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In response to Dean Fisher, by Gary Brandenburg

Dean,

Times sure do change.

I recall vividly as a teenager, on a small dairy farm in Bremer County, IA, having to use a pitch fork to remove cow dung matted with dried cow dung from pens and gutters. I had to use a silage fork to break loose frozen silage from the silo after climbing up numerous iron rung steps to even get to the open silage door. It was cold up there but to stay warm, manual labor, known as physical work, provided warmth.

After a sufficient amount of silage was hand tossed into the chute, I climbed down and now with another fork, a pointy and sharp tined device not approved of by the ‘youth employment police,’ but was approved by my father, a loving disciplinarian, I had to place that same silage in front of 30 head of hungry cows.

Every day, seven days per week, morning and night, repeat the same process. Oh yes, hay was provided to the cows also seven days per week. No time off.

Tractors: As I got older and desired on my part to learn how to operate a JD B and a JD A, with hand clutch, foot brakes, no cab (just dress warmly against whatever Mother Nature was throwing at you that day), and hook up the manure spreader, to take said manure (hand loaded into the spreader) to the field by driving said tractor across bumpy terrain.

Engage spreader, drive tractor into the wind as spreader delivered manure chunks onto the land — i.e. fertilizer application. Imagine this: I had no USDA EPA, or State of Iowa permit to apply fertilizer.

I did have my father’s dictate — “You have a job to do, so get-r-done, the sooner the better, if you want half a chance at using the car this weekend to take a girlfriend to a school dance.” I got this job done and many other jobs done, on time, for very low pay.

Hours of ‘authorized work’ were understood to start before sunrise and end after sunset. Period. That was farm life in its most basic form.

Cars and pickup trucks: us farm kids learned to drive these vehicles with stick shifts and clutches. That was interesting until we got the idea of coordination figured out. Oh by the way, I know I was driving a tractor by age 10. I know I wanted to drive the pickup truck by age 11.

So dad gave me lessons out in the back fields while we worked at setting up new electric fences for the dairy cow pastures. When the time came at school to take driver’s education classes, us farm kids knew we were aces at this game.

Still, we had to go through the hoops. Backing into a street side parallel spot was easy. We had already practiced that gig on the farm.

Wages: I did not whine about hourly pay rates or ever suggest time and a half for overtime. I knew better than to even bring that topic up for discussion. Farm kids did not expect a check made out to them from our parents for labor hours furnished basically for free.

I also had lots of overtime work hours growing up on the dairy farm. Examples: helping to plant crops, cut hay, bale hay, help neighbors with their hay baling operations when asked. One did not refuse helping other farmers.

Add up all the hours of work on dad’s farm before I started other jobs, and then come home to do dairy milking chores, well, by the time the day was done, supper was eaten and bath taken, eight hours of labor was a short day, not a standard day. Every day was an ‘overtime’ day.

Related to “wages” was the understanding that if you wanted to eat good home cooked meals from Mon’s kitchen, you darned well better not be allergic to physical labor. The standard rate of pay back then was three good meals per day, washed clothes to wear, lots of love handed out and encouragement provided for doing chores, or any farm work for that matter, and doing it well the first time, so those jobs did not have to be done over.

On a dairy farm, where every morning and every evening we did have to repeat milking chores, all year long. Without that work, there would be no milk production and no milk check from the creamery company.

Mom and dad kept the money for the big bills. Maybe I would get a few dollars if they thought I deserved it to spend during the weekend at a school dance, or go see a movie featuring cowboys Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.

Serving alcohol: growing up in a German family heritage environment and not having beer in the house was unheard of. With all that ‘free beer’ available, you would have thought every farm boy or girl was going to school every day a bit too tipsy.

Not so. Beer was for special occasions like company coming over to play cards or at grandparents’ birthday gatherings on Sunday afternoons. Abuse of beer was a no-no. Enjoying a brew was okay but never overdone.

Thinking back on all or those years of youthful experiences on a farm, I wonder now where my parents kept that State of Iowa Waiver form that they had to get from the Dept. of Child Labor, division of exemptions for farm kids, to allow us to work at any job they saw fit to assign to me or my sister. I just guess they had the attitude that work was a worthy thing to learn, to do, and do well.

Life later on in our adult years would demand that we understood that rule. No work, no food, starve yourself. See how that will work out. Times sure have changed.

Signed, a farm kid who survived in part because I was taught the positive value of work and did not become allergic to work. Great lessons indeed.

Garry Brandenburg is the retired former Marshall County Conservation Director who contributes the Outdoors Today column for the Times-Republican. He lives in Albion.