<Begin Segment 14>

AC: On this farm, you had horses, and you said you were pulling float across the field. What do you mean by that?

PS: Oh, that was a wooden float made out of boards, probably, maybe sixteen, eighteen, twenty foot, just a rectangular arrangement. That's what we used two teams of horses, and so it was pulled across the field at an angle instead of two teams pulling it straight, one team was farther ahead, so the thing was always pulled at an angle, and it would smooth, keep the ground rolling and smooth the ground out. And it was, I don't know who, it was a homemade thing, and somebody had built, got the idea around here early. I don't know whose idea it was, but it worked real well. So brother Abe wasn't much into doing that kind of thing, and so I worked with Joe driving one team of horses. And I think back, it was interesting how horses can be trained to work together like that. So Joe was the one who always did the cultivating onions and beets and spuds back in those days with a team of horses. But I think back how those horses would know where to walk all the time, and how to turn around with a cultivator. So if you had a good team of horses, and we had a good team, it was kind of a pleasure to work with good animals. Of course, it was up to the guy that trained them to do what they were supposed to, but I think back, and I kind of marvel at how well they were behaved. At that time, a good team was so important to have around.

AC: You said you were plowing, the first time you started plowing for potatoes, you broke the tongue of the plow. How did you do that?

PS: Oh, that was, the potato and corn cultivator, you'd cultivate one row at a time. And so the team would straddle the row of corn or potatoes, and so you'd come to the end and you'd raise a cultivator by hand, and then you'd turn around and you'd get the thing turned around. So in this particular case when I broke the tongue, the thing went into a drain ditch, a little drain ditch, I think, as I remember rightly, and the horse kept backing up slowly. But anyway, the cultivator wouldn't move back with him, so the tongue broke. That was one of the lessons, good lessons I learned early on.

AC: Were these large horses? What kind of horses were these?

PS: Oh, they were good sized farm horses. The male horse was a nice roan colored animal, a real good horse, and the other, she wasn't as big, but then, anyway, made a good team. And then the other team, I don't even remember, I just remember the two horses that we used to cultivate, and the other two we used for ground work, I can't remember what the other pair of horses were like. I just thought that roan-colored horse, he was such a pretty animal. And anyway, I don't know what breed he was, a big draft horse. Just a good animal as I remember it.

AC: So when you broke the tongue, what did you do?

PS: I guess I had to leave the thing just sitting there, and then I went to the house and told my dad about it. So he or Joe, I can't remember now who, but either they fixed it some way, but that was the end of my experience of cultivating spuds. Anyway, at that point in time, it was getting to where, well, we had a tractor, too, by then. And so we were starting to get into cultivating with tractors. And one of the funny things I can remember is this one family bought a tractor, but they weren't real enthused about it, 'cause if you've got a cultivator on a tractor, how can you watch both sides as you're going down through the field. And so they bought a cultivator and just put it on one side, on a tricycle tractor, they were designed so you could put a cultivator on both sides, you can cultivate two rows at a time rather than... the idea was so you could cultivate more. But anyway, this family just ordered a cultivator for one side, and that was... I thought that isn't why you buy a tractor, to cultivate one row at a time. Anyway, so that was getting started with mechanical machines at that time.

AC: So you had this tractor and you said you had these skeleton wheels with just the iron wheels, but you also had the wheels which were rubber. When would you use just the skeleton wheels?

PS: Well, that was for cultivating early on, in the spring you put those one, and the idea is if you put rubber tires on back then, the idea was that you're gonna pack the ground so much that water won't soak in, just ruin the ground. That was the theory at that time. And so that's when we used the iron wheels just to do spring cultivating. And then later on in the summer, why then you'd take those off and put those heavy wheels with the rubber tires on it. That was the beginning of that kind of farming. It was quite an experience. If you don't know anything about early tractors, John Deere had one that was a four-speed forward, and International had one that was a four-speed, too. But the way John Deere set up, it would go faster in reverse in high gear than you could go forward. So it wasn't uncommon to see farmers going down the road backwards, because they could go faster. And then, of course, the little farms, International tractors, they wouldn't go as fast. And so, but that's just the way they were geared. But that was kind of a crazy thing where you could, has a low and high in that John Deere, low high shifter that you could put it in high range and reverse and it'd go faster down the road backwards than it would forward. But one of those float kinds of things.

AC: So did it have an electric starter or hand starter?

PS: No, back then, everything was cranked. It was a conversion from going from... the idea was to have it as simple as possible.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.