Sometimes even farmers get bored. Farmers like to “play” too. Some of our best hockey players started on a frozen pond playing with a stick that was made from an alder with just the right crook at the bottom and a puck made from a piece cut of another bigger alder, or maybe just a frozen horse ball! Chamberlin, Richardson, Murray, Ryan, and others that your grandpa can tell you about didn’t start on artificial ice.
My neighbour used to turn some very good baseball bats on his little lathe. Some farmers drove “barn built” stock cars that raced on dirt tracks. I once overheard some farmers talking while having dinner at a farm show in Kentucky. They mentioned a very famous NASCAR driver and said, “It’s a good thing that he can drive, because he wasn’t a very good farmer!”
Some farmers played around with tractor pulling on the weekends. Many old thirty horsepower tractors that were built in the 50s ended up with their rear ends used for a modified tractor powered by more than a thousand horsepower! Some of those old tractors used whale oil to lubricate the rear differential and continued to use it in the tractor pull! Whale oil was as black as molasses and very stinky and impossible to wash off your hands. When those whales began to become extinct, a new lubricant had to be found, but it took years to come up with a better oil.
During the 70s, a “limited slip” rear end became popular in half-ton trucks before four-by-fours became popular. Sometimes after driving 50 or more miles without stopping, the rear end would lock up, making it almost impossible to turn. Sometime in the truck’s past history, the oil had been changed in the rear end and the mechanic had forgotten (or didn’t know) to add a little sperm whale oil which prevented the annoying lock-up when the rear end got too warm! It only took an ounce of whale oil added to the differential to make it work like new again!
It was those experimenting farmers that pioneered using turbo-chargers, water injection, inter-cooling, after-cooling, and special oils and oil additives that withstood extreme pressure and heat in those motors that put out more than 10 times the horsepower that the engine had been designed to produce.
Both oil companies and engineers watch those power sports very closely as much more severe testing is done on the tracks than at the factories where the engineers work!
It often depends on who is driving the technology. About 60 years ago, much of the research carried out on crops and cropping practices was handed over from farmers, government and universities to private companies. Because whoever pays the bill usually wants some profit, it soon became clear that higher yields, less weeds without cultivation, and less worry about crop planning became more important to those pharmaceutical companies than the nutrient density of the grains or crops being produced, or even the residual poison left on the crops or in the fields.
Nutritionists that monitor the nutritional value of grains, vegetables, fruits, and other crops have noticed that the nutrient density of many crops has reduced even though crop yields have increased.
The chemical residue left on grains and other crops, or in the field, is measured in PPM (parts per million) and different countries have different maximum limits. Some countries have zero limits. North America has the highest limit, and Europe and other countries vary from crop to crop and country to country. Some people seem to have different personal limits that they can live with. Some people are very allergic to different drugs like penicillin while others are not. Some people can smoke or chew tobacco all their life and die a normal death at 99, while others that smoke, chew, or vape will die at a young age. I seem to be very sensitive to any glyphosate residue (to the point of having a sick stomach after using just a little sugar made from corn or sugar beet) and I keep a mental list of a hundred foods that might contain any residue. If you have never used antacids or had any digestive tract problems or any indication of cancer, you are probably okay. We too often depend on the pharmacist or our doctor to give us something to get rid of a problem that would not be there if we just ate or drank right. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have those problems!
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
