Farming Today ** Was: Certain Increase In Essential Oil Prices

[Guest guest]

Howdy Jan,

 

 

> Wow Butch, you just gave me a new found Respect for my Roots. (Most of

> my

> Uncles are Farmers.) The ones that aren't still have family farms and

> such,

> but just couldn't do the economic aspect of the farming. Thank you

> again...

>

 

American history and wealth is built on moves to find better land for

agriculture .. its what tamed the West and the American Indian tribes.

 

One of my Grandfathers retired from the automobile business in Nashville

around 1950 or so and bought 40 acres .. he plowed it with a mule just as he

had done when he was a youngun .. he and his neighbors raised hogs and a

couple of head of cattle and grew small cash crops of tobacco. The corn was

harvested by hand and it all went to feeding the stock and trading to the

mill for corn meal .. wheat was harvested by a traveling combine that

charged a portion of the crop and the remainder was used as stock feed and

traded to the mill for flour. My Grandpa was a typical subsistence farmer.

When he got too old to work the land he sold it and moved back to the city.

 

Prior to that .. following WW II .. a lot of veterans went back to the land

with gummit loans. The father of a family I grew up near bought 200 acres

of scrub land and grubbed out the weeds and crap by hand. He built ponds

with antiquated equipment and started a cattle herd with a handful of cows.

He kept his ancient machinery together with duct tape and bailing wire and

in 25 years or so he had made a fine farm out of it .. operating at a decent

profit. He died and his two sons .. both around my age .. took over the

farm. They did pretty much what most of the young farmers around my neck

of the woods did back in the 70s or so when crop prices were high and

interest rates were low .. they borrowed up to the gills to get new

air-conditioned combines and corn pickers drawn by tractors with

enclosed cabs, air-conditioning and surround sound. Crop prices dropped

and in some cases one could make more putting land in the Soil Bank or

whatever it was called back then .. few could make enough to live and

service their loans. Those two fellers plus many others I knew lost

everything except the land their homes were sitting on.

 

Today its sorta back to how it was in my Grandpa's time .. small farms are

either barely getting by .. subsistence farming if they are lucky .. or they

are expensive hobbies. The least costly investment in farming today is the

land .. feller can buy 100 acres around here for less than the cost of a

some modern combines. The largest farmer around here has over 1,000 acres

of his own in crops and probably that many more on leased land. I

watched his folks harvest the corn fields around my home last week .. 4 corn

pickers did a job on one field around 50 acres or so in maybe 3 hours .. a

lot of the time was taken up dumping the grain into the dump trucks and

trailers hauled by tractors. I told Tanya that what she saw out there was

probably over a million bucks worth of farm machinery picking a crop on land

that was worth maybe $150,000.

 

No way can small farmers keep up today. It might give us warm fuzzes to

get nostalgic about the " good old days " but when we're shelling out cash for

food at the market we gotta realize that we're probably paying less per meal

and eating a wider variety of products than folks in any country on Earth.

 

 

 

> Hey If I win the LOtto... I'm gonna buy a few KG of what ever I can from

> you

> so You can retire WEALTHY.

>

 

Haw. ;-) Thanks for the kind promise .. but even if you beat the 187

million to 1 odds or whatever .. you'd have to spend it all on my oils for

that to happen. But if you don't win the lotto and still decide to buy

some oils I would rather you purchase in 4 oz or 8 oz sizes cause it takes

the same amount of paid labor to pour them as it does to pour 16 oz or 1

kilo sizes .. but my profit margin is nicer on the smaller sizes than it is

on the larger ones. ;-)

 

haud desiderium

> sieze dies

> Orbis terrarum est meus oyster

> vos mos non subsisto mihi

> EGO sum a comic indoles

>

> Jennifer Janek-Markey

> Soapywench

>

 

Y'all have a gud'un .. and keep smiling. :-)

 

Butch .. http://www.AV-AT.com