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Pittsburg, Kansas | Dad told of a neighbor with a sow and a bunch of weaning size pigs. He wanted to sell the sow and pigs but the person that bought it would not take the sow. Did not want to feed it. The pigs could be fattened up enough on scraps and whatever and sold for a little bit or butchered. But the old sow was not worth the feed it would take to fatten it up.
Dad talked of a drouht year when they did not have enough corn raised to feed all the hogs they had. Couldn't sell them. This was when he was first married to my mom at the depths of the great depression and the hogs were my grandpas (my mom's dad). He said they were so skinny and it was a cold winter, they would pile up at night to stay warm and they would find a few more dead from suffocation in the morning. Tough times.
But Dad was never bitter about any of it. He said the good thing about it was that they were married at the very worst point in the depression and so all through his farming carreer things progressively got better. He felt lucky in that respect and that he married the daughter of a successful farmer that gave him his start in farming. His own dad was a farmer, but had lost the farm to bank reposession and was a lowly tennant farmer with only the poorest farms available to tennants and they could only get an 80 at that (160 was a common farm size). Starting out and remaining frugal all their lives, even the 80's were an opportunity for them. Having no debt and considerable savings in the bank, they bought a number of farms in the 80's.
So for all the lamenting about the 80's, those positioned correctly, did very well.
John | |
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1920s
