Agriculture Today

I have actually lived in the middle of Parsons my entire life, but as a child I attended grades 2-8 at a school outside of town that was considered a rural school. It was actually created due to the fact that they combined multiple rural one-room schoolhouses in order to build one school for the rural community for ages K-8. My mother was a teacher at this school, so I would travel back and forth with her everyday. All of my friends (there were always more than 30 of us in a class) traveled to and from school on the bus. Some had to ride over an hour just to get to school or get home they had to travel such a distance across the county. While I new I attended a rural school, when I look back today I realize that many of my classmates were rural and their parents might have had cattle, they all had other jobs and didn’t just farm. One was a lawyer, one worked at a farming newspaper, etc. My best friend though lived on a true farm and I spent many, many hours on this farm between kindergarten and high school. I have some GREAT memories from this farm. I remember playing in the hay barn, swimming in a stock pool, and riding in the bucket of the loader. I would always enjoy getting up and doing Saturday morning chores and feeding the new baby calves. During the winter it was nothing to go over there and there was a calf in the back bathroom.

Looking back though I realize that they are one of the few remaining large farms in our area. I would guess that they actually own a large part of the county when it comes to land. My best friend’s dad and his brother ran the farm. My best friend’s brother has now joined the family business.

I remember when I first started going to the farm they had a dairy. They would milk the cows. My best friend didn’t like milk because she always told me where it comes from. J I would guess that about second or third grade they sold the dairy end of the farm though and went to just farming land and cattle.

You definitely do not see as much farmed land as you used to. Most of the people living in the country today just live there and do not farm there. We have a few teachers in our district that teach and keep cattle on the side. Very few small farms are still working today. The larger family farms have bought out most.

In my classroom I have actually had a couple of kids the last few years that often talk about working on the farm, but it is mostly dealing with their cattle, and they have all been from the same family. Their dad has a full time job outside of farming also.

In my area another place that you could check about area farms would be our local Farm Bureau. We also have a state agency in our county that deals a lot with farmers and working on them do their job easier while taking care of the land.