My grandparents, Otto and Alma Betke
In a new Agriculture Online poll, farmers express major concern about the ag economy. Uncertain times it is out on the land as well as on Wall Street and Main Street.
The financial meltdown we've all been living through, drawing comparisons to the Great Depression and other worst-ever scenarios, has had me thinking about personal roots and old stories of hard times.
My greatest heroes are my grandparents, Otto and Alma Betke, who farmed through the Depression and the Dust Bowl in Buffalo County, Nebraska. Grandpa once told me what it was like during the Dust Bowl days, one year to have the entire wheat harvest be two sacks of grain. "That's all we took to town," he said, shaking his head.
In the picture above, taken in another tough year, Otto and Alma were pretty proud of their wagon load of corn. Their faces are wind burned, and they look dog tired, but they took the time to pose with an artistic touch, getting their German shepherd to hold an ear of corn in his mouth. Picking corn by hand was always one of the toughest jobs on the farm, I'm told. Here is what the real hard times look like, and the folks took some passing pleasure in their humble harvest.
I don't think the Betkes ever looked to town for a financial bailout. They planted windbreaks, tilled a bigger garden, and expanded their eggs-and-butter business. They faithfully planted their crops until the good times returned.
So when I start worrying about the current financial crisis, I try to remember to take a look over at this picture in my office and remind myself what real hard times look like. The Betkes got through it, and lived long, happy lives. So will we, I suspect.
4 comments:
Otto and Alma sound like good folks! I bet they could give us some tips on how to cut the budget.
There are a number of very good books written about the Great Depression. People should read some of them. Illustrations such as a load of wheat did not pay for a load of lignite coal. If you shipped animals to market you did not receive enough to pay for the transportation. The only salvation was self sufficiency to the maximum. Also our parents often were immigrants from Europe and they knew how to sacrifice. Farmers had food but the urban unemployed had bigger problems.
My Grandpa used to trap skunks for extra money. One morning he caught two of them and asked Granma if she wanted to skin the skunks or pick corn....she chose the skunks!
I'm a 5th generation farmer here in NW Kansas.. We have our first normal fall crop in 6 years. 05,06 we only got 6" of rain fall each year.. The driest year in the 30's was 15".. So been there and done that!
This fall crop,, with the strong markets was going to be my bail out, but the markets fell out of bed before I could harvest. No wonder we can not get the next generation to farm.. sodbust
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