Reflections

   The older we get the more we reflect on our life to that point.  Farming has come a long way from the days my Father and Mother started house keeping in an old house that  was in a hog lot.  Needless to say they ran the hogs out, cleaned it up and moved in.  Remember them telling me about the time mom baked her first pies, She was so proud of them, Put them on the table to cool,  For some reason the ants found themand completely cover them so Mom cry and threw them out.  Dad farmed with a team of horses for years.  He then saved enough to buy an F-20 tractor on steel not rubber.  They then moved out of the "hog house" to a rented farm where after 5 years the owners of the farm, the local bank, wanted to sell it to Dad  100 plus acres for 15 thousand dollars.  Dad says there was no way he could pay for it so they then moved back down on the river where he rented a much flatter farm where he was able to save and buy "modern" equipment to farm with.  They lived there for almost 29 years before they bought it and 2 years later had to sell it for a company to build a power plant.  They raised tobacco, milked 20 cows, had several hogs to market and kill for their own meat.  Mom always had a garden and raised chickens for eggs to sell and eat.  She alsways fixed 3 meals a day plus helped Dad out on the farm everyday.  They bought & moved to the present farm in 1974.  They were debt free.  So Dad always said after that that we would buy or build something when we had the money saved up to pay for it, a pholisphy he kept till the day he died.
   They saw a lot of changes over the years in farming practices.  They often would talk about those changes and how they helped or hurt to improve life and farm practices.  Technology was embraced with caution, would it pay for itself over time.  In the end Dad had a tractor with a cab and AC and Mom had a refrig to keep her pies in.  They both had a love for their fellow man, the church and most of all a love for my sister and I.