
 
Location: Wyoming
9,724 posts, read 21,186,837 times
Reputation: 14823
LOL Your (OP's) story reminds me of the first time I was ever in this town in which I've spent the last 40 years. I flew in for a job interview. The owners and their wives wine and dine me -- it was a honky-tonk of sorts. The food was good; the live music was country-western; the dance floor was decorated with one of those glitter disco balls and filled with dancers wearing cowboy boots and western hats. I was sitting next to one of the wives and innocently commented, "I suppose a lot of the bars in town are like this one -- country and western."

She looked at me like I was crazy. "This IS NOT a country bar! In fact, it's the furthest thing we have from one!"

To her, living in rural Wyoming, we were in a fancy night club.
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Old 11-23-2009, 04:50 AM
 
Location: Canada
7,263 posts, read 9,268,126 times
Reputation: 9833
Quote:
Originally Posted by MoNative34 View Post
Invite him up for 5 days and put him to work!!


I was thinking just today on the drive home seeing so much corn still standing because its been too wet to harvest. By the time they get all that in, it will be time to spread the anhydrous ammonia for next growing season!! Lots of work.
We just got done a week ago harvesting flax, which is very unusual here where we usually have snow by the end of the first week of November. Instead we had the fall we never had in October, in November. Summer was a disaster, with nothing but rain.
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Old 12-08-2009, 08:30 PM
 
163 posts, read 214,056 times
Reputation: 61
Growing up in the 60's & 70's, in our small community we:
Worked weeding bean fields.
Played baseball.
Worked detassling.
Rode bikes.
Mowed lawns
Went asparagus hunting
Went fishing
Picked up pop bottles for the deposit
Flew kites
Raked leaves
Swam in the lake
Picked rocks.
Shot sparrows & blackbirds with our BB guns
Went to the dump to "shop"
Picked rocks
Went out to the "wilds" and picked plums and chokecherries.
Picked rocks
Went to the dump to shoot rats
Shoveled manure
Went to the neighboring town for band concerts in the park.
Raked leaves
Went to town on Saturday night & watched the people go by.
Hauled bales.
Went to the county fair.
Shelled corn & killed rats.
Drove snowmobile
Went to Sunday School & church, (actually most of us did)
Carried irrigation pipes
Went wading in the creek & caught crawdads and minnows for bait.
Picked rocks
Went nightcrawler hunting after a rain.
Picked rocks.
Went to VBS
Picked rocks.
Went to 4-H meetings
Carried irrigation pipes.
Went pheasant hunting
Drove tractor doing field work.
Went to football games.
Cut wood.
Went to basketball games
Cut wood
Went ice skating
Rode snow moblie.
Shoveled snow
Explored the islands in the middle of our local lake by hiking across the ice. (later driving on the ice)
Went ice fishing
Went to the high school basketball games and turned all the VW's sideways in their parking space. (Even did a couple of Ford Falcons)
Went to demolition derbys
Went visiting on Sunday afternoon at the aunts, uncles and cousins farms.
Went Christmas caroling
Once we were 14 we cruised Main on Saturday night. (All two blocks of it)
No, we never lacked for things to do.
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Old 12-08-2009, 09:17 PM
 
Location: Valley City, ND
625 posts, read 1,878,063 times
Reputation: 549
LOL! I can relate to all but the irrigation pipes.

Started detasseling the summer between 5th & 6th grade for 25 cents an hour and a 10 cent per hour bonus if we stuck out the season. Boy......hadn't thought about detasseling in years!

Just add FFA along w/ 4-H and add other chores for the livestock besides manuring out the barn....feeding, watering, putting out clean straw, vaccinating & worming, and working shifts during lambing season.

Also add digging & planting the garden.
Weeding said garden.
Mow lawn.
Carry water for 100+ new trees in the grove at least once a week for 3 years.
Driving tractor for chopping stalks.
Drive tractor to cultivate the corn & beans.
Bale & stack straw.
Hoe/weed sugarbeets.
Wander the road ditches looking for wildflowers.
Weed garden.
Mow lawn.
Go for a drive and long hike with the family along the river on Sunday afternoons.
Build 'forts' in the grove.
Build more forts in the hay & straw stacks.
Wander the gravel roads looking for neat rocks, especially agates.
Went to tractor pulls and county fairs.




Quote:
Originally Posted by plowman View Post
Growing up in the 60's & 70's, in our small community we:
Worked weeding bean fields.
Played baseball.
Worked detassling.
Rode bikes.
Mowed lawns
Went asparagus hunting
Went fishing
Picked up pop bottles for the deposit
Flew kites
Raked leaves
Swam in the lake
Picked rocks.
Shot sparrows & blackbirds with our BB guns
Went to the dump to "shop"
Picked rocks
Went out to the "wilds" and picked plums and chokecherries.
Picked rocks
Went to the dump to shoot rats
Shoveled manure
Went to the neighboring town for band concerts in the park.
Raked leaves
Went to town on Saturday night & watched the people go by.
Hauled bales.
Went to the county fair.
Shelled corn & killed rats.
Drove snowmobile
Went to Sunday School & church, (actually most of us did)
Carried irrigation pipes
Went wading in the creek & caught crawdads and minnows for bait.
Picked rocks
Went nightcrawler hunting after a rain.
Picked rocks.
Went to VBS
Picked rocks.
Went to 4-H meetings
Carried irrigation pipes.
Went pheasant hunting
Drove tractor doing field work.
Went to football games.
Cut wood.
Went to basketball games
Cut wood
Went ice skating
Rode snow moblie.
Shoveled snow
Explored the islands in the middle of our local lake by hiking across the ice. (later driving on the ice)
Went ice fishing
Went to the high school basketball games and turned all the VW's sideways in their parking space. (Even did a couple of Ford Falcons)
Went to demolition derbys
Went visiting on Sunday afternoon at the aunts, uncles and cousins farms.
Went Christmas caroling
Once we were 14 we cruised Main on Saturday night. (All two blocks of it)
No, we never lacked for things to do.

Last edited by 3-Oaks; 12-08-2009 at 09:18 PM.. Reason: typo
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