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market-farming - Re: [Market-Farming] Blew my mind today--lessons learned on new ag job

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  • From: Don Bowen <donb AT cts.com>
  • To: "market farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-Farming] Blew my mind today--lessons learned on new ag job
  • Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 14:52:34 -0700



I guess we lost this when farmers climbed up out of the dust behind Dobbin
.... There is a long step between these ....
and entered the air-conditioned lung-saving John Deere cabs.

I have spent many hours sitting on a tractor seat in the dust. I learned how to smell the life in dirt and to feel if it was ready to work. I followed my father as he walked into the rows of corn to see how things were doing. I watched as he bit into a kernel of corn to see if it was ready to harvest.

He grew up behind a horse and hated it. His father farmed with horses but when my father took over the farm in 1950, there were no horses in sight. 20 years later when he poured the last of the farm through a bottle, many farmers were selling out and the replacements sat in air conditioned cabs.

Air conditioned cabs cost a bunch of money and ushered in the "experts." Exerts who "advised" insecticides, herbicides, fertilizer applications, hybrid seeds, huge bank loans, and "farming to the fence rows". That was the end when natural lore was replaced with scientific farming.

Not all was good in farming outside in the elements. I sprayed many acres of corn for Cinch bugs, without any protective masks or clothing at all. I think that is a basis for my extreme allergy to fragrances.

Don Bowen donb AT cts.com
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
Internet development and software engineering

http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/



  • Re: [Market-Farming] Blew my mind today--lessons learned on new ag job, Don Bowen, 05/09/2000

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