Northern Farmer

I’ve mentioned many times in the past that I hate debt, credit cards, bank debt, whatever. And so I’m practicing what I’m preaching, we have no debt what so ever. Don’t even have a credit card. And will not get one no matter how convenient it is touted up to be. Internet shopping, bah, humbug! Now this has been pounded into my head by my father and that’s the way it’s gonna be for my lifetime. If cash or trading isn’t good enough, well, too bad.

The reason for this unforgiving attitude towards the modern glamour of easy debt is past family disasters. It happened to my grandfather on my fathers side. In the 1920s they had a beautiful farm for their growing family of thirteen children. Good land, good buildings, just the best small farm that a person could imagine. It provided a very fine living for them all. Besides the farm my grandfather owned and operated a threshing business, he owned three threshing machines, steam engines, and anything else that was required for it. All paid for as was the farm. Life was good in the north country. In the late twenties a forty acre piece of land that joined his farm came up for sale for a couple of thousand dollars. Times were good so they decided to buy it. Speaking little english, he got easy financing on the forty, but back then the lenders were pretty shrewd and there were no laws protecting borrowers.In borrowing for the forty he signed over the whole farm as collateral. And my grandfather didn’t even know it. But things were looking like the good times would never end.

Then came the depression, it didn’t hit all at once here, more like a slow, ever growing disease with no cure in sight. Every year things got a little worse. But the payments were made. Finally in 1935, when my dad was a youngster it came to a head. The land was almost paid off. The past few years had been the hottest on record but the small grain crops still produced some crop.My grandfather had over sixty threshing jobs to do at that many farms. Everyone promised to pay when they could, but there was not a dollar to be had out here.No one was able to pay. Grandpa had a big heart and just kept threshing so everyone’s crop got put up. He had a large pen of beautiful butcher hogs that he sent to the stockyards at South St Paul and ended up owing more on trucking than he received for the whole lot of hogs. Come time for the land payment, he couldn’t scrape up anything. The day the payment was due and he couldn’t make it he was told to get off the farm. That fast.

They had nowhere to go but an old widow woman let them rent an old abandoned house for a dollar a month. The only things that they were able to keep was an old truck, their clothes, some kitchen utensils, and an old wood cookstove they had in another building, not the good one in the house. Dad always tells me of the cold ride in the back of the truck driving away from the farm with the soot from the stove blowing in his eyes.He tells of the long winter in the old rickety house, trying to stay warm, no money, little food, little hope.He tells of his mother trying to raise a Christian family, from babies to teens, with nothing to offer them but poverty. He tells of coming up to her when she didn’t see him, and she would be crying. His father had that lost look in his eyes, so little hope that the bottle became a habit for awhile.

I’ll end it at that. They worked hard and somewhat recovered, but never to what they once were. The kids grew up and were able to go on. In fact my dad was the only child that bought a farm, back in the 60s, and started farming again. Sure am thankful that he did. So I hope now when I rant about debt and credit cards and all the other “you deserve it” bull, you’ll know where I’m coming from.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2005 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.