Did you know?

The labour force of the farming industry has dropped so much. In the United States, it's amazing how few farmers there are left. "Total population: 3,929,214; farmers 90% of labor force.a" This is in 1830a. 90% is pretty high for agriculture, but back then, a lot of people had to grow their own food. In 1840, the population of the United States was 17,069,453 and the percentage of those were farmers was 69%a, so it has dropped dramatically in a short 10 years.
The farmer's are given more work to provide food for more people. In 1850, the population was 23,191,786 and the labour of the farming industry has dropped to 65%a. Not as dramatic as the decade of 1830 to 1840. Jumping to 1900, the United States population has grown to 75,994,266 and the percentage of those that are farmers was 38%a. In addition to that, referring to my source, the average number of acres owned by these farmers go down as the years go by!
Imagine being in 1900, with 147 acres, having to provide food for the other 62% of the population! You would think once the number of farmers go down, the remaining farmers get more land to pick up the slack! But once we get to 1910, the farmers are beginning to gain more land to be able to plant more food and keep feeding the millions of people in the United Statesa.
Jumping again to 1950, the United States population is at 151,132,000 the percentage of those who are farmers has dropped to 12.2%a! That's 18,438,104 people farming, it's still alot of people farming, but they do have alot more work and land now to use for crops.
Finally, jumping to 1990 to 2000, the United States population is at 261,423,000. The farming population is at its lowest, which is 2,987,552a! That's 2.6% of the population!
In my opinion, people have forgotten what farms do, and how much we provide for food. Depending on what our farms are on, we still grow or raising the basic needs of life. Either it's grain, barley, corn, or cattle, chicken, pigs, even milk, cream, and cheese. Without farms, there is nothing. I don't think people realize that.

In Canada, in the last century, 40% of the workforce was in farming. Currently, it's under 2%b!
Sure we enjoy the profits, but from what I know, the farms in our area are struggling to meet the demands of consumers and at the same time grow our own food to feed our livestock. Which is why there should be more farms, so the demands of consumers can be more easily met.


Sources:
a  http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
b  http://www.guidetobceconomy.org/major_industries/agriculture.htm

The farm I love

I am posting a few photos for those who do not know much about farming equipment and farms, and those who like looking at other people's farms. I am including our current projects, such as our house. Also, I am including a few photos of what we did today.

First, those who do not know what a combine is, depends on what kind of combine we're talking about, there is the Conventional combine, Sperry New Holland, International Harvester, White, and  Allis Chambers. There is also the Western Roto Thresh, but they are not producing that combine anymore.

They are all similar on design on the outside, but the machine on the inside are completely different. What a combine basically does is takes the stalks of grain, runs it through a few process, and in the end the grain seeds are seperated from the stem, creating straw.

We own a Conventional combine.

And when we unload the grain into a truck, we dump it in this long yellow pole called an auger. It has a what it is called is an auger drill. It's inside the cover that carries the grain up so it can get dumped into the grain container.

This next machine is what we call a round baler. It picks up hay that has been cut and left in rows on the field, and put them into rounds of hay.

Bales of hay.

Next up are our rows of silage. Silage is basically chopped up hay when it's freshly cut. The white plastic is to cover it and keep it fresh. Unfortunately, it's like a plastic bag, once a hole forms, the seal is broke and air gets in, and some of the hay goes bad.

Our second row of silage.

This is what we were doing today. Corn silage. We run the tractors over the corn silage to condense it, so we can fit more silage in a smaller area, then we cover it with the white plastic to keep it fresh.

The people we hired to do our corn silage were a huge help, they didn't quite finish today, but they got most of it done. The truck drives along the corn combine to make things more efficient and faster.

This is our dairy cow barn. It currently holds around 90 milking cows, we have approximately 20 dry cows in a pen away from the barn. Dry cows are cows that are expecting a baby calf right away. Once the cow has her baby, we move the cow into this barn to milk her.

These calves were born in approximately the last 2 months. We can hardly keep up with the number of calves being born. We are actually in the process of expanding our farm.

This is our current project on the farm. This is the back view of our house. We are expecting the house to be done by mid-April. The windows and doors have already arrived, but we're waiting for the guys to come and install them. Next will be the siding. It is about double the size of the house we are living in, so we're all pretty excited for that.

This is the front view of our house.

I'm hoping to post some more pictures of the farm, there's alot more to see!

Getting our Harvest In

My dad and I tested the moisture of two different fields. Most farmers have special equipment that measures the level of moisture, and ideally, we want the level of moisture be to between 14 and 16%. Such a small range, but that's how it is. Before yesterday, I could drive anything but the combine, then my dad taught me to drive it. We really had no one else to do it, everybody else was doing something in the field. My grandpa was round baling, my brother was hauling grain, my dad was working on the house that we're building, and our hired help was milking the cows, so there was a lot going on. Now there is not one thing I don't know how to drive. I'm pretty proud of myself! The weather is looking pretty nice today, nice and sunny! Perfect weather to get a lot done. Unfortunately, I can't work in the field until around 6 tonight, since I have school this afternoon, I sure do wish I could skip school so I could help my dad get some more of the harvest in. Today, we are also harvesting the corn, so we had to hire some people with the right equipment to do that for us.