Building Character

Don Rudolph

Well-known Member
My least favorite job on the farm.
 

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Reminds me of my earlier days on the farm. Dad on the tractor, my brother and I sitting on the stone boat, driving the field picking rocks as we went. Now farmers have loaders and rock pickers.

Them were the days.
Them were the days I don't miss. Younger brother driving tractor pulling a wagon. Dad other bro and me picking rocks. RB
 
That was one of my jobs for the neighbor farmer. We would pick several hay wagon loads every spring. Be put his 730 diesel on it. That was a treat when it was your turn to drive. At the end of the day I would get 6 bucks. That was big money for me. Not to brag , but I now I make 6 bucks by noon.
 
Luckily we don't have rock like that scattered throughout our fields. And Don, what's up with posting a pic of a Ford on here? This is the CASE forum! Lol 🤣
Sorry about that. I was never big on the David Browns, and there was an active Ford dealer nearby, so I bought the retired neighbors 4600 Ford for a utility tractor. It was very dependable, but had 9,991 hours when the wiring harness burnt up. I traded it on the 5610S and it has been a wonderful, handy tractor for us.
 
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That was one of my jobs for the neighbor farmer. We would pick several hay wagon loads every spring. Be put his 730 diesel on it. That was a treat when it was your turn to drive. At the end of the day I would get 6 bucks. That was big money for me. Not to brag , but I now I make 6 bucks by noon.
When my kids were little they would wonder what the payoff was going to be. I would say a trip to the Dairy Queen for a small vanilla cone. LOL Moans and Groans. Of course we'd go to the DQ, but I let them order whatever they wanted. They have never forgotten the small vanilla cone bit and use it now on their kids.
 
The question comes to mind of what do you do with the rocks? Line water ways, make the wife a rock garden, etc.?
You may not believe this but we have line fences that are piled high with stones along with stone piles in the middle of the most egregious fields. I'll post a picture sometime. Those old-timers were certainly ambitious when it came to clearing land. Thank God for offset disks that replaced big plows.
 
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Reminds me of my days as a teen on the farm in eastern oregon. Hot days, heavy hay bales made by an old New Holland baler pulled by my 830. Picked lots of rocks also, man our farm was loaded with rocks!!! Ugh!!
 
Sounds just like my childhood. A NH 66 baler pulled by a D Case, then a 273 baler pull by an 830. Still bale hay with a 273 pulled by a 1030. If the sun was shining, we were baling hay, it seemed. And yet, Summer seemed to last forever. Now, it's here and gone in a flash. Where does the time go? The smell of hay drying.
 
Those old-timers were certainly ambitious when it came to clearing land. Thank God for offset disks that replaced big plows.

Use to fly into White Plains, NY in the winter time quite often.
With leaves off the trees, you could see miles and miles of stone fences created maybe in the 1700's.
Many were small one to five acre plots and crop raised.
Now covered with 100+ year old hardwood forest.
 
All those field stones so despised by farmers up north are big money here in Florida.
We only have stones that look like giant lava rocks for the bbq.
Any natural stone from up north is expensive and often bought for landscaping uses.

A rounded field stone house would be twice as expensive as a brick house.
 
We didn’t have rocks, we had volunteer corn to cut out of the beans . One year the neighbor cut beans off of the Mason farm that was full of pig weed. His combine brought it home and we cut that out of the beans too
 
Whenever some of us kids would complain about menial labor jobs our good old retired dairy farmer neighbor would say, "Idle hands are the Devil's playground!" And Alfred was not joking, he truly believed that old saying. He was "salt of the Earth."
 
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