Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Snyder
One of my wife's uncles lost an arm that way on his farm in southeast Missouri in the '50s.
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The little farming area I grew up in right in the heart of the Corn Belt, we had 2-3 guys with hooks, many more with mangled or missing fingers.
I did a LOT of field work from the time I was about 9-10 years old to about 20-22. But I never ran a corn picker or combine. Started driving the tractor pulling the baler when I was 9-10 years old. I drove the FARMALL M I have in the shop now when I was 7&8 years old pulling the hay rope pulling the hay fork up into the back barn lifting bales of hay into the hay mow. Ran hay mowers, hay rakes, cultivated corn, sprayed corn, plowed and disked, ran the neighbor's big tractor chopping haylage, ran to the little town of 100 people with a church, elementary school, fertilizer company, bank, bar, restaurant, lumber yard, general store, and three trucking companies and three feed mills for hog feed every Saturday from about first of March till Thanksgiving, and about every 2-3 days all summer. By the time I was 14 years old I was working for the local big time operator pretty steadily, kept Dad up to schedule, and worked off&on for a couple other neighbors.
Was helping put the mounted picker on the M by the time I was 6-7 years old, only as a Gofer at first but finally doing things unsupervised. As Grandpa got older I took over more of his role. Last 6-7 years Dad farmed Dad ran the picker and I hauled in on Saturdays, during the week Dad had to pick alone, pick both wagons full and park the picker and unload them. We picked as much on a good Saturday as Dad could pick alone in two days! We only raised 80-100 acres of corn on the home farm, and could pick 20 acres on a good day. Most days Dad would pick 2-3 loads and wait till a Saturday when I was home to help.