I would get to drive things home later that year otherwise it was only in the field that I would get to drive. One of the most critical was drive the grain wagon along side the combine so Uncle Kenny could unload while combining at the same time. I can remember being hollered to keep in line enough that I figured how to do it very quickly. One time I thought I heard whoa and I stopped and got grain dumped on my head before Uncle Kenny could stop the auger. I got hollered at quite severely and was given the tasked to clean up the grain from the ground and pay more attention the next time. Usually I could figure out pretty close to where I needed to be when the combine hopper was nearly full and be there ready to go. I didn’t have a lot of time to clean up the grain but I work hard at it and was just ready for the next dump. This one went better and I think I had figured things out a little bit better. We also combine for neighbors. I think Uncle Kenny liked the idea that I could drive along side and he could dump the grain into my wagon and not stop combining because we always got more acres done and when there was another combine in the field we always stayed ahead. When I would get a full wagon load I would go to the end of the field and unhook the full wagon and hook up to an empty wagon. The WD Allis was a perfect tractor for a young boy as I could use the clutch to shift and still not worry about steering because I also had that hand clutch disengaged. Then I could move in the seat and pull the hand clutch and the tractor would go.
When the end of the combining day would come we still had chores to do. We also hooked all of the full wagons together and take them home sometimes four hooked together. We had a long shed so we would drive the whole group in one door and be ready in the morning to drive out the other end just in case it rained at night. Combining never got started early because of the dew in the morning so we unloaded the wagons after morning chores. When we were able to combine in the morning we would unload those loads over noon eating by the grain auger as we unloaded. This way other than stopping to eat the combine never stopped.
We always had a lot of chores to do. We had beef feeders to feed, we had chickens to feed, we had pigs to feed, and we had fryers to feed. We usually had a couple hundred or more on feed. We had at times three locations for feeders.
In the following years Grandma Larson had hip replacement surgery in
At home for a while either. This is when we went to town on Friday evening and we started to take the wash into the Laundromat right away and then we were taken to Morkens for some canasta playing. Herman and I against Sophie and Grandma. Kenny would have the clothes picked up when he stopped by and we would go right home. The next morning after chores I would have the clothes hanging duty before I could be doing big boy stuff. I usually had to mow the lawn too that day and it was a big lawn. I really started looking forward to the rain storms so that we would have a break. Uncle Kenny bought a C Farmall tractor so I could start cultivating. Cultivating was a slow job and it was hard to keep the corn clean with just one cultivator. When the cultivating started Kenny would set the cultivator and he would watch how it worked and then would go and get the 70 John Deere and start cultivating with that. It didn’t take more than a year and I was driving the 70 and Uncle Kenny had bought a 4020 John Deere. We know could get some serious cultivating done. We had nearly 200 acres of corn to cultivate. We tried to get through the all of the acres three times but sometimes other things got in the way. There was always a battle for what to do after the crops were planting, we would have to clean all of the barns, pick rocks and then cultivate corn, none of which were my favorite things to do especially picking rocks. These projects all had to be done before the first crop of hay was to be cut, raked, and baled. We usually had 100 acres of hay to bale a year. The rest of the farm was divided up into 40-60 acres each of Barley, wheat, flax oats and soybeans.
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