I discussed before my grandfather's gardens around the house that totaled about an acre.  He also rented 40 acres from Mrs. Weir (of the family that Founded Weir City, Kansas).  There was a 10 -15 acre hay field (with assorted sink holes) and several smaller 1-2 acre fields.  We would use my grandpa's tractor,a 1935 John Deere, to do a lot of work with.  It was not the easiest thing to get started.  It had a wheel you can see at the bottom of the driver's left leg in the picture to the left, over a foot in diameter.  You had to spin the wheel to turn over the engine to get it started.  Not easy at any time, but especially hard in cool mornings where moisture would condense on it.  It would have been a lot easier if my grandfather had used starting fluid (Ether) but it cost $$ and that was out of the question.....I'm not sure if it were even available back in the early to mid 60's. The implements that we used were left over from the two horse or mule team days, back in the 20's and 30's for most farmers.  Although tractors were available, they were too expensive for most farmers.  To cut the hay, we used a pull type sickle mower.  The cutting unit it pointing upward in the picture to the right and held by a small metal bar.  When you wanted to mow, you would let the arm down and it would actually glide along on the ground and clip the hay about 2" above the ground.  My grandfather kept some extra cutters for the mower in the garage at the house, when one would break because it hit a rock or piece of metal, he would take the rivets out of it and sharpen a new cutter and re-attach it with new rivets.  He would spend half a day sharpening the entire cutter assembly before the first time he used it each year.  After the first summer with him, Roger and I got to do the sharpening for the next year.

     After the hay was cut, it was allowed to dry over night and the next day we would put it in rows with a sulky rake being pulled behind the tractor. You would put the metal tines down to glide along the ground and roll the hay up in them and then about every 40 or 50 feet, you would use the handle releases to lift the tines up and dump the hay in a roll about 1-2 feet in diameter.  You then had to quickly put the tines back down to start gathering more hay. Then dump it about 40-50 feet away.  After the field had been raked and had all the rows striping the field, you would travel up the row, picking up the hay in each row and dumping it again.  This would put the hay into piles, which we would go back later to pitch up on the back of the flat bed truck my grandpa had and then haul it over by one of the ponds where he had a small fenced in area, and build a hay stack.  It only cost about a penny a bail to have someone come in and custom bale the field, but my grandfather wouldn't spend that money either.  I may still be able to build a haystack that would shed water when it rains.  Don't want to do it again though.

      I don't think that his tightness was a matter of stubbornness as much as it was, he was poor.  He an my grandmother probably only got $40 or $50 a month from social security and with the taxes and utilities on the house in town and what groceries they had to purchase, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, corn meal, and a few other staples and well as gas for the truck and tractor and some oil, etc, things were pretty tight most of the time.  Because of the acre or larger gardens and his always having chickens, guinea fowl (not for eating, but a burglar alarm for coons of coyotes that might want to eat the chickens), pigs and cows, there was always plenty to eat.  We provided our own entertainment, largely with exploring the surrounding areas of strip pit dumps and woods and fields.    The large areas of the vegetable gardens were prepared with the tractor as well.  There was a 2 bottom plow that we used first, this turned over about a foot of dirt about 18 inches wide (altogether).
The next thing we would do would be to run the spring toothed harrow over the plowed ground, this was to break up the clumps of sod.  This sort of leveled out the plowed ground but still left a lot of big clumps of soil to be dealt with before planting could take place.  At this point we would have to use the disc unit to cut up the soil and especially the large chunks. After the disc was pulled around the plowed ground several times, solid was pretty close to planting condition.  Sometimes on some of the harder ground, we would have to weigh the disc down with rocks or cinder blocks when we could find them to break up to sod easier.  After the planting was done in the field (not the garden) with the two row planter, which you had to sit on and raise and lower the planting head at the start and end of each row to be planted.  You would think that just sitting around and raising and lowering the heads would be a piece of cake job for you, a strapping teenager; it actually was hard work with all the jostling and no suspension on the equipment and the dust being raised up by the tractor as it made its way through the field. A bandanna worn like a holdup bandit was pretty much the uniform of the day, along with a straw hat.  We planted mostly sorghum used to feed the cattle.  After the plants came up we would have to go back periodically with the cultivator to clean the weeds out of the rows of crop.  This was another instrument to ride behind the tractor on, and get all the dust and heat and jostling your innards about.  You can see there is no suspension on the metal seat.  This way of farming was the "easy" way for my grandfather.  He used to do it while being pulled by his two horse team back in the 30's.  It had to be even harder, because you had to control the team of horses as well a control the machine you were riding at the same time.  This was when the "Gee and Haw" came in as voice commands for the teams on whether to go left or right.  That let the farmer work his hands on the equipment and not the reins of the horses.   I guess we really had it easier than my grandfather, we didn't realize it then, we thought he was just into torturing  his grandsons.  I'm actually thankful he taught us a much harder way that was currently available.  We got a feel for late 19th century and early 20th century farm equipment and technology.