Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters How Come Gunwriters Don't Do Manual Labor

Yeah, rock-picking is often an "entry-level" job!

It's all entry level(until you die....grin).

That is the difference of a hired hand vs a farm/ranch kid, there are no wages for the kid, so $5.00 or $15.00 doesn't matter if you don't get paid...

I ain't that fussy when it comes to free grub, but would've held out for something a tad less chewy?

Hilly Ag lands in much of north central PA, seem to run about 80% rocks and 20% soil. The steeper the ground, the less the soil content.

Sam,

Yep! Though "exit level" may also apply.

The raise mentioned in my earlier post (due to helping a combine operator when his machine got plugged up) was after the first day I worked for your "Uncle Butch" in the summer of 1976 or '77. The next season I was promoted to combine driver, on one of Barney's 14-foot Allison-Chalmers, which could cut at least 2 mph in 30-bushel wheat.

Forgive me. I'm tuckered out and feelin' peckish. ;O)

JB must be drunk.....grin

14' at 2mph....

Great grandpa Barney would chit if saw how the super farmers do it now!

The first year I cut for him we'd done about 300 acres in a week when Butch showed up up with his pair of 24-foot Massey-Fergusons and cut that much in a day....

dubePA,

Please forgive me for a major mistake.

The daughter of one of the guys I worked for then was named Allison.

Actually, she still is!

Yeah, a 30'er will cut about 20 acres an hour. Keep a couple of 'em going with a grain cart and semi's and they can really whack the wheat.

We don't farm enough grain to afford a fleet of high dollar harvest equipment.

Speaking of farming. Late Spring up here, snow on the ground and mud. Gonna be another week or two at best before anyone thinks about seeding. The big farmers are getting a little nervous, more rain on the forecast.

Speaking of Allis-Chalmers combines, am I the only one to call silver duct tape "Gleaner Instant-Weld?"

Sam,

That was back when Butch and Boone were farm equipment dealers, and Butch was custom-cutting from Texas to Alberta to pay for his equipment. I don't believe they made much money at it, but they learned a lot!

I got pretty good at running a big combine, and Butch even had an 18-speed Ford that I could run through gears pretty slickly. Luckily, only two trucks tipped over during those years--neither driven by me.

300 Savage,

I hadn't heard that one before!

Does green duct tape qualify as Deere wrap?

Now I hadn't heard THAT one before . Where I work, one of the faculty is pretty proud of his PhD. One time I mentioned mine...he looked confused...and I went to the pickup and got my clamshell posthole diggers out. He wasn't impressed.

Allison must have been cute to have you remember her this long, I used to go to brandings to meet the rancher's daughters.... Let's see there was .. Oops better forget that one. We were dry land wheat & had about 1000 mother cow operation on the Big Flat 50 miles N. of Harlem. Late 60's early 70's, then went West & worked in the trees for a while. Still have old friends & family in that country where everybody waves. I never did figure out how they knew what I was driving 2 days before I got there though.
MC

I must have had a bad upbringing. I'd be more impressed with your phd than his. (Especially if it was a good commercial type instead of my light duty home-owner's rig.)

I knew I had lived in Kansas City too long when I drove past a small-town implement dealer with a big, red "MF" sign and the first thing I thought of wasn't Massey-Ferguson.

In eastern Kentucky in the early Forties, I delivered papers all over town � on foot � supposedly for $1.00 a day (which I never got!).

In 1945, we got out of school to sucker a bumper crop of tobacco for 60� an hour. Old folks in town bitched about that being "too much money" to be paying teen-agers for simple manual labor.

Don't remember how much I got for forking wheat onto wagons � then later from the wagons into the thresher � but it wasn't much. All that I remember (not all that fondly!) are the humid heat, the dust, the dusty sweat on my glasses, and the saturated shirts.

Later, shoveling coal and milling feed were also hard physical work but seemed worlds easier by comparison.

So, tell us the story of you and the farmer's daughter.