Wednesday, June 29,1977
University Daily Kansan
3
HE KEEPS ON...
RESENTS
IER
S
AM
IRE
GHT
After 50 years of farming, Clyde Mills waits again for the right conditions to start on his crops
Gerham-Wheat farmers in this small rural community 18 miles east of Hays were waiting Saturday for fields to dry from the rain, and some of their crops resumed. The rain in the last two weeks has prolonged this year's harvest, arousing farmers' impatience to get their crops in on time.
One farmer, Clyde Mills, has learned to overcome that impatience. After more than 50 years of harvesting wheat, his patience is tempered by time and the power of nature.
Mills, who is 82 and continues to farm up to 350 acres of his 909-acre farm each year, said he never counted on the reppings of a farmer in Iowa. He has more than the weather to contend with.
The machinery he uses to harvest his crops isn't new. However, he owns a 1952 combine he calls new, and he also considers his red 1950 wheat truck new, compared with another truck manufactured in 1936.
Mills said he didn't know why the combine and trucks kent running.
"They just keep on going," he said. He admitted that they required a "lot of effort."
Besides the age of his machinery, Mills also has to deal with his deafness, hich forces him to depend almost entirely on his hearing. Would he be whether a machine is running properly?
Millas constantly glances at the combine, checking for broken parts, as he guides it down.
"You don't have to hear to make them run." he said.
Mills, a short man of slight build, said he had lived on the farm since his father bought it in 1896, except for a year's service with the company. He now works daily time working as a carpenter in Florida.
That's where he married his wife, Marian, whom he calls "Jack." He said fondly, that she had probably hauled more wheat than any other woman in the state.
With nothing to do until the fields dried, Mills reminisced about his years spent farming. With a still sharp memory, he was able to recall good and bad years for crops, the number of bushels an acre raised each year and the corresponding prices of wheat.
"The thirties were the dry years." Mills said. He said that 1911, 1913 and 1917 were
"It never rained." he explained.
"Outside of that, from 1932 to 41," you might say every year was a failure," he said. "I know we cut wheats that made two pounds per head, and prices were around 25 cents a bushel."
Mills said that during the Depression, he supported 10 people and had to mortgage all but the quarter section of land his house sits on. He paid off almost all his outstanding debts.
"Before the days of self-proplied combines," Mills said, "we cut the wheat with leader's card. We carve the wheat straw and all, up into a box. Then we drove to a stack and pitched the wheat out. And while we were doing that, another box was getting filled
he said a thrashing machine went around to each farm to separate the grain from the crop.
"The price of wheat varied just like it
was before," he said. "It just hardy ever,
got as high as a dollar.
Mills said his father bought her first custom
wheels, and she was nice, but not
anything they rushed to buy.
A year later, he bought his first tractor.
a year later, he bought his first tractor.
"It was pretty good," he said. "By running it day and night, you could get a lot more done than a team of horses."
"We got up about five, and the first thing was to go down to the pasture to get the horses and cows," he said. "Then we d feed and harness the horses before breakfast."
Before the days of mechanized farming, there was much more work, Mills said.
*We usually use four or five b-horse teams for plowing and finished about 25 hours.
Mills said he didn't know what could be done to alleviate oversupplies of wheat besides implementing an acreage allotment program.
Mills puts most of the blame for low wheat prices on farmers themselves.
"The farmers won't control it, voluntarily. We are an independent- not like labor union people."
"Most farmers, right now, have every acre in wheat," he said.
Mills has his own thoughts on the subject of government intervention into the farm industry.
In '1973 and '74, we had oceans of wheat," he recalled. "We had shortages, so I went the embrarker in the air."
"If there was a chance of us running out of wheat, may be it would be all right to put an embargo on. But that wasn't the case when (President) Ford did it."
"He wanted to keep the price down so people would have cheap bread," Mills continued. "But that didn't make a penny-a-
loaf difference in the price of bread because three cents more of wheat in a load of bread than of wheat in a load of bread.
"It's the processors and retailers—they all get a cut."
The high rate of indebtedness among Kansas farmers occurred partly because of the favorable wheat prices in 1973, Mills said. Many farmers, thinking that wheat prices would always be about $a buad, money in new, expensive machinery.
"But I wasn't gambling on prices staying so high," he said.
story by Bob Godfrey
photos by Marianne Maurin
Mills thinks that his 1936 truck runs just as well as his relatively new 1950 wheat truck
With a constant eye on the sky, Mills knows what to expect from the weather.
Farming has been all his life
Mills plans to keep on going as long as he is able