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A Life On The Farm
RANDY P. KROTZ
ST. LOUIS, MO.
A phrase I often use these days is, “my father sleeps in the very room in which he was born in our farmhouse in 1931.” The reaction I receive is consistent, and people are genuinely astounded. My siblings and I have hours of audio and video of my dad. He enjoys discussing his ancestry, his early memories and life on the farm, where he received his education, and his only separation from the family being his four years serving in the U.S. Air Force. Livestock was always a significant part of our farm in North Central Kansas, but once he begins to talk, often-times, it comes back to the land and equipment used to work it. Once I left Kansas to start my career, I heard a term that I was not previously familiar with – iron. Farmers love steel, no matter how it serves the land. Tractor, planter, field cultivator, etc., all this steel seems to have a special place in the heart of someone that prospers from the earth.
My dad and I talk a lot about the current political landscape, the coronavirus pandemic, his view of the organic industry, ‘real meat vs. fake meat,’ and today’s visit even included a discussion about the rioting across the country. My home is in St. Louis, so the Walmart and Target stores closing early today was news worth mentioning. Though suddenly, and without reason, the conversation turned back to farm equipment. Parts of northern Kansas are in drought conditions this spring and have been throughout the winter. Some of the winter wheat planted on our land will not be making it to maturity. Regardless, we began to talk about harvest and, as usual, drifted off into to olden days.
In 1956, right after my dad returned to the farm from his time in the Air Force, his dad and he purchased a McCormick 141 Combine. He remembers self-propelled combines in the area before he left in ’52, but not many. Now they were showing up on most farms or were shared between relatives or neighbors. The massive 14’ platform (header), made it a wheat, corn, and sorghum eating machine. That same combine remained on our farm for over 15 years and is the first one I remember in the late 1960s. I ran it several times at a young age, with no cab, usually harvesting sorghum or oats, the itchiest crops on our farm. A fact my older brother likely carefully planned.
As long as I can remember, there have been wheat threshing events in my area in June and early July. My father, a calm and quiet man, has always been eager to tell us his earliest memories of harvesting wheat. The thresher itself would be pulled from farm to farm by a large steam tractor, placed in the field, and immediately leveled. In the days before the crews’ arrival, a grain binder had bundled the wheat, and soon after, the farmer, or his young labor, would gather those bundles into shocks. Also, at an incredibly young age, my dad led the hayracks around the field behind a team of horses as others placed them on the wagon. He remembers doing this for several years, probably in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s. It is one of his stories that I have asked him to tell over and over again.
The changes dad has witnessed in his lifetime are immeasurable and often cause me to reflect on the changes in agriculture. The transformations that occurred in the equipment industry since the ’50s are challenging to track even with current resources. Ford-Massey-Harris-Ferguson is a complex story in itself and ripe with litigation. Remember some of the other brands, including Oliver, which became White, Minneapolis-Moline, Allis-Chalmers, Case, IH, Farmall, and the list goes on and on. Are there four major companies today, or three?
From purchasing a new Ferguson TO-20 in 1949 along with a two-bottom plow and front-end loader, dad experienced the first generation of hydraulics on the farm. Most of his time in the field after that he spent on an Oliver 88 which could pull a three-bottom plow, then in the late sixties, he moved to John Deere with a 3020. He recalls the price as just over 6000 dollars. A 4020 was a least 2000 more. Consider for a moment the electronics, the power, the comfort, and the acreage that can be cultivated or harvested in an hour today versus 75 years ago, when he first started working in the field.
A couple of months back, several weeks into the pandemic, my family had a video call, and thanks to his daughter, he “Zoomed” in with the rest of us. At the end of a two-hour conversation, my dad was asked what he thought of seeing his kids and grandkids live on the computer screen. He said, “amazing, simply amazing.” He chuckled at our final comments that no one had ever experienced more change in a lifetime, except his grandfather, who invented the wheel and maybe fire. ∆
RANDY P. KROTZ: CEO – AgWiki
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