I originally had this posted on Ralph's thread, but decided not to hijack his post, so here is is.
At age 56 in 1953, our father was finally able to buy his own 141 acre farm after many years farming on-the-halves. Almost every cent from the sale of his earlier machinery was put toward the down payment of the new farm. First tractor there was a 1937 unstyled Allis WC. Had a 2 bottom IH Little Genius plow and 7 foot drag disc and a 2 row JD horse drawn planter converted to tractor pull. I was 10 years old at the time and 2 older brothers who did most of the tractor driving. We all despised the WC and dad knew that. One day when we came home from school, the AC was gone and its place was a 1939 Farmall H. We were all ecstatic about that and practically fought to drive it. We bought a few milk cows 1 or 2 at a time till we had a herd of 18 that we milked by hand. Raised a few hogs and sheep and mom always had her flock of chickens for eggs to trade on Saturday night on our groceries. Little by little we were able to get others cast off junk machinery that we fixed up to get the job done. We had 1 flat bed wagon with grain sides and a 2 wheel trailer for the hauling. Had a converted horse drawn IH mower to cut the hay and a New Idea rake and hay loader and put our hay up loose and hoisted into the haymow with grapple forks. We did have a fairly new Jogh Deere 12A combine to cut the oats, wheat and soybeans. A very well used and abused Wood Brothers did the corn picking and a #14 shovel to transfer it to the corncribs. Milk was shipped in 10 gallon cans that were kept cooled in a tank filled with well water.
Along the way we were able to acquire 2 farmall F-12's to help with the tillage, planting and cultivating and usually tilled up the 2 acre garden.
At the time dad bought the farm, there were still 9 of us kids at home as the 8 older ones had married and moved out. There were many hard times to meet the bills. During the summer as we boys got old enough to hire out to the neighbors for extra money to meet school expenses and some new clothes and maybe a NEW bicycle.
Times were hard, but times were good!!!!
Gene