This was one of Uncle Ned’s favorite and amusing stories. The late 30’s to early 50’s, were what I call “The Golden Years” of our farming operation. My Grandfather Raymond, Uncle Ned, and father Terry were alive and all farmed both our farm the other farms they rented. The other farms were Burnham’s, Greeno’s, and Gillespi’s. We always heard they farmed 500 acres, which in those days was a major scale farm operation. It’s also amazing as referred to in an earlier story that they farmed all this land with 2 Farmall “H’s” and a Farmall Super “M”! Since the “H” could pull a 2- bottom plow and the “M” a 3-bottom plow, spring plowing was a major time consuming operation indeed. Being born in 1948 toward the end of the “Golden Years” I can barely remember this time. I have just a few fleeting memories unfortunately.

 

Fortunately, our grandmother Ollie kept a diary of everyday operations throughout this whole time and I have learned a lot about the early farming operation during “The Golden Years” by reading the diary. Actually she called them the “day books” since they were the size of a ledger. During the very busy spring plowing routine they would plow in 2 shifts, all day and all night. Sometimes the “day books” mentioned at Sid Daniels helped with the plowing. The one thing I found curious reading though the “day books” was that other then an occasional mention of Sid Daniels, they rarely if ever had another hired farm hands in those days. I suspect that it was due to the reason that they couldn’t afford to pay anyone since in those days like the present, you couldn’t get rich farming. You did it out of a love for the land and for farming just like these days. I tease Tim that since beef prices are never that good that all the cattle he has are just “for company”. Of course he gets back at me by teasing me that my horses are just “hay burners”.

 

In the post “Golden Years” after 1953 and 1961 when Raymond and our father died, Uncle Ned was left to run the farm until he died in 1969. During the early 1960’s when we were in school all day during the spring plowing season, Uncle Ned would occasionally hire a man to help him with the Spring plowing and fitting. By that time the other farms were no longer rented and 90% of the operation was just confined to our 280 some acres on the home farm. One guy Uncle Ned hired was from Kentucky and his name was Dolly Miller. Hmmmm we always wondered why anyone would name their son Dolly? Maybe they were fans of Dolly Parton and wanted a girl. Be that as it may, Tim, Sue, and I always made fun of his name among ourselves. We always got a kick out of his Kentucky accent. For example he called fencing pliers “Waplahs” (wire pliers). One day Uncle Ned told Dolly to take the tractor and go back to the lane and get the Cultipacker. When Dolly returned he had the spring tooth hooked up behind the tractor. Uncle Ned said, “No, I said get the cultipacker”. Dolly then came back up with the disk! By this time Uncle Ned was getting quite exasperated so he rode down the lane on the tractor with dolly and said. “That’s the cultipacker”! Dolly said in his best Kentucky drawl, OHHH, back home we call that a Dough Roller”! Ever since that time we kids called him “Dolly the dough roller”!