Jack Abernathy Family Farm – Jack Abernathy

0:00:01	Introduction
0:00:25	Short History of Interviewer
0:00:48	Early Life and Family Background
0:01:47	Farming with Grandpa
0:03:16	Raising Horses
0:04:16	Moonshining and Farming
0:05:12	Gardening as a Young Boy
0:06:05	Gardening and Selling Vegetables as an Adult
0:06:56	How People Got Land
0:07:54	Hillside Farmers
0:09:58	Mid Farmers
0:10:35	Tobacco Farming in the Area
0:11:04	Government Intervention
0:12:52	Jack Farming
0:16:08	Jack Helping Other Farmers
0:17:21	Childhood Farming
0:18:56	Raising and Riding Horses
0:20:03	Successful Farming in Burke County
0:21:10	Farmers in the Area
0:21:54	Land Leasing
0:23:07	Learning about Farming and Teaching Others
0:23:58	Modern Farming Techniques
0:26:16	What Jack’s Family Raised (Meat)
0:27:35	Crop Rotation and Tillage
0:29:14	Irrigation System
0:29:47	Impact of Industrialization
0:30:57	Agricultural Practices from the 40s to Now
0:31:26	Corn Shucking Traditions
0:32:24	Impact of the Invention of the Combine
0:34:22	Modern Farming Knowledge
0:35:19	Modern Farming Practices and Machinery
0:40:09	Economic Impacts on Farming
0:43:23	The Role of the Industrial Revolution in Farming
0:45:27	Surplus of Corn and Government Involvement
0:46:35	Modernization of Tractors, Planters and Tillers
0:50:12	Transition from Liquor Making to Sawmilling to Farming
0:52:27	Hay Farming
0:54:13	Conclusion

Bethany Mace
So hi, this is Bethany Mace and I’m sitting here with Jack Abernathy today and it’s November 15, 2024, and we’re in Connelly Springs in Burke County in North Carolina and so today we’re going to explore Jack’s relationship with farming and gardening and what he’s seen over time. So good morning, Jack.

Jack Abernathy
Good morning.

Bethany Mace
How are you doing?

Jack Abernathy
Fine, how are you?

Bethany Mace
Doing good. So first, I just want to ask you what year you were born in and your age, if that’s okay.

Jack Abernathy
I was born in 1936, June the 29th. I’m 88 years old.

Bethany Mace
And have you always grew up in Burke County?

Jack Abernathy
Always, except for the time I was in the Navy.

Bethany Mace
And so, what was it like growing up here for you?

Jack Abernathy 00:01:00
Well, I had a kind of a tough childhood. My dad made illegal whiskey for a living and I had to help him in that. But we were also, we done farming, crop farming, like corn and vegetables and different things of that nature. And we a soul sprouted corn and call it malt. And that was an ingredient that went into moonshine. And my grandfather started that business back years ago. And that’s where I got my introduction into farming, more or less, when I was a little boy. I liked to stay with my grandpa and help him. And he farmed with horses. And we farmed with just conventional equipment back then.

Jack Abernathy
In the time, there weren’t any tractors around here. We just more or less farmed with horses and mules and things of that nature. And I’d go to the field with my grandpa and walk in the fir behind him when he’s plowing. When I was just four or five years old. just developed a love for farming when I was just a little kid.

Jack Abernathy
And I remember having probably my first garden when I was six years old. And I attended that garden. I grew beans and corn and squash, different types of vegetables in the garden. And, but when I helped my grandfather, he raised quite a bit of hay cause he handled cattle and livestock. And he trained horses that was brought in here from out west.

Jack Abernathy
Yeah Doc Hefner was a man that used to bring them into Hickory. And paw would bring them home or bring them up to his house and he would train them. He was a horseman. He was in the Mounted Cavalry. World War, what was it? One? One?

Bethany Mace
In the early, 1914 to 917?

Jack Abernathy
I guess. Yeah. Okay. But anyway, he was, he was a horseman, and he also raised cows, and sold cows, and he had a big windlass and everything, and he butchered a lot of cows and sold a lot of meat during that time. And but now paw, as far as I know, he didn’t make moonshine. He didn’t ever make any moonshine. But then when my dad come out of the army, he started working for a big farmer over in the lower end of Catawba County. A fellow, John, made whiskey and farm too and my dad was good at both of them.

Jack Abernathy 00:05:00
So, he helped him on the farm and helped him to make moonshine. But then my dad branched off into just making, selling moonshine. That’s all he liked to do. But I always like to farm and raise a garden. So, I raised a garden for the family, gathered vegetables and things of this nature and fruit. We had fruit trees and then I’d help paw and we raised a lot of sweet potatoes and a lot corn, a lot of beans, just a lot of vegetables.

Jack Abernathy
Paw sold some vegetables and my dad done some gardening and he sold quite a few vegetables. Green beans was his specialty. He liked to raise and sell green beans. And I, of course, after I got married I raised a lot of all types of garden stuff. I’ve got about an acre little over in a garden space that I would plant a lot of vegetables, primarily potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, just a lot of stuff. Just vegetables. And I grew a lot of vegetables and I sold quite a few in the place, in my workplace where I worked. I sold a lot of vegetables to the people that worked there that didn’t have gardens.

Jack Abernathy
I always wanted, it was my dream to have a farm. I always wanted to be a farmer. But, you know, if you didn’t have land, or didn’t have a good bit of land, and most people, the way they got their land, they either inherited the land or they made liquor and bought the land to get started. Well, these big farmers around here, the bigger farmers around here that had the good equipment and the tractors and things of this nature, they made their start by making liquor and selling liquor.

Jack Abernathy
That’s where they got started, or moonshine, whatever you want to call it. But that’s the way most people in this area. But there was a few, what we call hillside farmers in this area. I can name three right close around here that actually made their living on the farm. Now the way they did, most of them had a little sideline of cutting hair.

Jack Abernathy
They sold milk, milked cows and sold milk, sold butter and cream and all those products that came from a cow. And they would go maybe and plow other people’s gardens. They had horses and mules. And they’d plow gardens for other people and they raised a lot of peanuts and sold a lot of peanuts.

Jack Abernathy
And the sweet potatoes was a big crop that they sold. And they also sold a lot of beans and tomatoes and cucumbers and different types of, uh, uh, row, what we call row crops. And these people actually made their living right within a shouting distance of my home right here. I can name three different, uh, farmers that actually made their living on the farm.

Jack Abernathy
Horace Lowman, Marcus Lowman, and Myles Lowman. And all three of these men actually made their living. Uh, uh, they, they would not have anything to do with liquor. I mean, they, uh, they wouldn’t, uh, mess with it, and they actually made their living farming. And they made a good living. But in those days when I come up, there was not a lot you could do.

Jack Abernathy 00:10:00
A lot of jobs, there just weren’t a lot of jobs. You either worked in a hoser mill, or a cotton mill, or you raised cotton, corn, or products like that, and sold them. You know, the, I call them mid farmers at that time, uh, farmers that didn’t have, uh, uh, mechanized tractors and things of that nature that done it with horses and mules. Uh, they raised a lot of cotton and a lot of, and, and there was even some tobacco raised in this area, not much. Yeah, there was some tobacco raised. Yeah. With tobacco you had to get a government allotment to raise so much. They’d let you raise two acres, four acres, six acres, depending on how much land you had and all that.

Jack Abernathy
And, uh, there was a lot of subsidy, subs, subs, subsidiary? Yeah, a lot of things came from the farm, uh, board, uh, You remember Maven Bradshaw that was in our church? She was in charge of that for the Farm Board at the time. And Maven knew all these farmers around, and they knew her. And, uh, they, uh, you know, got a lot of help from out of Maven from the government.

Bethany Mace
And was the Farm Board, like, local county?

Jack Abernathy
She worked for the Farm Board.

Bethany Mace
For Burke County?

Jack Abernathy
Yeah, for Burke County. And, uh, along about this, the time I was, uh, 15 or 16 years old, uh, the state started putting a lot of land in what they call, uh, the land bank, and paying the farmers not to farm. Yeah, uh, they had a surplus of corn and different things, and, uh, they paid them to leave their land, uh, what do you call it, fallow? Yeah. Uh, to leave the land laying out, and that’s still going on today. There’s quite a bit of that going on today.

Jack Abernathy
In this, you know, these people, that’s got smaller farms, and they don’t want to lease their land. They can put it in the farm bank, they call it, and, uh, uh, get money from the state on it. And, uh, but so much I remember about farming is, uh, you know, after I bought this place here, uh, I cleared all the land up here. After I had a good garden plot about an acre a little more and I’d plant this whole thing and Susie would help me to raise, my wife would help me on in the garden she liked to work in the garden with me and we both enjoyed gardening and I done a lot of studying on raising stuff like tomatoes. I used chemicals on tomatoes that nobody else around here didn’t know anything about.

Bethany Mace
What did you use?

Jack Abernathy
Well, I used, uh, citric, citric acid. Uh, I used, uh, uh, well, different types of fertilize. I don’t even recall. the different types. Now I’d know if I’d go to the store to get it, but we just used different types and, uh, kinds of fertilizer, and I used a lot of compost. I made my own compost. Uh, I used horse manure, and, uh, I’d get, uh, ten loads a year. Uh, ten pickup loads, and I’d pile this horse manure up in a pile and compost it, keep wetting it down and putting lime on it to make it rot quicker. And I’d use this, especially under tomatoes. I, I grew the best tomatoes in the county.

Bethany Mace
Oh really?

Jack Abernathy
I thought I did. Yeah. And most other people did too. And, uh, I started raising a crop of onions.

Jack Abernathy 00:15:00
We called them Vidalia at that time. Now you’re not allowed to call them Vidalia because Vidalia, Georgia sued the people that were raising the plants and they couldn’t raise them. They used plants to set these onions and they were delicious. They were Vidalia onions. And I guess I was the first one around here to really raise Vidalia onions. And I raised, uh, A lot of them, and I’d give them away to people because they just loved them. And, uh, I raised them for years and, uh, well, I’ve raised them every year. In fact, up to last year, and I’m going away from farming now. I cut down this year, coming year, I may be able to raise tomatoes. I hope so.

Jack Abernathy
And, because I want to get in the garden. Yeah. And, uh. But, uh, that pretty well, uh, uh, wraps up what I did as far as gardening and, and farming. Uh, I did help people around farming. Now, your, uh, great grandpa, I believe it’s your great grandpa, Walter Lowman. Uh, uh, I helped on the thresher. He had a threshing machine. He’d come through to thresh wheat. And, uh, we would raise the wheat and, uh, chalk it up in bundles and have it on the barn loft and he’d come through with that big threshing machine and, uh, they would come through one time a year and do the threshing. Threshing is the correct word for it, I guess. But anyway, uh, I would help in that from the time I was five or six years old.

Jack Abernathy
I’d help throw down bundles into the hopper on the threshing machine. And then when we’d get through at our house, uh, I’d go to the neighbor’s house and help them. Uh, two or three of the neighbors that lived there. Uh, different farms, you know, had different, and they’d have, uh, cooked the food and had big meals and all that, and I liked them big meals.

Jack Abernathy
Oh, yeah. And, uh, but, uh, I done a lot of that. I did do some, uh, uh, when my daddy was, uh, building time in prison for making liquor, uh, I would, uh, go to some of the neighboring fields where they had planted corn and they didn’t cut the tops. We called it cutting tops. You cut the corn off. The stalks had had the fodder on it and all that. After they pulled the corn, we’d cut these stalks off and shock them up, you know, and then haul them in and put them in the barn. And I’d always fill the barn up When my dad was building time and I would, uh, when he came back out we would get horses or mules and cows. I always got a milk cow. And we kept milk cows all the time.

Jack Abernathy
I learned to milk with both hands when I was six years old. Uh, that was a feat that we all, uh, Desired to be able to milk with both hands, you know, at the same time. And you’ve probably seen people milk with both hands. And, uh, But, uh, we always kept a cow when we could, you know. And, uh, kept horses. And I liked to ride horses, too. I’ve done a lot of riding. I had a couple of riding horses. About two or three different ones. My grandpa bought me one. Uh, my daddy bought me a Palomino. And I rode horses. And I’ve just been connected with horses and cattle and all this my whole life. I mean, since I was a little boy. And, uh, uh, I would go with my grandpa, like I say, any time that he went to plow or something, I loved to walk in the fir behind him plowing. And I’d get tired and he’d set me up on the horse and let me ride. And, uh, but that’s where I guess I gained my love for farming. And, uh, just loved it. And I even to today, I love to smell ground.

Jack Abernathy 00:20:00
When you plow it, and you open the ground up, and I just love to smell it, and when you’re breaking ground, plowing ground, or plant garden, I like to do that. And if I’d have had the money to do it, which I didn’t have, and the land, land’s a big thing in farming. You’ve got to have, uh, I’d say to be successful in farming in this area, in the Burke County area anyway, to be successful at farming, you’ve got to have about 300 acres of land. Only about that much.

Jack Abernathy
Now you can use it for a sideline, if you’ve got another job, to enhance your income, but to really farm to make money. a good living farm and you need about 300 acres of land. And, uh, that’s, if you’re planting row crops, that’s rotating, uh, you know, corn, soybeans, and wheat, and you rotate them crops. And, uh, all the farmers around in this area, that’s the way they do their crops. They rotate them. The biggest farm we got in this area is 337 acres. That would be the Lucas farm over here close to you. Uh, and uh, that’s the way he raises his crops. He’s, uh, now he’s a big time farmer because he tends over 3, 000 acres. But, uh, not in Burke County, but he’s got this big farm in Burke County over here, the Lucas Farm, you’re familiar with it.

Jack Abernathy
And, uh, uh, Robert Lowman does a lot of, he’s a pretty big farmer. He leases a lot of land. They’ve got a system here in Burke County where a lot of people that don’t want to put their land in the farm. Land bank or something of that nature. They’ll lease the land for five to six dollars an acre. And then people lease this land and plant it. And a lot of farmers around in this area lease their land to farm. And that’s, uh, They make a, you know, and they can lease land and still make a living off of two or three hundred acres of land. Primarily three hundred, I think, is a magic number that most people want. Most people shoot for, you know, making fifty to seventy five thousand dollars a year in income, and that’s about what it takes. Yeah. Uh, pretty well and

Jack Abernathy
I’ve, uh, uh, one reason I’m so familiar with these other farms, I’ve taught some of this and, uh, when we, when I teach in the teenagers in, uh, in, uh, church, teaching class and, uh, say, uh, kids, uh, high school kid, uh, when I was teaching, I would, uh, go to around these farmers and ask them questions, you know, cause they knew how many seeds do you plant to, uh, acre and all this stuff. And, and I’d be able to, uh, when I taught them, I could teach with knowledge, you know, when, uh, now, This, uh, uh, farming today is just not even similar to what it used to be in, uh, these, uh, acreage farmers. Uh, where we used to raise, uh, a good crop was, uh, 50 bushels of corn to the acre. They raise 200 bushels now.

Jack Abernathy
But, uh, the way they do that, they plant so much more seed. See, they’ll, they’ll plant their, we used to plant our corn, uh, 48 inches across the rows, would be 48 inches wide, and you’d drop a seed every 18 inches. And that’s the way you set your corn planter. You know, we had corn planters even with the horses and mules. But, uh, we’d set them, but now they’re raising them crops, some of them 16 inches wide.

Jack Abernathy 00:25:00
And, uh, planting a seed every four inches. So, you can see why they raise so much more corn. They plant so much more in the same amount of acreage. But they have better fertilizer now than they used to. You used to have one or two brands of fertilizer you could use. I think a common number back when I was a boy was a 10-10-10. You know, and now they got it up, nitrogen, up to 32 or 34 percent. But, uh, it just made a total difference in farming now and the way it used to be. And that’s a reason people can lease land. And, uh, even rent land and, and still grow crops and make money.

Jack Abernathy
If, uh, if I had to raise like we did back in the day, you couldn’t have made, you could not have made any money. Uh, you could just made, uh, uh, maybe 11 if he’s lucky. Yeah. But, uh, that’s about all of the, Now we raised chickens and cattle and we always kept chickens and hogs and cattle. We’d kill cattle and we had a place that we could butcher cattle and string them up overnight.

Jack Abernathy
We sold, uh, paw sold a lot of beef to, uh, grocery stores in Hickory.

Bethany Mace
Oh, really?

Jack Abernathy
Yeah, he sold a lot of beef. He’d go to the sale at Hickory and buy a cow and bring it home and beef it and kill it and cut it up and take it and sell it to different stores around. And my daddy and I actually butchered some cattle and, uh, would take them around over the community, the community around in this area and peddle the beef.

Jack Abernathy
And, uh, we done some of that. Uh, I don’t know much I’ve missed. How long have we talked?

Bethany Mace
About 30 minutes.

Jack Abernathy
Well, that’s a pretty good interview, isn’t it?

Bethany Mace
Yeah. Well, I have a few more questions for you, if that’s okay. So, I know you talked a little bit about acreage, like having a small number of acreage, but for your garden out there, did you practice crop rotation, tillage or anything of that nature?

Jack Abernathy
Uh, I didn’t. Well, yes I did to a certain extent. Mm hmm. I’d plant tomatoes here this year and plant them here this year. Yeah, to a certain extent. You plant, you don’t ever plant. Crops of any kind fall on each other if you can keep from it, if you’ve got enough land to keep from it. And having over an acre of garden, I could move my stuff around, you know, just about anywhere I wanted to. Yeah, I sure did. And, uh, I noted in certain areas of my garden, it would grow stuff better. Uh, now, I’ve got a place up on the upper side of my garden that I grow, I grow my onions. And I tried growing them in other places in the garden and they didn’t do as good. Uh, same way with tomatoes, same way with cucumbers. Uh, certain areas in the garden just grows, uh, cucumbers better.

Bethany Mace
So, you learned over time where to put, where to place things?

Jack Abernathy
Yeah, you learn to put, uh, where to plant the stuff to get the best, uh, crop out of it. If that’s yield, I guess you would say.

Bethany Mace
And did you have an irrigation system at all?

Jack Abernathy
Just, uh, just my well. I got a deep well. And, uh, I can run water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And I’ve done some of the irrigation with that. Some of it with drip hoses and some of it with just, uh, sprinklers.

Bethany Mace
And so, I know you talked a little bit about it earlier about you using horses and mules for irrigation, plowing, but how, how do you think industrialization impacted farming, like for you and in your garden, like with new tractors, new equipment?

Jack Abernathy 00:30:00
Well, it, it made it, I worked, uh, a lot of hours in, uh, in these industrial plants, and, uh, you know, with getting a tractor, uh, myself, I could, uh, go plow my garden and a third of the time, whereas I’d be up here planting or plowing after dark back before with a tiller before I got tractors and then after I got tractors it just speeded up the process made it a lot easier, a lot easier on me. Allowed me to plant more garden and be able to tend it.

Bethany Mace
And so how have agricultural practices changed between like the 40s and to now?

Jack Abernathy
Well, mostly, uh, becoming industrialized, like you say, uh, tractors and, uh, different kind of combines. Uh, you know, we used to, uh, when we’d gather corn. We’d pile it up in a big, long pile. And, uh, we’d have what they call corn shuckings.

Bethany Mace
Oh, really?

Jack Abernathy
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that.

Bethany Mace
My grandma talked about it a little bit. If you can explain it to me again, that’d be lovely.

Jack Abernathy
Okay, we’d pile this corn up in a big, long, uh, uh, big, long pile. About six foot high and maybe 200 foot long. Just have a big pile of corn piled up and maybe bigger, depends on how much corn you have. And then they’d invite all of the neighbors in and have a big feed, kind of like you did at threshing time. And, uh, we’d have a big feed, everybody’d cook a pot of chicken and dumplings and all this stuff outside. And just have a big meal and, uh, we’d shuck that corn. Uh, and the reason being, we didn’t have combines around here.

Jack Abernathy
And then, uh, the invention of the combine coming into play made a world of difference, cause they go in now, and even then, you shell corn with a manual sheller. Now, we used to sell 200 bushels of malt to make liquor out of. And, uh, we’d sell sometime 200 bushel a week. And I shelled after I was 11 years old. I shelled all the corn that was shelled at the house with a hand sheller. A big sheller. And, uh, then I got one, uh, got a sheller that was even bigger than my regular hand sheller a big hopper on it and a big wheel it turned and it was much easier to turn it. I could shell up to close to a hundred bushels a day and with it, but, uh, then gradually as, as, you know, the combine made more difference to me.

Jack Abernathy
Seemed to make more difference in, in, in farm growing than any other piece of machinery that came out. Because see, combine, when you combine, you can cut it, uh, shells it. Shucks it, spits it out, uh, uh, shoot. It does all of the processing. And see, that made a lot of difference. Uh, like raising hay. Round bales has made a lot of difference. It’s, it’s faster, and, and, uh, people like it better. I don’t, but. Some people do. I like the square bales because they’re easier to lift. But, uh, you know, there’s just so much difference in the machinery now that you farm with, and knowledge. Knowledge has become a great thing. Uh, you know, uh, what is that TV program I used to watch religiously? Uh, Hefty Brothers. Uh, now, they had a world of knowledge, you know, they constantly was in school learning different, uh, ways of, uh, planting and, uh, different ways of raising crops. And their big thing that they advertised, if you want to double your money, lease some land and go to farming. That was, that was what they preached.

Jack Abernathy
They said you could do it. And, uh, of course out where in the Dakotas and around where they were, see, they could do that. But where, here in Burke County, you couldn’t have done it. You know, but. Yeah. Or maybe you could, I don’t know. I know, uh, Lucas bought this 300 and, uh, 37 acre farm over here, and he said that the farm paid for itself in five years. And, uh, he gave, uh, it was way up there, which was over a million dollars. And in five years, he paid for, the farm paid for itself, you know, in crops. So, uh, industrialization has just made a world of difference in, uh, farming. Uh, now I love to plow corn, or plow land with a mule. I love to cultivate with a mule. I love to farm with a mule. But, I mean, you couldn’t make a living now, not even close to it. But, uh, You know, I, I can’t, I think, I still think that the combine was the greatest, uh, tool that came out. Because it done three jobs. Yeah. And see, uh, when you see them go into, uh, uh, when you see them go in over here to farm.

Jack Abernathy
Of course, they got soybeans this year. You won’t notice it, you just see the dust. But, uh, if they had corn in there, for example, they go into that corn and there stood a stalk of corn with an ear of corn on. Well, they cut that, that combine, cut that stalk down, shucked that ear of corn, and shelled it. See, it done all those processes in one thing, but, I guess Walter Lowman, your great grandfather, was probably one of the first around here to have a combine.

Bethany Mace
Oh, really? My grandma didn’t tell me that.

Jack Abernathy
I believe that now. I don’t know if anybody else had had it. The Huffman’s possibly could have had one, but I don’t know. They were big farmers, too. But now the first combines that come around were, uh, fairly crude. I heard a man say one time, he was talking about a combine, And the combine’s got a lot of parts on it. And he said, uh, the way they made the combine, they just went through the barn and picked up all kind of old broke plow points and everything, throwed it all together and made the combine.

Jack Abernathy
But it was crude. I mean, they pulled it with horses. The first combine that was made were pulled with horses, of course. I mean, that was the power that they had. And then they made them into, uh, where tractors pulled them. And then they changed them and they got their own motor and, uh, radio and tape player and everything now, but, uh, they, uh, If you notice, the combine now is completely enclosed where dust don’t get in on people.

Jack Abernathy
Uh, but you go to a field like they’re doing soybeans over here, you’ll notice that you can’t hardly see the tractor or the combine going through the field. for the dust. Yeah. It’s just so awful dusty and everything and I just about have to have enclosed camp, you know, for it to be healthy. Of course, I guess you could wear a mask with an open tractor, but that’s been one of the greatest innovations in, in my lifetime that I’ve seen uh, is a modern up to date combine. But in saying that, see the price has went astronomical. I guess a good combine now, when I say good, I’m talking about an average good combine now is over a half million dollars. And some of them up to a million dollars. I guess Lucas has got some combines probably that go a million dollars.

Jack Abernathy 00:40:00
But, uh, see that makes a lot of difference as you, as you go up in convenience, you go up in costs, too. And, uh, you know, it’s like anything else. When, you know, we was talking the other day about wages. You know, you kids used to come out of high school or is in high school and you get a job. You get a job making six, seven dollars an hour, maybe eight if you’s lucky, at a supermarket or anywhere at a food chain over here like Hardee’s.

Jack Abernathy
Well now they tell me that cost is up to sixteen, seventeen dollars an hour. Okay, what happens when that happens? I mean, that makes our food go up. Makes the cost of everything go up and see that’s the same way with farming. As the cost of labor goes up, as the cost of machinery goes up, the cost of product is going to have to go up. I mean corn, beans and all that stuff has got to go higher and you know, back whenever you was using a mule and a horse, you didn’t have all that overhead. Of course, you had to feed the mule, you had to feed the horse, but you had some overhead. But see, everything goes, it’s a relationship thing. They talk about Trump is going to be so good and bringing prices is down. He’s not going to. It’s not going to happen. If you work in somewhere for 17 an hour and they come in there and tell you you’re going to cut it back to 10 (an hour), what are you going to do?

Bethany Mace
People are going to stop.

Jack Abernathy
They’re going to quit, ain’t they? They’re going to go home, sit down, let mom and dad keep them up. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. You can’t do it. You cannot bring wages down. Once you get wages up there, they’re going to stay up there. And that’s the same way with, with, uh, farming. You know, when farming goes up, food’s going up, and everything else is going up. They keep talking about, you know, going to the grocery store and how high and I know inflation has increased astronomically. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve lived through four periods of inflation. I have never seen anything like this past four years. You go get a car part and it’s over double. You go get anything, food is double. They say it hasn’t, but it has. Food is just about double. I can show you on, uh, crackers and cakes and different stuff, you know, that you get in food lines. It’s double. And you know, that’s because labor has went up.

Jack Abernathy
And, uh, right now, if it hadn’t been for the Industrial Revolution, we’d been, going hungry now. I really believe that. I believe had it not been for the industrial revolution in farming, I believe you’d have been going hungry now. When you can take a piece of land and grow four times as much product on it, see, that cuts down on having to have all that land. And, and all that, and it moderates the price of food and everything else. Had it not been for the Industrial Revolution, I don’t know what food would cost now.

Bethany Mace
The, the supply would be small, so the demand would be, be higher.

Jack Abernathy
Yeah, you think about, if you think about going out there with a horse and mule and raising corn, and if, now this is good crop. Was, uh, about 40, 50 bushels of acre. And now they’re doing 200. That’s four times as much. So that’s a tremendous difference in farming that’s taken place over the years. And that makes an awful lot of difference in when they go to sell it. Even in the price of your gasohol. You know, where they sell the corn to make gas out of.

Jack Abernathy 00:45:00
And, you know, that thing of the gasohol, of course people talk about it all the time. It ain’t good gas and all that ain’t, I don’t, I burn it all the time. But they, if it wasn’t for gasohol, you’d have a surplus in your crops like you had at one time. They was dumping corn into the ocean because they had such a surplus. They had stacks of corn laid out on the ground. Of course, you know out there it’s dry in the Dakotas and Iowa and out through the big corn belt. They’d have them laying for miles long and fields just shelled corn laying out there. And they’d scoop that up and the government would pay them to take it and dump it in the ocean.

Jack Abernathy
But, see that’s, there’s a lot of things changed during my lifetime in farming. Tremendous amount of things. But this has all happened really, most of that’s happened since 1950. That was when I guess they called the industrial revolution in farming happened in the late 40s and early 50s. And another little note I could give you on Ford tractors. I know you are familiar with the 8N tractor, the old Ford tractor, gray tractor that everybody’s got. That tractor come back in production in 1946, after the war, after World War II. Buck Hildebrand and Clyde Hildebrand bought the first two that ever came around here. They came to Smith’s Crossroad over in Lenoir at the Ford place. They came in over there and they bought the first two tractors, 8N Ford tractors. And see, that was kind of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution for me, you know, and for Burke County.

Jack Abernathy
Cause Alec Martin bought tractors, Rhoney down there bought tractors. Just different people bought different tractors and then they started buying equipment that they started coming out with, you know, different kinds of equipment and they started bringing in the big tractors that would make, you could use three and four plows with and turning plows. And where you were eight in, you could plow about two acres a day, and that’s a good day’s turn to plow. And with them bigger plows, you could plow, uh, double that, you know. And then they quit plowing. They don’t plow land no more. They till it.

Bethany Mace
But yeah, we just till ours. Yeah, they quit. And that’s another feature that cut back on cost of farming. And that’s a modernization. There’s so many, you know, little things that’s come about that we just skip over and don’t really, I don’t know, we just don’t really think about it. There’s so many little things that’s come out that, it’s kind of funny, even if you use a tiller. They got little planters now. You probably, your dad’s probably got one of them little planters.

Bethany Mace
I’ve used it, yeah.

Jack Abernathy
Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m saying. I mean, now those was unheard of in my day. And I tell you, the big key to that was, mama or grandma better know how far apart to plant, drop them seeds, and how many to drop, you know, and all that. And, uh, see, all that’s changed in my lifetime. I got little planters and tillers out here, and I just lay off a row and go in there and take that little tiller and put a plate on it. That plate tells it how many to, it’s got graduations on it, you know, and it tells it how many to plant.

Jack Abernathy 00:50:00
And see, that made a big difference just in gardening. And there’s just so many things that’s changed over the years. But in farming in Burke County, I’d have to say this, that all of your, uh, big farms around here sprouted from Whiskey making.

Bethany Mace
Yeah, I had no idea.

Jack Abernathy
I wouldn’t say your, don’t put down there that your Grandpa Walter sprouted from it, but he.

Bethany Mace
My grandma didn’t say anything about that.

Jack Abernathy
Oh no, grandma won’t say nothing about that.

Jack Abernathy
Well, I mean, this is off the record, but Uh, Huffmans over there was big liquor people.

Jack Abernathy
And another thing that they incorporated into this, (phone rings) You know, so much, and you know me being, growing up around liquor making my whole life. And my daddy built time, seven times, in prison for making and selling liquor. And I mean, that’s the way he made his living. I mean, that was his, that was his occupation. But most of the farms really sprouted out from liquor making and sawmilling. They went from making liquor to sawmilling. And then you big farmers all had sawmills. I bet your Grandpa Walter had a sawmill.

Bethany Mace
Yeah, he did. Off of Jeter Show Road.

Jack Abernathy
Okay. Well, see, that’s what I’m talking about. They’d go from liquor making into sawmilling. And then from sawmilling they’d go into farming. And some of them, you know, would buy land, because land was fairly cheap back then, 50 dollars an acre. Buy you good farmland. Now it’s, uh, $20, 000 an acre. I got a good friend that makes hay. He’s big in the hay business. Grows a lot of alfalfa and different types of number one hay that you feed horses with. And he sells a ton to Madison Bumgarner. You know Madison Bumgarner was a pro pitcher in the Major League. He’s got a big farm, five big farms over in Caldwell County. He’s even got a butcher place like they got in Taylorville over where you can go get meat in Lenoir now. He’s just opened it up. But he’s got a massive farm over there. This friend of mine, just a young fella, he’s trying to make it raising hay and he’s trying to lease land everywhere and all that. But those people like that, you see, they’ve got so much money, they can make beau coups of money in farming. I mean you can make a lot of money in farming if you’ve got money to make money, but it takes money to make money.

Bethany Mace
It does.

Jack Abernathy
Was there anything else I can, that you’d like to ask me?

Bethany Mace
I think that’s it. If you’re good.

Jack Abernathy
I’m good.

Bethany Mace
Thank you for your time today.

Jack Abernathy
You’re welcome.