Uncle Carl's Work Ethic

In connection with the use of hybrid seed corn, uncle Carl had the idea of making some crosses himself and testing out the seed corn for its productivity. So we detasseled corn in the process of these experiments — I believe he harvested and segregated this corn but to what extent he ever carried through on the project I have no idea. Vincent and I also worked detasseling corn for a production program (as I recall) by the county farm bureau. Again I don’t know just how successful this project was in producing good seed corn. In more recent years seed corn production has been entirely in the hands of the commercial seed companies.

Uncle Carl can only be described as a prodigious worker — on the other hand he often became distracted as his interests took him down various bypaths and he neglected more important tasks. Many times when he was doing custom corn-picking his own corn would not be harvested until the following spring. One year he became intrigued in making a potato planter and spent several weeks on the project when other work called. He followed agricultural advances closely and I recall accompanying him and Vincent in visiting at Iowa State College for their agronomy days, at which new development would be demonstrated.

The Peterson farm had been tiled for drainage by uncle Carl and other of his brothers. I still recall the surveying level used in this that was kept in the tool shed along with his other tools, grease guns, etc. The only exposure to tiling during our years on the farm was when some additional tile was put in by uncle Carl in the low end (along the southeast corner) of the south forty. Whether I actually participated in the digging I don’t recall but I must have. I remember uncle Carl laboring way deep in the ground and I can’t imagine being in the vicinity of the activity had I not been digging also.

All of the Peterson farm was “tiled out” into the drainage ditch which ended close to the southeast corner of the east forty. This include the west half of the north forty, a low area that according to Vincent should have been drained in another direction. Uncle Carl used intakes which projected close to the surface or actually above ground — these were always a nuisance in field work as they had to be noticed and steered around.