Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Roy Morgan <k1lky AT earthlink.net> wrote:

> In my home town, there is a field that is one mile long.  Not very
> wide.  But I was told that a team could only make three passes in one
> day.  Either because the day was done, or the horses were worn out, I
> dunno which.

When I was a child of about 20 and working with my father for a spell,
during spring plowing (we had a one-bottom and a two-bottom plow and
Allis Chalmers tractors that are still causing local collectors to do
insane things because my sister hasn't gotten around to selling them)
I asked the old man how in hell he ever got the plowing done before he
had a tractor and slave labor. Basically, he started at daybreak, took
a 2-hour rest (for the mules), and plowed till dark. And he bought
cattle so he could turn more of the farm into rotating pasture. As a
tad, I put in far more fence, I bet, than any of you have. Of course,
the fence posts (osage orange that Dad had cut over the years) went
into sand so the digging wasn't so bad but we fenced a lot of ground.
And he'd fenced a lot before he'd even thought of marrying, let alone
producing slave labor. Some of those fences are more than 70 years old
now and solid as they day they were put in (none that I had a hand in
-- those are no more than 40 years old).

Marie