Growing up on the farm used to be a tough proposition. Now with all of the technology that is available, it is much easier to grow up on a farm than it was in the past. Still not easy, though. In the not too distant past, farmers used to be the toughest, smartest, and thriftiest people in the nation. At the present time farmers rely heavily on their machinery to bring in their crops. However you must give some love to the farmers of America, because without them we would be lacking fruits and vegetables to eat. Also they perform all of their work and their crops are worth less and less every year, because of the technological advancements that have been made. It is ironic that the very thing they use to make their jobs easier actually makes them work harder to make the same amount of money. It was a much more straightforward life for farmers in the early days.



In the past farmers would wake up before dawn to start working in the fields to make sure that their crops were the best crops possible. Farmers used to use many different types of hand tools and animals to help them get their job done. Nowadays farmers rely on many different types of machinery to work their crops on the farm. I think that one of the major differences between farmers of old and the new breed of farmers is the ability of farmers to make things work when they have a problem. In the old days a tool would break, or the barn would leak, and the farmer would figure out a way to fix it with the materials that they had at their disposal. Today a farmer will just call a repairman, or take their machinery into the shop to get it fixed. My father-in-law grew up on a farm and he has an uncanny ability to make things worth without spending very much money to do so.

I do not want people to think that I do not have respect for farmers, because I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. However I think that farmers in the old days worked much harder, and had more hard learned skills than the farmers of today. A farm is definitely a hard place to grow up now, but many people died, or were worked to death in the past, so we need to remember the farmers that blazed the trail before all of the technology of today's farm.