A Little History of The Farm

Overnight and throughout the day we got snow which accumulated upwards of 8 inches. I went up and fed my cows hay throughout the day and shoveled the driveway to give me something to do at the time. I put 22 pieces of wood on the fire for the night as well. We didn't do much outside tonight, so here is some of the history about the farm. When I refer to the farm in my posts I am talking about another farm "separate" from ours where we live. Where we live we have the house and barns which we store some equipment and wagons in for the winter. The farm is located adjacent to where we live and it has barns where we store hay, equipment, and tractors, and our shop is there too where we fix and build things. The farm was purchased by my great grandpa George Krebs whose parents lived in the house I live in today. He went to France and fought in WWII, and when he came home he worked at a tobacco factory for about 5 years. George began milking 35 cows in the barn around 1954 up to 1983 when my grandma, his daughter, took over the operation. She milked and ran the farm until the early to mid 1990s when she sold the cows. They raised chickens and also made maple syrup. George farmed up to 450 acres at a time and used a 2 row corn planter up until 1976 when they got a 4 row. Paul Seese worked for my great grandpa, and in 1977 they planted corn in some nutrient rich black mucky dirt. They took first place in the FFA state competition for corn yield getting 178.4 bushels per acre. 2nd place was over in the thumb of Michigan. Today it is a pasture for the cows because it is too wet to drive a tractor around in it without risking getting stuck. The main barn at the farm was built from the ground up, meaning they built the top of the barn first and jacked it up to build the foundation. They later added on a tin barn attached to the north end of the original barn, and they used like 12 ft rail road ties as the beams. This barn was used for calves, dry cows, and heifers. This is the barn where my cows stay for the winter. A big part of the farm business was selling hay and straw. Hay was stored in barns on 4 different farms. Most of the hay that was sold was for local use, but some was for out of state. A man hauled produce from Florida to Grand Rapids and would bring 2 semi loads, 450 bales each, back down for over a decade. The farm has a lot of great memories and history revolving around it that will hopefully never be forgotten.