There wasn’t any big time farming around Myrick’s Mill. Most were small fields and most owners in the community farmed less than 100 acres. Willie and I decided that we’d try our hand at farming using the horse and plow. We had no nostalgic notions. We harrowed the ground with our small B model Farmall tractor; but used the horse drawn planter because it was the only planter that we had.

Daddy always had a bunch of cows and pasture for grazing; but, they were constantly breaking down the sorry fences and generally interfering with my preferred hunting and fishing time. I grew to hate fooling with cows and swore when I got older that I’d never claim any of the cows for my own. I never did and still don’t and won’t. Instead, I chose to raise a few hogs. Willie Boyd and I shared the work, building fences, pens, feeding them and did all with intentions of sharing the profits. Maybe we made a little money, but I honestly don’t remember it if we did. Probably, more importantly, we had a good time doing it. Remembering it as a pleasure suggests that we must have made at least some pocket change. Willie, tragically, was killed with an accidental self inflicted gunshot while squirrel hunting while we were both youths. He was reportedly pulling the rifle, barrel first, from behind the seat of a truck when the loaded rifle discharged striking him in the head. Otherwise, I’d just give him a call and see if he remembered any profits from the venture.

We fed the pigs old bread and other bakery goods from the Merita Bakery depot where bread trucks collected returned out of date goods. In addition, we supplemented their feed with mineral feeds, and corn. We thought that we’d reached the point where we needed to grow some of our own corn. So we planted about 20 acres, working hard to harrow, fertilize according to recommendations, and otherwise doing all that the farming experts said was the thing to do. Twenty acres might not sound like much of a task today, but following a mule or a horse pulling a planter over 20 acres was a real job. We didn’t care. We were proud of it and enjoyed it. We learned. We learned of the pride of claiming a project of our own. We had always played together, and together fixed Daddy’s darn sorry cow fences. We learned why farmers always ride around their fields after planting, admiring their work in anticipation of seeing the first sprouts appear. We also learned about disappointment and the value of knowing about equipment before, not after, you start mess’in with it.

We finished the planting and as other farmers, checked our field frequently. We probably talked about the amount of corn that we might make and the money that we would make after paying Daddy the loan for seed and fertilizer. We probably talked about feeding our hogs our own home grown corn, instead of buying it from others and the fact that we should now make more money because of growing our own corn.

The rains came and the corn began to sprout. something was wrong? Every little sprout was so evenly spaced, but about 5 feet apart. What happened to the stalks in between? Far more sprouts should be in each row. We scratched between the stalks looking for seed that didn’t germinate. There was not other scratching in the row so no animal dug it up. We just couldn’t solve this puzzle. Expert help was needed to solve the problem, so we went to the store. Mamma was there that day, so she kept the store while Daddy returned with us to the field.

Standing in the field, Daddy took a look and asked a serious question. “What kind of plate did you use to plant that corn”? Willie and I looked at each other, probably thinking the same thoughts; “what plate? What do you mean by, plate?” Silently we must have mused the same thoughts; “We used the whole planter just as it came from the barn.” Then Willie said, “Mr. Willie C, We didn’t do anything to the planter. We just used it like it was”. Our answer must have been a clue that we didn’t know what we were doing.

Me, Willie and Daddy went to the barn to take a look at the planter. Daddy flipped open the lid on the planter, pointed inside the planter and asked, “Is this what you used to plant that corn with”? Yes, sir! We were afraid to say much more for fear that we had unknowingly torn up the planter or something equally awful. Something was equally awful, but we hadn’t torn up anything. We had used a watermelon plate to plant corn! The watermelon plate carefully and precisely drops a grain of seed about every 5 feet………spacing too far apart to make a crop of corn. You see, the round disc or plates in each compartment of the planter with little cups around the edge came in various sizes. A plate with a lot of little cups planted a lot of grain close together while another plate had fewer cups to pick up the grain from the hopper and drop it to the ground. There were corn plates, watermelon plates, and other plates for each crop being planted. We had messed up royally.

I can’t speak for Willie, but I learned something else that day. “Human blunders, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness.”(A.J.P. Taylor)

My future lay in something other than farming! I decided to be a forester and grow trees. Tree planters don’t have plates in them.

©2003 - William C. Humphries, Jr.