The History of Our Farm - Part 1 - A Talk With Dad

[Music] it's been requested many times from a lot of people that I talked about the history of our farm so today I've got the legend with me this is my dad Nate he's rarely been seen on the channel and I don't know if you've ever talked to the camera yet I don't think I've ever talked to the camera on your channel you know I've been just in the background doing things once in a while talking to you or Jim that's about it well there that here he is so we're going to talk a little bit about the history of our farm so our farm was originally homesteaded during the Homestead Act in 1876 correct right yep I think the one quarter not where we're living right here but the one half mile to the south of us was homesteaded in 1876 and I don't know the details as good as a shudder as good as I wished I knew him but yeah I do know that the one quarter was homesteaded in 1876 this I believe we believe is the original family right yep he had time and Matilda Johnson night yeah believe they came over from Sweden I know that they did and then my grandfather would have been the youngest one there John our Johnson and time started the farm and then grandpa John our took over from him I believe in probably in the mid 1930s or her so he was on the farm before that and grew up on the farm but I believe it was in the mid 30s when he took over and he actually bought the farm none of his older brothers or sisters really wanted to farm so he was the only sibling he was the only one that stuck around and wanted to farm that seems weird in the early 1900's that only one sibling stuck round and farmed it it really kind of does yeah yep yep no my grandma sight after he got married she had two brothers have farmed fairly close to here she was in a big family to air at a large family and she could over down to the southwest a few months right yep about three miles kind of southwest of here is where the two brothers farm didn't and I think almost straight west about two miles is where my grandmother grew up on a farm they built the house moved to this quarter of land rate a half mile to the northwest and built a new house yup the 1906 in 1900 developed him yeah 1906 yeah my grandfather was building born in 1900 there is right there that was the new house that they built in 1906 that's the house that I grew up in until I was 14 right the house it was a brick house with a stone foundation the foundation was kind of falling down we looked at remodeling it we had a couple people look at it and they basically told us it wasn't worth remodeling so in 1998 we built a new house here in the farm mm-hmm so from about that time early 1900s grandpa your grandpa my great-grandpa John our comes in starts farming and then he had how many kids did he have he had a son and a daughter just two kids is all John are my grandfather and grandmother had just a two kids so one of those kids being Bertus you know Mertes was my dad was your dad you know and he passed away yeah it's no I hear a little shirt on some of the details but he started farming with my grandfather and then I believe probably in 1956 he got married to my mother and then I was born in 1958 and then we was in December of 1960 is when he passed away from lymphoma correct but Hodgins to see Hodgkin's disease you know you know so I was I was born here in this house that we just had up in the camera yeah I was born in that house and then at two years old my dad passed away and then after that mom ended up moving to the cities and going to college and from there we ended up going to southern Minnesota in southern Minnesota my mom remarried and she remarried a farmer down there so I grew up on a farm in Jackson Minnesota in southern Minnesota and I did grow up on a farm so I've talked about the family connection to Jackson Minnesota but I've never really explained it both of my parents are actually from Jackson so dad was born here in this area lived here for two or three years yeah two or three years yeah yep and then ended up his dad passed away they moved south and you grew up on another farm right yep but your family still owned it up here yeah my grandfather still on this farm he he continued to farm it for I believe two or three years after my dad passed away and after we moved away he continued to farm it and had help and then he retired and he rented it out to several different people after that so there's kind of a we're a fifth-generation farm right now but kind of in-between that third and fourth generation there's like there's a half generation gap where our farm still or our family still owned it but they didn't farm it at the time actually from 1962 as a lass that virtus my dad and grandfather farmed it and then I came back in 1982 I moved up here from Jackson so was three years there's a 20-year gap in there okay okay when you farm in Jackson it was all row crop there corn and soybeans yes Lee well when we first stood down there they had a little bit of small grain and they fed hogs and cattle when I was really young and then they quit that probably when I was 6 7 years old 8 years old they quit feeding hogs when you were that young well yeah they quit throwing I guess actually they did keep finishing hogs for quite a while I couldn't forgot that about that Dad a finishing barn yeah but anyway it was mainly a role crop corn and soybeans for them and then when I got in FFA here about 15 years old I needed an FFA project so I decided to buy a few had a cattle and a few hogs so I kind of started out down there with a little bit of my own livestock but basically working with them it was my stepdad I actually call my dad he's the only dad I ever knew was the only dad he's your grandpa right in he farmed with his brother Kurt and then Kurt had actually but he's got five kids but he at that time looked like there might be a couple of them getting into farming - besides me so there were a fair amount of people down there but I was older than all my cuts down there so I was kind of the first one starting on the farm but I enjoyed livestock I had hogs and cattle in they also had several building sites where they bought the farms and they were just farming land in those building sites had the livestock setups on him in so basically they let me use some of their livestock setups so i had hogs of my own and then the cattle setup we kind of went in partnership we fed cattle then and I did the work and they provided the feedlots and stuff we own the cattle 5050 they were half mine as long as I did all the work and they owned half and then they didn't have to do the work of course they helped and we use their equipment some for chopping and so basically that's kind of how I got my start 15 years old they started out with livestock I think I had 13 cattle the first time I bought and probably about 20 hogs and and hugs were way more profitable in the 70s and the gemenese yeah we actually I believe there were several years I made $20 a pig on in the salmon in the 70s yeah when it started all the first year you have a hundred hogs that's pretty good well by the time I I suppose I graduated from high school and they still that's when we got a little bigger in the livestock there I think we were up to probably four or five hundred a big cattle and and they had a finishing unit for hogs so they had their own hogs in there and then I had my hogs and all the other places in the outbuildings but probably between us here a couple thousand head of hogs a year in as a set livestock was profitable in those years so I was able to buy some equipment mainly smaller livestock equipment you know pretty much a full line of livestock equipment and then down there there were a fair amount of people you know there were five of us at that time farming and and so I kind of decided maybe I would like to try it on my own I talked to my grandfather up here and then I got me reading we're still here your grandpa John are we're still living up here he was still down farm area yep in the mound and Laurie three miles away from here yeah and I talked to him and got married in nineteen one and then in 1982 we decided to come up here and start farming so he moved here actually did the fall tillage up here in 1981 living at Jackson I drove up here and spend a few days of time doing the tillage and then we moved up here in March of 82 and and lived in that house again the house where I was born and that's when we started farming here so you had a lot of machinery to get from Jackson Bobby to here yep and now I heard some stories about pulling stuff all the way from down there which is 180 miles yeah right at 180 miles to where the farm was south of Jackson's up here yeah and we ended up pulling a lot of equipment my dad and uncle down there had also had an implement dealership in Estoril Iowa and at that time the ladies weren't good but in the late 70's or brown 1980-81 farming had already kind of gone downhill and so I was able to buy a lot of used equipment from their equipment dealership down there and we pulled a lot of it up here I had a half-ton pickup should've had a little heavier pickup but I'm guessing we made 30 trips probably back and forth was the deal with silver silver yeah silver Lincoln anyone pick up I don't know if we have any pictures of it it was a good pickup and did a lot of work and anyway we were up here both Zach's mom my wife and I were from Jackson so we ended up you know missing home at young age so we'd go back to Jackson a lot of weekends and we typically come up here Sunday afternoon and we were kind of something when he pull it up here every weekend just go back and get a different implement pretty much back and forth yep we had the tractors hauled up here but then we'd go back and pull a digger one week and and grandmother and Grandpa his brother were still farming down there right they still had a farming operation going in the implement dealership going down there yeah you know and what did they sell at the implement dealership it was Massey Ferguson and white and white yeah okay at that time they weren't together it was two separate companies now it's ankle they're together but at that time it's two individual companies and then you get into the 80s yeah farther into the 80s after after the early 80s year up here and you got everything moved up here and you have a young family two young kids how did the 80s go well ladies were a struggle for everybody yeah but you know like I said I moved up here I had my livestock equipment some of that well we started out with fed cattle here at first in fed cattle till I believe 87 and we had hogs for a year or two after we had cattle I never had a bought at the same time we never did no because we'd never had enough buildings up here sure so we had the one by Ernest all this is where the cattle and hogs were great good night in this building but this this is where we're standing used to be cattle and hogs building yeah yep yup and I always enjoyed cattle in there was big investment with cattle so it was actually almost safer I figure a grain farming and had an opportunity to rent a little more land so we've kind of quit the cattle and hogs were cheaper of course to feed so we had a few hogs with not for too long how many hugs did you have in the building here well I think we kind of remodel it and put spent panels up yeah we could have about 400 and I don't think we ever had it completely fall okay I remember the Hogs pretty well the cattle I think I remember the cattle but just I remember running down the bunkers and trying to hit him in the nose when they were eating but they were always quicker than me at the time yeah the first year we had to drive in to feed lots to feed him and then the next year we poured some cement and had cement fence line bunkin and that was really nice I always enjoyed the cattle I really liked feeding the cattle and enjoyed that but it kind of got where we had so much going on it was too much probably for one person so we have about 300 cattle usually in the land and so we just decided do we put the cattle and just farm the land just farm the land do you regret that ever or did you ever regret that no I missed the cattle once a while but I really don't regret getting out of the cattle it I kind of had to concentrate on one thing didn't have enough money to do both or expanding in go with one their goal with both walk of the variation so we just concentrated on the grain went with that or corn soybeans sure do you have any stories from the eighties that people might find interesting well huh I don't know if there's any stories like it it was tough for everybody you know it's a time I thought it was a terrible time to start farming started in 82 but a good crop in 82 and 83 was kind of a poor year for the whole United States and up here we were close to average a little blow average but in 83 the price came up and either the price wasn't too bad in 83 I actually think we had $8 per soybeans in the fall of 83 83 yeah how were your soybeans I think we were a little over 30 that you're the first year were in the upper 30s thirty seven or eight and we actually had some we hadn't sold till 83 so at that time after 83 was over then we had the decent prices I think a lot of people in the area definitely including me thought well the tough times on the farm are over think that you're gonna get better yup things are gonna get better because 80 81 82 were not the best mm-hmm and in 82 was actually good appeared for crops but it was kind of going down here all the 70s are really good and it was going downhill so everybody thought well the from crisis or poor farming economy is over and people bought stuff again and and started going and really the poor times have not started yet mmm-hmm 1985 then I I grew I had one field of barley I'd never really grown small grain before but at 60 acre field we planted the barley and it was that a good year at all for barley they ended up yielding 20 bushels to the acre and the price had dropped it was worth a dollar a bushel now we straight combined ours so it was a little wet so we didn't get the full dollar we got ya discounted and we ended up selling out barley for 95 cents a bushel at 20 bushels a acre that doesn't work very good when at that time we're up sounds cheap now but it was $45 and you get less than 20 Hertz girl I said it it was tough for everybody and it stayed that way until about 1987 things kind of get a little bit better that 20 bushel barley is that the stuff that you combined when you had pneumonia yeah it was you know I think you told me the story where you went out one afternoon and you come by until late at night to get a hopper well actually I think that was in 92 or three with the beans oh that was later yeah okay we have beans in 92 and three we were extremely wet and we had seven a bushel the acre beans in several fields we had a lot of fields were in the 20s but it it was just way too wet that whole year in 93 I believe is a year they had the picker I can't remember all the details but anyway a lot of corn in in the area ended up getting destroyed plowed under chopped we harvested ours we probably should have plowed it under there was a government program to do that and we didn't go in that we ended up selling probably a third of it to neighbor that combined it went with the cob and put it in the silo to feed cattle we fought a lot of it through the combine through the dryer I remember in 93 we finished combining about two or three days before my birthday which is December 21st and on my birthday we were in the wet tank it was a corn popper bottom Cohen tank we were in there chipping the corner because it got wet and it would sit on the sides and it was just it was kind of a struggle in the fall of 92 or three but we kind of come back from the financial crisis of the 80s you were bouncing back a little bit at that time right yeah you know actually during the 80s it felt like a terrible time to start farming however I think it was actually probably good you know I moved up here I didn't really have much money I had to compete with some of the neighbors that had full line of nice new equipment and same wordly good yeah they were well established and I was trying to compete with him in it it was tough but by about nineteen eighty six or seven I had just as much money as they did we were all because almost nobody any money you know you've got a story about becoming a car salesman for a very short time span can you tell well I guess so I was just gonna try and have a part-time job yeah in it your cuz farming was no Department wasn't any good so I looked into doing that and I think I would have enjoyed it but there just wasn't time then started doing that just for a little bit and then we had a late spring and also and the Sun came out well if you end up not planting your crop for two or three days if you're busy working the offeror job it just was not going to work so I believe at that time we had 800 acres or you're trying to plant with an eggroll planner and it you know I think if I would have kept that job it probably would not have worked we wouldn't have gotten their work done and it was tough anyway getting the crops planted late you really suffer in this area if the crop is implanted on time so you could have cost your operation as much as what you may have made right second gentleman you know you know if you don't get out there and then you get a rainy spell for a week and plant the corn a week later you're gonna lose a lot more than you would've gained having a job I did have some winter jobs after that you know worked at ski resort for a little bit and drove snowmobile groomer and different things in the winter I really enjoyed driving the snowmobile groomer it sounds like a terrible job you do it was flowing kind of pouring and then you get to watch everybody zip past you on snowmobiles I didn't have to work weekends usually they tried to pull the groomers off on the weekends because the snowmobiles are pretty busy so I can go out there and groom during the week and then I would always know where the good trails were too I suppose that's one way to look at it you know before we get too much later let's talk a little bit about some of the the older equipment that you have okay no you said grandpa was a Massey dealer right Maskin white and white yeah so I've got some pictures here that I think people might find a little bit interesting this picture here is is you don't we well that's always that's okay first you're a farm that was nineteen - okay then I planted 60 acres oh it's 80 acres I can't remember which but yeah this is the first combining I did with my own combine firstly grew up in southern Minnesota driving the massive combine for your machines oh yeah they weren't my machines right so moved up here and had this machine and started out doing loads first and we had pretty decent crop looks that year and then I ended up bailing all the straw it didn't have any help so he dumped it on the ground came back with racks picked it up and stacked it in the barn that's right here and then a fair amount of the straw he sold some of it we got cattle later that fall so he kept a bunch of it for betting for itself but I think we sold probably 2/3 of the straws and then this picture here what I think is so cool about it is that's that's our farm in the background there this was taken south of here a half mile kind of in between here and the original homestead quarter right yep that's right Ken right across the road yeah original homestead a quarter and you can see our farm in the background the way it looked you can see the silver galvanized shed there that's the shed that stood that's the hog building Network really ending it now you know this picture here this is this is the white you actually had two two of the same they were both 135s right yeah this is a first one we had I got to have gone in Esther ville my dad's implement store hold it up here in that's the first tractor I had that in the Minneapolis willingness people you see in the videos once a while now which I'll have both of those right away in the beginning that's what I had the first year so I did the tillage of this white tractor in plan to do the Minneapolis Moline we got the picture here of you on the Moline that's in the middle of the yard to the old crib I guess we called it yeah there was a granary in the middle of the yard here yeah another picture of the white pulling the cultivator yeah at the time I see some boxes there's this some 1979 - and 35 white 79 did you buy it new no well it was almost new the store done astragal Iowa had rented that tractor out and there good programs on it you know when I was starting out I probably didn't need to buy you there I shouldn't have probably bought the newer equipment we don't buy new equipment now but we did at that time but the dealerships had good programs or the manufacturers had great programs on it and so it helped a dealership out in actually the plan when I bought both that tractor and that combine we thought farming was going to turn around and they were I was going to use them for a year or two and they were going to go back to the store in Esquivel Iowa and get sold as a demo of the year for possibly two years old and in my then everything had gotten worse in the price of new equipment had even dropped further so that couldn't happen so I kind of got stuck with a pretty new combine and tractor great when I shouldn't have yeah which I think a lot of people from what I hear a lot of people got stuck in those situations oh that time it was tough for everybody yeah you know anybody who had any new equipment to bail you just kind of crashed mm-hmm and it had already kind of crashed when I got this equipment I like that combine I had probably actually paid a little over half price what that would have been two years before that because a manufacturer came with a 20% discount to the dealers so I got it 20% less and dealers cost and it still it didn't work out [Music]

Channel: Millennial Farmer

Views: 630,949

Keywords: agco, agco challenger, agco tractors, challenger, combine, corn harvest, corn harvest 2018, education, entertainment, farm, farm videos, farm videos for toddlers, farmer, farming, farming simulator 17, grain cart, green tractor, harvest 2018, how farms work, john deere, john deere 9870, john deere 9870 corn settings, mn millennial farmer, history, farm stories, old farm, dad, the history of farming, old, old tractors, massey ferguson, dekalb, farmers business network, talk, historical

Id: dZF_zcZ6qs8

Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2019