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| In the late 70's Dad was buying new tractors, put up a new machine shed and a new cattle shed, silo and a couple of new grain bins. New car, new pickup, new snowmobiles and 3 wheeler as well as new equipment showed up on the farm. More land was bought. Then the 20% interest rates hit us. We had a loader on the 4030 John Deere and that tractor started on fire. We could not afford to replace it, so we put the loader on the 3010. Soon the batteries in the 3010 were shot. Batteries were too expensive so we parked it on the hill. If all that money had not been spent on extravagant extras, we would have been fine. So, yes, I do tend to be much more frugal than Dad was.
One of my neighbors used to say that I could rub 2 pennies together to make a dime. I have bought a lot of older equipment and gotten a deal through the years, but I have not had to loose much sleep figuring out how to pay for it. In hind site, I think I would be better off if I had borrowed just a little bit more and upgraded sooner or spent more on fertilizer and chemicals in the 90's instead of banding, but it sure saved me in '92 and '93 when I was just starting out and we had crop failures. If I had spent like Dad did in the 70's I would be way worse off then now. The challenge has always been knowing how much to borrow in order to be the most productive without getting too deep in debt. Looking back, I should have been buying land, in the 90's but I didn't have much equity and I was so cautious because of what Dad had been through. Thankfully Dad never lost the farm. He did sell off an 80 to take some pressure off, but kept the rest. If he had run old tractors he could have kept that 80 and been way ahead, so I have never been an advocate of new paint. In the 80's we had newer tractors that we could not afford to fix the air conditioning on, so we could have just as well been running older ones. | |
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Those who farmed through the '80's ?
