Riding the Cultivator Horse

During the summer of 1921, we boys had many experiences working on the Powell farm. We had ten or twelve acres of potatoes. It seemed to me, we were always working in the potatoes. Dad was constantly cultivating the potatoes. It was my job to ride the cultivator horse. Dad held the walking cultivator. I had to be on the job all day long, wide awake, guiding Old Ted or Nig, the horses, whichever one we happened to be using, guiding him straight as I possibly could up and down each row of spuds. My rear end got so sore until it toughened. Sometimes, I could hardly set down. Once in a while, Andy and Dell would ride the cultivator horse, but dad said I was the lightest, and this would make it easier on the horse.

Then, after I and the horse were well broken into the job, and we both knew what we were doing, dad would let Dell and Andy spell him on the cultivator. Dad was very strict. If I got careless and let the horse get too close to either side of the rows of potatoes, then the cultivator would pull up the potato plants, and we would have to answer to dad. So I would try my best not to let it happen, but once in a great while, it did happen. Then, whoever was a holding the cultivator would holler out, “Hey you, wake up sleepy head,” and I would jerk myself back to reality.

That fall, Dad had about fifteen big boys and girls come each day to the farm to pick up spuds. He kept a couple or three wagon teams busy hauling the potatoes, sacked, to town where dad had a man dump the spuds in a bin in a long potato cellar for the winter. Dad was depending on cash from his potato crop to carry us through the next year, plus to make the payment on the new home in town he bought for his family.

One of dad’s main purposes in leaving the coal mine at Sunnyside and getting us on the farm was to teach his boys to work, and work we did! Especially Dell and Andy. They were eleven and twelve years old. Handling a cultivator was a man’s job but they did it.