Plowing with mules for fun and profit

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Few, and the number gets less and less each year, people know what it is like to plow behind a mule. While I never plowed behind a mule, I did plow behind a 4x4 pickup.

Self-fertilizing farm equipment. And the mule is handy too.

Grandpa hooked an old mule plow to his pickup and I tried to ride herd on it as we plowed a line for him to lay down a pipe or an electrical line, I forget which.

Growing up, I also learned what it was like to pick watermelons in triple degree heat, pick cucumbers by the 5 gallon bucket, bend over for miles cutting cabbage and pick bushels and bushels of peas and beans. But I never picked tobacco.

I carried irrigation pipes. I carried stationary irrigation guns. I drove a manual shift John Deere 4020 with a variety of implements behind it. If you can do that, you can drive anything.

It was work. Very very very very hard work. It didn’t pay much (forget about what I was paid). Field

Well. Not true. There are substitutes, but nothing gets done.

hands were paid by the piece. Some of ‘em could make $100 or a more a day. Remember this was in the 70s and 80s so $100 a day was pretty good stuff. Few made it that far. Most were in the $30-$40 a day range, still not BAD pay, but considering the amount of work which went into, it was not great pay either.

But if you’ve never done it, you really can’t imagine what it was like.

I note here STRICTLY for the record, Dad was a partner with his brother in the farm. My brother and I worked out butts off. Our cousins by our uncle rarely if ever put in an appearance on the farm. Ahem.

Anyway, where I started to work on the farm, all the help were local folks. By the time I graduated high school and headed off to college this had shifted to all immigrant labor.

Few things you need to know - The local hands I grew up working beside could and did make $100 a day and more. One lady routinely made $200 a day. This was picking beans by the bushel, cucumbers by the 5 gallon bucket or cutting collards, 12 bunches for a dozen for the pay.

Mo Money!

Yup.

Folks like her, from my Dad’s generation, were few and far between, but they existed.

Along came their children who found such work beneath them. If they did show up, they were often stoned. They got drunk almost as soon as they were paid and you could forget about them showing up for work on Monday - they had a weekend to recover from. They took extended “smoke” breaks too. They copped attitude. They complained. They wanted to get to work late and leave early.

That’s still the case.

Immigrants moved in.

Immigrants have NOT come to this country and taken jobs away from Americans. Immigrants have come to this country and have taken jobs Americans don’t want.

Americans WON'T do this kinda work.

You may object to this. If you object then you are not a large scale employer in an unskilled work environment. If you do hire plenty of unskilled labor, then you are jumping up and down and yelling AMEN!

Americans do not want the kinds of jobs immigrants take.

No. They do not. I have the empirical evidence to back this up.

If you live in Georgia and pay scant attention to the news, you hear the farmers screaming about the new Georgia immigration bill which has sent immigrants, legal and illegal, out of state. Crops are literally rotting in the fields because farmers can't hire people to harvest them.

Yesterday Gov. Nathan "Let's Make A" Deal suggested farmers hire people on probation. He's so far refused to discuss this proposal. I strongly suspect he knows exactly how idiotic that idea is and he's pandering to people who have no idea about farms and think food is magically manufactured in the back of a grocery store.

An American cat.

One major industry here TRIED to hire all local labor. Of those who bothered to show up, all were gone within a month. Quit. Walked off the job and never came back.

You don’t have to believe me. Talk to the plant manager. Excuse me. Plants’ managers cause it ain’t just one.

At my office, I have hired local people. Some never showed up after being offered the job. One memorable candidate accepted the job and on her first day of work, never showed. She eventually called in the NEXT DAY and said she had a hair appointment that day, which she told to someone else. Not me. She explained she was sick the first day. She was invited to stay at the hair dresser and I hired someone else.

It's the attitude a lot of people have around these parts.

Being an idiot is a style too.

I spoke with a local community leader. I said folks are going to have to pay some dues working on the line in un-airconditioned places and low wages and learn their way around before they can move into a desk job, especially if they have no skills.

His reply?

“No. We’re not willing to do that.” He went on to say they want the inside jobs at good wages right now.

And you wonder why the United States is flooded with immigrants. They take the jobs Americans don’t want.

You again may disagree with that. Because you choose to not accept reality, reality will not be reordered to fit your notions of what may be.

In other words, if you disagree with me on this, yes, I call you a fool because only fools deny reality.