Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="justafarmer, post: 707306, member: 3926"]I remember an afternoon many years ago under the guise of deer hunting my father and I having a discussion of many pointless topics while in the woods sitting on the trunk of a downed tree. My father said, “you know son, things are different now. Used to be a time when a family could take 40 acres and carve out an existence. You just can’t do it now – everything costs too much and 40 acres just will not produce enough income.” My dad of course was reminiscing about the time of his youth – the 1920’s and 1930’s. I thought for a few moments before making my shocking response, “Dad you are wrong – I disagree – of course a family could live off 40 acres now – the same as they did when you were a kid. Granted you would be living in a 4 room shotgun house without electricity using a wood burning stove for cooking and heating. You’d have a chicken coop, a sow with a couple of sucklings, a small barn that housed your mule and milk cow, a couple of fruit trees, a 2-3 acre garden, smokehouse, root cellar and don’t forget about the outhouse. Then you could plant the remaining 30 acres in a cash crop – tobacco or cotton plowing your field using the mule; which also would be hitched to a wagon as transportation to town on Saturday afternoon. Like I said the same way they exsisted on 40 acres when you were a kid.”[/QUOTE]