Philip Taylor, born in 1944, discusses his life and farming experiences in Burke County, North Carolina. He recalls a time without electricity and running water, raising milk cows, and using horses for farming. Taylor’s family raised and canned their own food to provide for their 18-person family. He describes the transition from horse-drawn farming to modern machinery, noting innovations like combines that increased efficiency. He emphasizes the evolution of farming practices, the importance of farming in American society and how his family and other farms in his community worked with each other.
Tape Log
| 0:00:01 | Introduction |
| 0:00:40 | Growing up in Burke County |
| 0:02:18 | Milling Wheat at the Gristmill |
| 0:03:03 | Threshing Wheat |
| 0:04:06 | Transition to Combining |
| 0:04:50 | Farming Operations Without Equipment |
| 0:05:46 | Transition in Farming Technology |
| 0:06:31 | Silage |
| 0:07:15 | Education and Careers |
| 0:08:01 | Family Reunions |
| 0:09:33 | Story About Sister Being on “Strike It Rich” |
| 0:10:25 | Transportation Before Cars |
| 0:12:35 | Religious Values |
| 0:13:30 | Story About Buying a Car and Family Members |
| 0:15:44 | Family Work in Farming |
| 0:16:12 | Raising Animals |
| 0:18:51 | Changing Agricultural Practices |
| 0:21:01 | Family Farming and Businesses |
| 0:21:55 | Farming with Horses |
| 0:22:54 | Slow Industrialization Process on Family Farm |
| 0:25:42 | Crop Rotation, Tillage and Irrigation |
| 0:26:40 | Gardening/Farming for Providing Food |
| 0:27:42 | Cash Crops |
| 0:28:45 | Selling Corn |
| 0:29:49 | Farming Collaborations |
| 0:31:47 | Corn Shuckings |
| 0:33:04 | Government Intervention |
| 0:34:11 | His Family’s Farm Today |
| 0:37:14 | Chicken Houses |
| 0:37:46-0:38:41 | Unexpected Challenges (health issues that will be redacted) |
| 0:38:42 | Tractor Accident |
| 0:39:25 | Overall Challenges and Difficulties |
| 0:40:39 | Typical Day |
| 0:41:51 | Passed Down Knowledge |
| 0:42:36 | Favorite Traditions |
| 0:44:17 | Favorite Memory |
| 0:45:05 | How Farming Has Changed Over Time |
| 0:47:19 | Farming and its Importance in American Society |
| 0:48:03 | Conclusion |
Transcript
Bethany Mace
Hi, this is Bethany Mace, and I’m sitting here today with Phillip and Bernice Taylor. Today is November 20th, 2024, and here we’re in Connelly Springs, Burke County, North Carolina. So today we’re going to explore Phillip’s relationship with farming and him growing up in Burke County. And so yeah, let’s get started, Phillip.
Bethany Mace
So, I just want to kind of ask you what year were you born in and your age, if that’s okay?
Philip Taylor
Born 3/10/44. I’m 80 years old.
Bethany Mace
And have you always lived in Burke County?
Philip Taylor
Yep.
Bethany Mace
So, what was it like growing up here?
Philip Taylor
You know, back in our younger days we were in a place where electricity and water, running water, wasn’t there yet. So, this storm last week, or a couple weeks ago, really brought the reality of being thankful for electricity and running water. But anyhow, we and just about everybody else in those days had milk cows. I mean, either they bought milk from their neighbors but everybody about had a milk cow. And that was a time frame when people were getting away from farming with horses. But there were a few people around in our neighborhood (phone rings) bought tractors. We farmed all ours with horses and we raised everything we eat, practically.
Philip Taylor
Well, in the fall of the year, daddy would buy a bag of pinto beans, but we raised, and again, it was not uncommon for us to have a hundred half-gallon jars of blackberries that we picked, you know, and canned So we did a lot of canning, and we raised our own wheat, raised our own corn. We raised corn to make cornmeal, to make cornbread. And we raised our wheat to make flour and we’d bring it over. There used to be a gristmill on Old Mill Road right over here, just before you cross the Henry River Bridge. It was an old mill, grist mill up there. (ice machine noise) And we’d hitch up the wagon anyhow and we’d take it out to Avery Hildebrand.
Philip Taylor
John Hildebrand’s grandpa run that place for a while and then Richard Bradshaw and then when they finally closed it up, and then we didn’t have the, we didn’t combine the wheat. When we got our wheat in, you’d cut it with a reaper and shack it in the fields and go cut some corn and make like a teepee on top of it, keep the water off of it so it’d dry. And then there’d be thrashers come over and your, I guess it’d be your great grandfather Oliver Lowman. He had a threshing machine. And they’d, they’d bring it on, they’d bring it on your place. And he would, you know, thresh your wheat, and he’d separate the wheat from the straw.
Philip Taylor
He’d build a straw in a big old bale, and the hay would, the wheat would come out in a sack on the other side. Somebody’d be up there in a little old stand, they’d be bagging the wheat. But then when they quit making, quit, closed the grist mill, people had to go different routes. So, then they moved to what they called a combine. And the last year my dad raised wheat was, I don’t know, probably in the mid-sixties. He cut wheat, had it combined with a combiner. Those combines have really been innovated and are a real piece of machinery now. As some of them, you know, get this fellow over here, he’ll get 18 rows at a time. And so, so he couldn’t get it ground, so he ended up feeding that to the hogs and the chickens.
Philip Taylor 0:05:00
And so, our farm, we farmed, I guess it was 40 acres over there. And we raised corn. We, you know, nowadays they spray corn, but in those days you plowed them about, you’d plow a field about three or four times for you. And what you’d got, you’d call, lay it by, you’d plow it the last time. And so, my dad, he still worked with those horses. He died in 1980 and he still farmed with those horses in ’79 (1979). So, he wouldn’t let a tractor on his place.
Bethany Mace
Really?
Philip Taylor
He said, pack the ground. So, then after all my brothers and sisters got through school and the last two were in college, Maynard bought a tractor. He finally let us on the field to bale his hay cause there wasn’t nobody there to haul the hay. So, you know, it was, and see our uncle right above us, he, when he come out of the Navy, he started a dairy farm, his land bordered ours right there. And so, we spent a whole lot of time up there in the summer hauling hay for him too, just like we did it at home and I think he was milking around 25, 30 cows and he made silage.
Philip Taylor
And so, the way they made silage when it started back then, I know it’s a wholly different setup now, but they had people that had hoes cut off about so long and sharpen them and go through the field and cut it down, put it on a trailer. And then they hauled it over there to a silo. Those two silos still standing up there at my uncle’s place. And he had what he called a cutter blower. And you’d have somebody feeding that corn in there and he’d cut it and blow it way out. And the silo was about 30 feet tall, I guess. And he’d blow it in there until it’d get full, you know. But, but yeah, farming, farming has changed. So, then all my brothers and sisters, except the two oldest and myself, went to schools of higher learning. I had to learn mine the hard way, not on the job. (Interviewer laughs) But you know, there were nurses and teachers and Ronnie, my brother, just younger than I am, he taught school for 42 years. I did construction work for 40 years. So, you see pictures of these cranes around here, that’s what that’s about.
Philip Taylor
But, you know, as we all started going our different ways from the home where, and so then we, we started having reunions. But it’s on the 4th of July. It’s still on the 4th of July. But my dad still raised gardens like he had all over this area. You know, he could make a garden grow now. And so, everybody would, when they left after the reunion, they’d leave with their car loaded down with, you know, potatoes and okra and cabbage and apples, whatever. We had a few fruit trees. To go back to when we were at home, and we didn’t have electric lights and the running water and so when this storm come through, uh, we at least lit two of those lamps, oil lamps in there.
Philip Taylor
And so, I said just bring that over here and set it on the nightstand. And I grabbed me a piece of paper and I’m going to read it. Ain’t no way you can read by an oil lamp. But that’s what we had when we were in that house. And my sister went to Wilson College and she was going to New York to be on a show on television called “Strike It Rich”. Now, that “Strike It Rich” show, she won 500. (Interviewee and Interviewer laughs). But anyhow, she won that and so people called in and gave lumber and, you know, different building material, and so the house that my sister lives in over here that you go up Taylor Road, the first one on the right, sits up there on the hill, that’s the one that was built from the beginnings of that show on “Strike It Rich” on television. And so, we were in a time frame where there wasn’t many cars either. I guess some people had cars, but everybody didn’t have cars, but we didn’t have one. So, we had to walk to church and we had a path that went, the old house set across the road from where this one is now. It’s set over where them barns is at. So, we walked to church and we’d walk through and come out. We had two ways. We could come out up here and come out on the Hoyle Road right there beside that the local service, uh, local station over at the local store.
Berniece Taylor
The salvage store.
Bethany Mace
Oh. Yeah.
Philip Taylor
We’d come out right there and then walk on over to the church, and then there was another one that come through, down by this farm, Romer’s Farm, the one that had the dairy farm, walk down through it. He’d had a trail through there and come out about where John Hildebrand lives down there, somewhere right along there. I don’t know just exactly where it’s been so long since I’ve been down in there, but yeah. And we’d walk to church over there and I always, back then, I always wondered, I said, especially when we was having revival and, and you’d have, you know, it’d be dark when you got out and you didn’t have lights everywhere like you got today, you know. I mean, when it was dark, it was dark. And so, I often wondered why somebody wouldn’t stop and pick us up in the dark over there. And then I got to thinking one day, well, who in the world already got their car full of people to stop and pick up 10 or 11 more? But we were took to church.
Philip Taylor
We were we were taught to love people and love one another. And, and I think that’s where we’re missing it in our, you know. Somehow or another, there’s so many people in our church, this is in my lifetime, that, you know, they get out and they go to college and then it, it just don’t seem like church is important to them. And that’s the time they need it the most. Cause you’re making a decision on what you’re going to do the rest of your life and you probably choose your mate. And so, you know, there’s a need for people. You know, I’ve told people if your parents drove you to church when you was growing up, you ought to thank them. (Interviewee and Interviewer laugh).
Philip Taylor
Oh me, but we live, you know, we, that house that I was talking about that they built when my sister went up to New York, that, that house is. Uh, we moved in that house in, I’m thinking, 1956, and that’s a big deal for us, cause we was all in that one room mansion, and I was gonna show you a picture of it, I might find it directly, I don’t know, but anyhow, several of us when we moved over to that house, graduated high school. When I was a senior in high school, I bought me a, I went down to Northwestern Bank in Hickory and borrowed 350 dollars and bought me a 1953 Studebaker, and then I was going to Tennessee to pick up my sister. I hadn’t made over two payments, I don’t believe, and I rolled that thing end over end down the mountain. The brakes locked up or something.
Bethany Mace
Oh, gosh.
Philip Taylor
But if you go around the home place, there’s a bunch of pecan trees. And we planted those, you know, uh, I guess when my brother, Doug, was in from college. He went to Western Carolina and back when it was a two year college and then he had to go to NC State to finish up and he did most of his work up there in Madison County up above Asheville in a little place called, well out from Weaverville.
Berniece Taylor
Marshall.
Philip Taylor
Marshall, a little place called Marshall. But he’s all involved up there now, so. But, all of us, you know, all of them, all that bunch, all of them knew how to work. And they all did work. I mean, when it come hay time, them girls grabbed a pitchfork just like we did and pitched hay and packed it in the barn.
Bethany Mace
And so, when you were young, like what type of farming did you practice? Like, did you raise animals, like raise a lot of animals or a garden?
Philip Taylor
Well, I think, you know, back then, I think most people out in the country had a milk cow and a hog. They had milk, and those that didn’t have a milk cow, bought milk from their neighbors. And so, we had the horses and the cows to milk. So, you had to get up early in the morning before school. I thought there for a long time it was against the law to milk them cows when it was daylight. It was dark when we milked them in the morning before you caught the school bus. And then we always had things to do when we got off the school bus. And, then you’d have to end up milking the cows in the dark. So, when I was a senior in high school, I think we had six milk cows. And, and then naturally you got, you know, I was thinking, animals on the, on the farm. (Ice machine and background noise)
Philip Taylor
Well, naturally you have one that would die occasionally. And so, when I was a senior in high school, my dad had to be at work at two o’clock down at Henry River Mills. That’s the only public job I ever knew him having. But anyhow, he come and got me out of school at one o’clock. Took me home and told me to bury that horse. Now a horse is a pretty good size animal. It died, you know. And so, I went down there, and dug a hole, and put the horse in it and was covering it up when the school bus went up the road at four o’clock. So, I dug a pretty good hole in a small amount of time.
Bethany Mace
And so how do you see agricultural practices changing between the late 40s and now?
Philip Taylor
Oh, it’s entirely different. I’ve told people here and yonder that, you know, if people still farmed the way they did in the 50s, we wouldn’t be a feeding this country. We wouldn’t be a feeding cause…We went out to Nebraska, rabbit hunting and stayed with a fellow that owned a, I believe a section of, and a section is a, is a mile, mile, mile. And he said when they first moved there, when he started out with the horses back when it’s a farm with horses that he’d eat breakfast and he’d make one round and his wife would meet him with lunch. So, you know, now they, I’m telling you, they got machines out there. I was just watching the other day. They take a 40 foot strip through the field when they, when they’re plowing and when they’re combining, they take a pretty good sweep, especially if it’s wheat. But yeah it has changed 100%, you know, from the way it was in the, because it, it was a slow deal with a horse.
Philip Taylor
And like I told you a while ago, my dad wouldn’t, he wouldn’t let a tractor on his place until after all of us got married and moved off and I bought a place right above Romer’s place up there and I had a, what was it, a 430 case tractor. But they, there wasn’t many of them out of that bunch that took up farming, Maynard, he’s farmed the home place, like I said. I guess he’s got, what, I guess 40 acres there. And he’s in that sharp curve over there at Taylor Road, off to the left where you see them cows. That’s my brother’s place. That was the home place right there.
Philip Taylor
We own both sides of Taylor Road till you get up there to where them driveways turned off. And, uh, on both sides and then one side all the way, well, to that main building up there, he’s got a metal shop down there on the left. We owned all that and then over to the, well not to the foot of Piney Mountain, but over there to Little Creek, as you cross them fields, we farmed all that with horses. They was work to be done with the horses most of the time. You know, most of the time you’re doing something. I remember one time it snowed in, and I believe it was January the 1st. And it sleeted about two inches on top of it. And it froze real hard, got down to zero. And the horses would walk on top of you, on top of the snow. And they did that.
Bethany Mace
Wow. And so, you didn’t, your, like your family farm didn’t industrialize like as fast as most? Since you didn’t use tractors?
Philip Taylor
Yeah, yeah, after we got married, I bought a tractor. Maynard bought a tractor. And so. We did, matter of fact, just to be straight, to think about it, it was one day out, daddy wanted to mow some hay, and he wanted to know if he could mow with my tractor. I said, well you sure can, I said I’ll go home and hook it up, so I went to the house and backed the tractor into the mowing machine. Took it down there, and the next day I come in, and he was mowing a field down there, he hasn’t done it yet, that’s why I come around the curve. So, I stopped and he said, I can’t get this tractor to cut this thing, I said I’ve changed the sickle twice and it still won’t cut, I said, well let me see it. Got on it and well you know you got to have the RPMs up there about 1,800 or 2, 000 RPMs for it to cut hay. If it just won’t cut, that’s what makes the sickle move fast. And so, I went around and was coming back to where he was at and there he was again.
Philip Taylor
He said, why you running it so hard? He didn’t believe him running nothing hard. I said, that’s what makes it cut, dad. Oh, he said. So, I mowed the rest of his hay down that evening before I went to the house. But yeah, the moving over to tractors and then, and then now they’ve got, I’m telling you, they got, they’ve got tractors now that makes those tractors we had look like a toy. Well, my son up here’s got a 108 horsepower Kubota and these tractors out there, two and three hundred horsepower now, they really cover the ground.
Bethany Mace
We still use a tractor from the, from the seventies, so.
Philip Taylor
Do what?
Bethany Mace
We still use a tractor from the seventies.
Philip Taylor
Yeah.
Bethany Mace
And so, did y’all practice any tillage or crop rotation?
Philip Taylor
Oh yeah, yeah. We always, well daddy raised corn and he raised wheat. So, he’d raise corn on maybe this section this year and he’d raise wheat on the other section and then the next year it’d be right around he’d raise wheat down there and he’d raise, so yeah we practiced it. We didn’t have too much washing of the soil away when we was growing up.
Bethany Mace
Did you have any irrigation systems at all?
Philip Taylor
No, we didn’t have no irrigation system. All the good Lord sent us. And I don’t, I was thinking the other day, I don’t ever remember dad planting a crop and never harvesting it. We always harvested what we, what we planted.
Bethany Mace
And so, did you have any acres that were under tillage for cash crops?
Philip Taylor
Not when, not when I was growing up. Now we, we have now. But back then we, it took all we raised there to keep that family going.
Bethany Mace
Yeah. A lot of mouths to feed.
Philip Taylor
Yeah. There’s always something on the table to eat though. That brother of mine, I mean, when you got cows, you got cream, you can make butter. And they had a little old print when you made butter, it would be about this big around. And about that thick. And he would cut that ball of butter half and two and put it in a biscuit and eat it.
Berniece Taylor
And he’s the littlest of them.
Philip Taylor
Yeah, he’s as skinny as a rail. He won’t weigh 140 pounds.
Bethany Mace
So, what about? So, you said that later you had, you had cash crops, like when did you have them and what were those crops?
Philip Taylor
Well, we didn’t start having cash crops until we moved over here and we got, we got cows. As a matter of fact, we just took some off Tuesday. We have cows and we’ve got corn that we harvest. And it’s, it’s corn that you ought to have been making a hundred bushels, a hundred plus bushels an acre. Was making about twenty maybe thirty, thirty five. And in that flood, I don’t know, the fields at Andy and thems had up on the river. It must have washed, I don’t know, twenty acres, twenty plus acres under.
Bethany Mace
Oh wow.
Philip Taylor
Put it on the ground.
Bethany Mace
And so, did you sell any of your produce?
Philip Taylor
Yeah, that corn, they took all the corn that we raised this year over to a hog farmer in Caldwell County, he bought every bit of the corn that we raised here. And, if you didn’t, then you had to take it down to Lincolnton. Oh, I can’t think, I can’t think of that man’s name. Lewis Richards. Down there he’s got multitude of silos, big silos that he put it in.
Bethany Mace
How many acres of corn do you think that was?
Philip Taylor
Probably 120 acres.
Bethany Mace
Oh, wow. That’s a lot of corn.
Philip Taylor
Theirs and what we raised here too. We had about 25, they had about 100, I guess.
Bethany Mace
And so, did your, like you’re growing up, did y’all collaborate with any other farms or families in the community?
Philip Taylor
Well, we, we used to farm a couple other little patches. You know where Alfred Lowman lives? Behind his house, that them fields in beside the, beside that house and where Blande Fulbright lives, all the way down to that creek and all the way back to, well, it’s woods now, it’s going to say all the way back to the woods, but this grew up so much. But we, we, we raised corn there on, I think on four parts. So, when we shoved it, we had to keep it separated and put three buckets in the corn, in the corn crib. Sack up one, one bucket for Eugene McNeilly. I don’t know whether you remember him or not. That’s Jimmy’s daddy. I remember when Jimmy just first moved out, he had a little old pony. And they wanted my dad to, had dad to go work a plow, and they wanted dad to hitch that thing to a plow. And finally did. They plowed a while. It tickled them to death. (Interviewee laughs).
Philip Taylor
And then we raised, one year we raised these bottoms here on the river where that lady’s got that trailer.
Bethany Mace
What is it?
Philip Taylor
Them bottoms right there. Farmed it, planted it, and grown them one year. But most of the time we didn’t need that much corn.
Bethany Mace
Yeah. And just out of curiosity, from past interviews, I learned that they participated in corn shuckings.
Philip Taylor
Oh yeah.
Bethany Mace
Did you participate in those?
Philip Taylor
Oh yeah, I remember the last corn shucking we had. Of course, corn shucking, you got a meal, so, my mother would fix a meal and everybody would eat and everybody, or everybody’d shuck and then they would eat and so it ain’t, you wouldn’t be surprised how fast a pile of corn would go down with, you know, 30 or 40 people shucking. And yeah and then I went with dad, I don’t remember where it was, but I went with him on a corn shucking somewhere or another. And then people got away from it. That’s the last thing I remember of it. We had to shuck it all ourselves.
Bethany Mace
When was that?
Philip Taylor
Probably ‘50, ’53, ‘54, right in there. 70 years ago.
Bethany Mace
And so, were there any federal or local government involvement in your farm like then and now?
Philip Taylor
No, nothing except, you got to pay them some money when you get finished with everything, but, but they, you know, no, they didn’t. Well, I think Dad did draw, my mother did work, public works, among all that, having all them kids. And, and so she did when she passed away at age, uh, daddy did it all so secure to each other, you know, so all of them got grown.
Bethany Mace
Did at any point the government tell you to, like, slow down for them, like, slow down, you know, producing corn or anything like that?
Philip Taylor
No, never did.
Bethany Mace
That’s good.
Philip Taylor
Of course, on 40 acres, you know, 50, you’re not gonna be making a big dent in the market one way or the other.
Bethany Mace
And so, more so in recent years, what has your farm and, you know, your garden looked like? So now you have cows.
Philip Taylor
Yeah. We got, matter of fact, they’re picking them up today. In the neighborhood of raising 100,000 chickens a flock. And he usually raises anywhere than four to five flock a year.
Philip Taylor
All depends on when it breaks, you know. And we have a garden out there where we have a well out to the chicken house is close from here to the door to the garden. And so we can get the hoses out there and water them down. You know, if we, if we need it. And it’s probably about, maybe a hundred feet wide, two hundred foot long. 150 anyhow.
Bethany Mace
So how many acres is your property?
Philip Taylor
Well with all, all it’s with this farm right here and, and I run off some for the chicken houses. There’s about 120 acres.
Bethany Mace
And do you still collaborate with any farms in the area? I know you talked about selling your corn. But anything else?
Philip Taylor
Well, you know, we cut a lot of hay. And, uh, of course, Andy does all that. These people come and get hay all the time, you know. He sells hay to people. One lady comes and gets four bales every day. I mean, not every day, every week. She gets four bales. She got horses.
Bethany Mace
And so, could you, maybe explain like what have the largest expenses been for your current practices?
Philip Taylor
Well, the only way I know how to do that is to put it this way. The last year that I bought fertilize to go on this farm and what we farm. It cost me 10,000 dollars.
Bethany Mace
Wow.
Philip Taylor
But now, we’ve got the chicken houses, we put chicken litter on it, so we’re not buying fertilize now.
Bethany Mace
Could you explain any more like, um, chicken houses and what part you play in that?
Philip Taylor
Andy owns the chicken houses. I just help up there and then, and then he pays me when I, when I, of course, I’ve not helped him for the last four months, I can’t get my breathing justified for some reason.
Bethany Mace
And so, have there been any unexpected challenges over the years, um, that you and your family or yourself and your family now have experienced?
Philip Taylor
Any what?
Bethany Mace
Unexpected challenges?
Philip Taylor
[This portion of the interview has been redacted at the request of the family.]
Philip Taylor
[This portion of the interview has been redacted at the request of the family.]
Philip Taylor
And we’ve had a couple old tractor bang ups, you know. I was tethering hay down there on, on River Road, I guess, down there at the river. And a fella run into me. Tore my tractor to all pieces, it had to go. They totaled it, knocked me, didn’t knock me off the tractor, I stayed on. Busted the tire and busted the casing on the transmission and everything. Tore it all to pieces.
Bethany Mace
I’ve never heard someone having an accident with a tractor like that.
Philip Taylor
He hit me from behind. Said he fell asleep, so I don’t know.
Berniece Taylor
He was lucky he didn’t get killed.
Philip Taylor
But you know, no more than the everyday challenges, you know, that we go through, you know.
Berniece Taylor
God’s been good to us.
Philip Taylor
Yep.
Bethany Mace
And so, what’s been the most difficult part of your job?
Philip Taylor
I don’t know, I never did, I never did think about what was the hardest part.
Berniece Taylor
He enjoyed construction work and the farm.
Bethany Mace
So, you worked two jobs?
Philip Taylor
Yeah. I guess probably that was our toughest time because I don’t know how we did it. Kept this farm going and the construction company, both.
Bethany Mace
It’s impressive.
Philip Taylor
Yeah. There for about, I don’t know, 14 years or so before I retired.
Bethany Mace
So, now, what does a typical day look like for you?
Bethany Mace
What does a typical day look like for you, like in the summer when you’re harvesting?
Philip Taylor
Right now, I don’t have a typical day. It’s just before this last episode, we’d get up every morning and go through the chicken house and pick up all the dead birds. Come home and take a shower and go out and eat. Come back and then most of the time there is a piece of equipment that needs to be worked on that’s broken. And do that and mow the grass. The grass around here takes a little bit of a job, probably a good bit to mow. And then we built a couple of sheds up there on behind the chicken house, we built those ourselves. After, after, you know, after picking up chickens and stuff, just whatever hours we had left in the day.
Bethany Mace
And so, have you passed along any of your skills to future generations, like your family or anyone in the community?
Philip Taylor
Well, I don’t know. There’s a lot of people in, well not a lot, last I checked there were several of us in this tree trimming business and, you know, and that is classified as some kind of construction, I guess, because they got to have construction equipment. They got to have a way to take a tree down, they got to have a way to haul it off, and all that stuff.
Bethany Mace
And so, what were some traditions that you saw growing up that you loved?
Philip Taylor
Traditions? Oh, me. I guess, you know, you wouldn’t think so, but I guess Christmas. I’ve told people this before. I loved the church over there probably before I was ever saved. I mean, that’s where I thought all the good people was at. And so every Christmas Eve, they put a play on over there in our church. Now, I don’t know that I’ve missed one, I may have missed one, but that, homecoming, time when people gather together was probably one of our favorite times. They used to, matter of fact, it used to be in our minutes, but when a person becomes 62, the church would give them a birthday dinner, in other words. And so, but now they didn’t have a bunch of them to give. But anyhow, anyhow, I enjoyed those kind of things too. You go to somebody’s house and yep.
Bethany Mace
So where, where do you go to church? Like, have you always gone to that church?
Philip Taylor
As far as I can remember. Probably before I was born. Mount Hebron Baptist Church.
Bethany Mace
And so, what was a favorite memory of yours growing up on the farm?
Philip Taylor
Growing up, my goodness. Favorite memory.
Bethany Mace
I like asking this question at the end.
Philip Taylor
Uh, I, you know, I guess, I guess my favorite memories was when, when I was getting up around, well, the teenage years until I graduated high school, all my brothers, my sisters, and nieces, and nephews would come in for Christmas. And we’d have Christmas, and that’s probably one of the most memorable things.
Bethany Mace
Okay, so, just one last thing. How do you think farming has changed, not like through like industrial change, but like through society, like different roles that people play? Kind of, how do you see that changed over time?
Philip Taylor
The amount of produce? Well, you know, I told you when we raised corn, we had to plow it. Four times, each field four times to keep the weeds in it. Now, these farmers go out today and they spray a field and then they plant it and they don’t mess with it and they go harvest it. They might spray it twice, but, then they go harvest it and, and back when we was, you know, when we was making 20 and 30 bushels an acre, they said, hey, some people now getting over 200 bushels an acre, cause if, see, when you, back when you plowed it, you’d have to have it this wide or the horse couldn’t walk through it. Now they’ve got them this wide, 20 inches. And so, you’re getting almost three rows to two there. And, and so that automatically makes your yield increase and they’ve made machinery just to handle that. And people grow, you know, people now, with the equipment, there’s no way we could, we could put all the corn in the ground that we plant this year with horses. There’s no way you can get that much plowing done. You just couldn’t get it done. So that enables an increase just simply because you can get more work done.
Bethany Mace
And do you think farming is still an important part of American society today?
Philip Taylor
Think what now?
Bethany Mace
Farming is still an important part of American society today.
Philip Taylor
Oh, it’s the most important thing and I’m not going to say the most important, the next most important thing today that’s in this country is it’s farming. Everybody from all these other countries has got to come to America to learn how to farm. They, they come and years ago, they come and got farmers out of the Midwest and paid them to come down to Brazil and some of those to South America to teach them how to farm.
Bethany Mace
Okay. That concludes our interview today.
Philip Taylor
Okay.
Bethany Mace
Thank you for letting me do this.
Philip Taylor
Okay. You’re welcome.