And now it’s only a few mouse clicks away. This thought is tempered by the knowledge that my wife, our two sons, our grandson, and numerous new friends were still off in a future that was unimaginable by the boyhood me. In the photographs, everyone that I knew and loved – my parents, my sister, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cherished neighbors – were all still with us. Then I realized why these old photos have such strong appeal for me. Seeing Grandpa again after all those years caused me to choke up a little. Grandpa passed away in 1978, but here he is, strolling across our farmstead with his dog, Tippy, at his side. It was Grandpa Nelson, wearing his trademark summertime straw hat! Something in the middle of our lawn caught my eye. We tore down our rickety old corncrib many years ago, but the granary is still there, although it now serves as a garden shed. Our barn and silo combo look much the same. I can almost hear the lowing of a Holstein cow from down in the barn and the grunt of a sow greeting her new litter of piglets in the hog house.Ī few more clicks took me across the section to Grandpa and Grandma Nelson’s farm, the place where my wife and I have lived for nearly four decades. As kids, we would play on the lawn during summer evenings as our parents watched from the porch. My parents’ farmhouse – it’s hard to believe ten people were living in there – still has its porch on the east side. But there it is looking exactly as I remembered, crowned by its gothic wooden cupolas, their lightning rods gleaming in the afternoon sun. At 60’ by 60’, it was thought to be humungous when it was new.Ī fire destroyed the barn in 1988. The farm’s majestic old barn, which was constructed by my homesteading ancestors, commands the center of the photo. Up by the chicken coop, a trio of Leghorns scratch out a living. Our 1947 John Deere “A” – which I still have – is about to be mated to its mounted corn picker. In the foreground are three ancient plows, a field drag, our four-row corn planter, and our grain drill. The photo enabled me to recall forgotten intricacies of my boyhood. There’s our farmstead in all of its 1969 glory! It occurred to me that since I was in the neighborhood, photographically speaking, maybe I could find my parents’ farm. Al and Lorraine’s house looks exactly as I remember it. In the foreground is a stack of alfalfa bales I probably helped create. There sits Al’s Farmall “M,” hitched to the ancient New Holland “Super 77” baler and a flatbed hay wagon. Studying the details of the photo, I was able to mentally reconstruct a long-gone life. Then – Bingo! There was Al and Lorraine’s farmstead just as it was 53 years ago! The farmsteads began to look somewhat familiar. “Nope, wrong silo,” I would mutter to myself, or “That barn isn’t in the right spot.” I felt like Sherlock Holmes as I methodically sifted through the photos. I clicked on Vintage Aerial’s link for Brookings County and waded into an ocean of old monochrome aerial farm photographs. It’s difficult to find a particular farm photo based on a street address because our erstwhile rural route and box number system was replaced some years ago by our current E911 numerical addresses. Vintage Aerial has a treasure trove of aerial farm photos that were taken in 1969. Then I Googled “old aerial farm photos” and stumbled onto. But I have zero artistic abilities, so reconstructing a visual version of their farm as it was in the past seemed impossible. I could pretty much recall which building sat where. Markets Analysis Back to Markets Analysis.1945: Forty-two labor-hours were required to produce 100 pounds (2/5 acre) of lint cotton with two mules, a one-row plow, a one-row cultivator, a hand how, and a hand pick.1945: Ten to 14 labor-hours were required to produce 100 bushels (2 acres) of corn with a tractor, 3-bottom plow, 10-foot tandem disk, 4-section harrow, 4-row planters and cultivators, and 2-row picker.1942: The spindle cotton picker was used commercially.1941–1945: Frozen foods were popularized.Additional agricultural developments included: You can also select your favorite tile surface from options like shiny, crackled, raised, matted and textured. One farmer could supply enough food for almost 11 people in the United States and abroad by 1940, and throughout the decade, the average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer was 13,590,466 tons. Our current inventory includes tile types such as plain, mixed, decorative, floral, figural, geometric, textured and shell patterns. During this decade and through 1970, farms experienced a sea change from horses to tractors, including the adoption of a group of technological practices, which broadly characterized the second American agriculture agricultural revolution.
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