Quote:
Originally Posted by asphaltgambler
Growing up as a farm kid - most of my contemporaries were cut from the same cloth. Money was the biggest obstacle, our determination and perseverance was our biggest gift.
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Farm kids - a national treasure that is going the way of the 250 acre family farm. There aren't many farm kids on today's 2000 acre corporate farms.
One of the greatest strokes of luck in my life was to be born a farm kid - right up there with being white, male, and born in the USA. I learned to drive our Ford 2N tractor at about age 7 and was raking hay with it when I was 8. By age 10 I was running the baler with our big tractor (with power steering!) while the town kids dad hired were sweating their butts off pitching bales. The best part was that I was part of the team - helping mom and dad support the family. It gave me a sense of importance and a belief that I could do anything I set my mind to. My folks were determined that I would go to college and be the first college educated kid in my family. They told me, "You
are going to college, you just have to figure out how you are going to pay for it." (I
was the first to enter college, but my sister beat me to graduation.)
I don't know how we could replace the character-building experience of growing up working on the family farm, but we need more "farm kids".