My name is really close to ‘Bob Evans’. Sometimes when people hear my name, they joke about the restaurant Bob Evans. I tell them, sometimes to their surprise, that I actually raised sausage on a farm growing up.
It seems like another lifetime ago that I was a teenager working with livestock or in grain fields. There were times that I did not enjoy it like cleaning barns and hog pens, but for the most part I loved it.
Both sides of the family had different types of farms but my dad’s side has farmed for at least a couple generations. I spent lots of time even from the age of 6 and up riding on or driving tractors and equipment. To this day, I still love walking around the farm and just checking out equipment. I still sometimes get on tractor sites and see what’s out there these days. When I was a boy, my grandfather farmed about 1000 acres in the 70’s and raised hogs on a fairly large operation for the time. In the mid-80s, my father began farming on his own. He launched out with modest means, tools and machinery. He farmed a few hundred acres of grain and we had about 2,000 hogs on our farm (he stopped raising hogs in the late 90s and none of us miss that!). Since then, through hard work and wise decisions they have built a successful operation with much more and larger equipment than the days that I was helping out. I love getting to go home and see what is going on and what new “toy” is on the farm. For the past two years in the fall, I have been able to sneak away for a couple days and put in some long hours like I used to do as a young man. Some wouldn’t understand, but I love doing 15 hour days in the field or on various projects when I get the chance. I am very thankful for my upbringing and learning the value of hard work and sacrifice. For those of you who are interested, I am including some of the pictures of my trip this year and will throw in some from last year in Facebook as well. Enjoy!
GK: mysterion 