Life of a Farmer

Life as a farmer is busy and often exhausting. Today’s farming life is not as tough as years ago, but there are still long hours and hard work involved. Farmers get up early in the morning and work late at night. It was estimated years ago, that 90 out of 100 Americans, were considered farmers. Today, it is much less; only 2 out of 100 are farmers.

A farm in the 1830’s consisted of only about 80 acres. That was about all that a farmer could handle. As years went by, farms became larger, especially as more machinery was invented. The machines were first pulled by horses, followed by tractors. During the 1900’s, farms grew larger and farmers began raising different crops. They grew such crops as corn, oats, wheat and barley. They also began to raise more dairy cow and beef cattle plus chickens, sheep, pigs and some mules and horses. Women helped their families as best they could by growing many things in their gardens such as potatoes, lettuce, radishes, carrots, beans, pumpkins and other vegetables. They took care of the chickens, collected and sold eggs and butchered the chickens when necessary.

As machinery became bigger and better, the farmer had to be more diverse in all aspects of farming. The farms became larger with more acres. Instead of hundreds of acres, the farms became thousands of acres. Now days, it doesn't take as many people to harvest the crops, but the hours are still just as long.