Scott City Musings: Farm kids

One of the benefits of growing up in a small community like I did was the school system. I attended a one-room school from kindergarten through 8th grade and then on to a high school with a total of 52 students in the four grades. By being small, there weren’t many elective classes so most everyone took the same classes. One that I am so thankful for was taught by Mr. Helmer which covered bookkeeping, some accounting and typing. Awesome class. Another class was shop. Most of the girls took home economics which included cooking and sewing. Fast forward to today and most schools don’t offer shop or home economics.

Recently I was watching a news program when they brought up the fact that back 20 or 30 or 40 years ago employers were looking for farm kids or kids who had been raised on a farm. The story brought out that farm kids most likely knew how to use an electric welder or hand tools or even had rudimentary knowledge of carpentry skills. Farm kids had been around tractors and equipment of almost every description. They had possibly been around cattle, sheep, goats, chickens or even turkeys. The news piece also said that farm kids most likely had chores, such as feeding the animals or even gathering the eggs. They grew up with responsibilities.

They were totally correct in their news piece. I grew up knowing how to use an electric welder and an acetylene torch. From the time we were pretty young, we were helping Dad in the hay field driving the International C, or the Cub. We learned how to fix a fence and put in a corner post or a dead man. We helped Dad pull the pump rods and install new leathers so the windmills would pump water. We learned how to pull a calf if the cow couldn’t have it. We learned how to recognize a sick calf and even help give it medicine in the form of pills or shots. Every year, Mick and I helped Mom and Dad butcher a Jersey steer or a couple of hogs. We learned how to go from catching a young chicken to sitting down to a piece of fried chicken.

Reading on in the article, farm kids or kids raised in the country are getting harder and harder to find. I grew up on a ranch, which raised mostly cattle rather than growing grain like a farmer. Both our boys went back to Nebraska and helped my brother on his ranch. Both boys know farm life, but our grandkids' experience with farm life is limited to helping Marge and I bottle-feed calves and garden. The likelihood back 50 to 100 years ago was that most every kid had some type of farm background. That is pretty much over.

So do businesses today need farm kids, kids who can use an electric welder, drive a tractor, milk a cow or grow a garden? It would seem to me that the hands-on job market would benefit from hiring kids or youth who are handy with tools or driving equipment. Youth who are considering taking classes at the local Vocational Education School would be in this category. But many businesses today need highly trained and educated individuals who have focused on computer technology and such. This is an area I am totally lost in.

But what caught my interest was the work ethic of the farm kids or country kids. From an early age, they had been raised learning how to work and finish a task. They were given certain “daily chores”, which they were to complete, such as milking a cow, feeding the calves, slopping the hogs, gathering the eggs and on and on. Most of the time this meant getting up early and doing their chores before breakfast and school. I can’t remember a single time of sleeping in!

Maybe the most valuable byproduct of farm life was the work ethic. Raising kids who knew how to work regardless of what type of work it was!

Just me,

Rennie

Phillips began life as a cowboy, then husband and father, carpenter, a minister, gardener and writer. He may be reached at phillipsrb@hotmail.com.