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Agriculture This Week: Farming always evolving

When you have grown up on a farm in the 1960s and ‘70s it is almost beyond belief the changes in farming we see today. 

It was a mixed farm for me, and that meant pigs and grain. 

In my youth I hauled a lot of ground grain to feed the pigs using cleaned five-gallon pails that originally were filled with some weed spray, or another. 

Looking back over some 40-years it seems like it was such a crazy thing, but repurposing the pails was pretty standard. I’m pretty sure potatoes came from the garden to the cellar bin in similar pails. 

Of course I clearly recall Dad taking plugged nozzles off the sprayer, his gloves getting soaked in the process, and then simply blowing out the nozzle with his breath. 

Knowing what we do now it’s a wonder what health problems were caused in a time we didn’t know better, or were reluctant to change. Dad lived to a considerable age, his heart giving out one day, but one wonders. 


Trending Video

These Pigs Keep Breaking Everything

Video: These Pigs Keep Breaking Everything

We found something in bin 12 that no pig farmer ever wants to see. Feed caked up solid in the boot, and when that line is feeding thousands of hogs, you fix it today, not tomorrow. That is just where the day starts. The pigs worked half the gates loose again, so Tork and I are going pen to pen putting them back together. Then it is the barn door repair, rebuilding the wash room, and a walk through a freshly washed barn getting ready for the next group. Pig farming is fixing the same things over and over and keeping the barns running no matter what.