SEGMENT: FARMING METHODS, ENVIRONMENT, & CHILDHOOD ACTIVITIES

Ray Ackerman>ISM Interviews A-L>ISM Interviews A-L, Segment 2

SEGMENT: FARMING METHODS, ENVIRONMENT, & CHILDHOOD ACTIVITIES,

duration 10:50
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FARMING METHODS
Two-three years of corn, then wheat or oats. Plant clover for a few years, which would build the soil back up, then go back to corn. Fertilizer was manure from the cows. Would harvest the seeds of clover in the fields.
ENVIRONMENT
Talks about how drought affected the crops, along with temperatures hitting past 100 degrees for several straight days. Had a very cold winter. Hailstorms were a problem. It was hard to deal with crops especially since it was after the Depression. Talks about grasshoppers in the fields and what they did to get rid of them. Land is tiled, used to be a marshland.
CHILDHOOD WORK
One job was to drive the horses to pull up the hay.
CHILDHOOD ACTIVITIES
Had a bluegrass pasture that was good for playing baseball. Would have games on the weekends. The pasture got flooded during the winter and had an ice rink all winter & would play hockey.