Hello all! First post here... and I am HAPPY to be here.
Well, now that that is out of the way; let's get to the meat. My family history certainly involves farming and homesteading. The most recent of those would be my sister, but I want to know the whys and hows. Second to her, my family has been involved in agriculture on a at least an extremely small scale, with multiple family gardens among multiple relatives (home-grown veggies are the best!). Go back a little further, however, you get multiple relatives who are farmers at the "great" level. While I don't know of any life changing stories from farming, and the farming practices, it is interesting to me to learn that I am related to so many farmers. My family has always had a strong work ethic, and I have to wonder if that was passed down through generations of farming and hard work. My great great grandpa Amos Hawks was a farmer. One of the ways that farming history affected my family was the fact that they moved around a lot. Amos was restless by nature, but you have to wonder if the droughts in the late 1880's were part of the cause. Even though Amos did not live in the Great Plains (he migrated between Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho), news surely would have traveled to him, and as a farmer, he would have been seeking the most fertile soil. When his son Eardley was about 18 (in 1914), the family farm was in Fallon, NV. This was an extremely fertile area, and crops grew readily. They also raised turkeys on their land. While there is no mention of a financial rift, Eardley, who mentions often in his family history how much he loved farming, became a plasterer (probably the equivalent of a professional drywall tradesman now). From the reading, we learn that in the early 1910's, farming credit became an increasing problem, and we know from history that the great depression in the 1920's hit farmers extremely hard, where many of them had to change professions. From 1921 to 1940, there was a great agricultural depression, which is very likely why my family left farming. My great grandpa Eardley was in his early 20's up to his 40's during that time, which explains why his profession is so different from his dad's, as supporting a family as a farmer was extremely difficult. The trade of being in construction passed down to my grandpa, who was a bricklayer and eventually a contractor, and my father, who is a structural engineer.
It is interesting to now understand at least one reason why the divergence in careers from my ancestors, who were farmers by trade, to my current family tradition of finding the "best" work for yourself!
references:
http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/index.htm
https://familysearch.org/photos/stories/1560822?returnLabel=Eardley%20Erastus%20Hawks%20(KWZX-WZ7)&returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Ffamilysearch.org%2Ftree%2F%23view%3Dancestor%26person%3DKWZX-WZ7%26spouse%3DKWZX-WZQ%26section%3Dstories
