Farming and Ranching

Emil Ischy - Gregory S. Brown, Interviewer

When I started farming, the first several years after we married [in 1924], we had to farm with mules and single row equipment, just plow one row at a time. Then, I bought a two-row outfit, after I got going a little. Plowed two rows at a time. Man, we were flying then. When you worked with a single row, you could work all day just as hard as you could and you maybe go from here to that window the width of the field that you'd plowed.

Then, in 1939, I bought my first tractor. It was just a two-row outfit. You could drive that thing all day long and never have to let it rest. When you farmed with a team, you had to let them rest once in a while. They'd get hot and all. Then, during the forties, I bought a four-row tractor, plowed four rows at a time. I was sure flying. Now they're using eight, ten, twelve-row outfits, especially where the land is fit for it. When I first started driving a tractor, gasoline was nine or ten cents a gallon.

Adolph Wolbrueck - Michael D. Keller, Interviewer

We started farming with two-row equipment drawn by four mules. When the crops were up, we had to hoe and weed and disk the corn and cotton. When harvest time came, we would harvest the maize by cutting each head of grain with a knife and throw it on the wagon pulled by two mules. The corn was harvested the same way, only the ears were twisted off of the stalk and thrown on the wagon. The cotton was picked by hand and was put in a long tow sack that we had to pull by having a strap over our shoulder. When the sack was full, it was weighed and then emptied on a wagon. When we had 1500 pounds of cotton, it was hauled to the gin by a pair of mules. This would make a 500-pound bale of lint cotton. Sometimes the mule had to stand hitched to a wagon all day.

Emil Ischy - Gregory S. Brown, Interviewer

In 1928, our friends here in town, two ladies, each had two kids, the wife and I and four colored folks, picked thirty-three bales that fall. Picked it—didn't pull it. About 1400 pounds to a bale, about 60 acres. If we made a half a bale to the acre, in those days, we were flying. Now they make two bales to the acre since they fertilize. We didn't fertilize in those days.

[We did poison.] Dad taken a horse and went horseback and put a stick across the saddle and he had little sacks over each row, two on each side. He'd go down the row, and, of course, the horse would trot, and that would shake those sacks and drop the poison on the cotton stalks. Mainly, in those days, they were bothered with leaf worm more than any other thing. Leaf worm would hit a cotton patch and clean it overnight. Then, in the later years, the boll weevil came into this country.

E. C. "Pete" Bouffard - Bobby Deaton, Interviewer

The boll weevil—he was a rascal. Daddy used a machine, kind of a hand-built machine that would shake the cotton stalks. We'd use one mule and just drive through the fields for weeks on end, every day, and shake the cotton stalks. You do it in the middle of the day when the ground was hot, and get that old boll weevil on the ground and the sun was a hundred degrees, and he couldn't make it back up the cotton stalk. It worked pretty good; better than poison.

Then, for a while there, he had an invention. It was on wheels and it had a shaft running back behind the wheel that would sit right on top of the row, and it had a piece of metal that would turn, kind of like a fan, and take two rows at a time. It'd hit the stalks like that and knock the weevils out. Of course, the square, which is the cotton bloom before it opens to a bloom, is where the boll weevil laid its eggs. The cotton stalk would try to shed it. It would turn yellow, and the stem would get weaker, so if you could shake it just right, it would fall to the ground and then when they got on that hot ground down there, the boll weevil wouldn't hatch. One way of getting rid of them.

Adolph Wolbrueck - Michael D. Keller, Interviewer

We started farming with two-row equipment drawn by four mules. When the crops were up, we had to hoe and weed and disk the corn and cotton. When harvest time came, we would harvest the maize by cutting each head of grain with a knife and throw it on the wagon pulled by two mules. The corn was harvested the same way, only the ears were twisted off of the stalk and thrown on the wagon. The cotton was picked by hand and was put in a long tow sack that we had to pull by having a strap over our shoulder. When the sack was full, it was weighed and then emptied on a wagon. When we had 1500 pounds of cotton, it was hauled to the gin by a pair of mules. This would make a 500-pound bale of lint cotton. Sometimes the mule had to stand hitched to a wagon all day.

Ruth S. Carlson - Christopher D. Caron, Interviewer

Cotton was the cash crop. In the fall of the year, my uncle, Martin Sandburg, would take the wagon and the team and go into Austin and get the colored family and move them out to live down in the little house in the pasture. They would come out and pick the cotton and stay maybe three weeks, until the crop was gathered. Then he would take them back to Austin. We had the same family come out from Austin every year for the longest. Old Aunt Carrie was the mother and she'd come up and get me; I'd cry and cry at night sometimes when I was real little, and she'd hear me and she'd come up and get me. I had colic and she'd take me and pat me and love me, and I'd go to sleep. She was a wonderful old person.

They came and picked cotton and stayed, and brought their whole family and cooked outside. They had a big family. Maybe twelve, fifteen would come out with them. They were just real good friends to you and you were good friends to them. A couple of years ago one of the men that used to pick cotton came by to see me. He was still in Austin and he came up to visit with me.

I remember one night in particular, my aunt was here, and she was playing the piano. They heard it, and they came up and stood outside the window and started singing the hymns that she was playing.

Later on, we had a Latin-American family that lived on the place and helped us some. They had one son and he was about the age that my brother was, and we taught him how to use a knife and fork, taught him how to write his name. He'd come up at night and sit with us, and we'd read to him and finally taught him to read just a little bit.

Beulah Yearwood - Irvine Frank Leffingwell, Interviewer

When we used to thrash the grain, we didn't have combines. You had a thrashing machine. The neighbors would come to help. They came and helped you, and then when they thrashed, you went to help them. The menfolks traded back and forth. That's the way they did. The wagons and teams went to the fields [to get the grain] that had been cut with a reaper. One person would stay on the wagon and take the bundles of grain, and the others would pitch them up there. Then they'd haul them to the thrashing machine. Then, they fed the grain into the thrasher, and it took the grain from the stems. That was a big day.

You'd have twenty, twenty-five men come to help. We'd fix dinner for them. If you want to hear something that sounded good, all those men sitting around the table stir-ring that iced tea. We had meat and beans and potatoes, bread, and usually cake and iced tea. Then, in the after-noon, we'd hardly get things washed up in the kitchen, and we took the food to them in the afternoon— sandwiches, cookies and lemonade, tea, or something like that.

[Now] a man comes in with his combine and has his truck, usually, and he combines the wheat or oats, and takes it all to the place where it's sold, and that's it. The owner doesn't have much to do about it. They do it all, and then he pays them for the combining and hauling. If you want to save some of the grain, you either hire him to bring it to your barn, or you put the trailers out there, and he'll put a certain amount in it for you, and get it unloaded into your barn. They combine corn quite a bit nowadays. Used to, it was pulled by hand. They have corn pullers that pull the ear off the stalk, or they combine it and it comes out as shelled corn.