I wonder if there ever was a “golden age of farming” when farming was a comfortable lifestyle. It seems to me that it has always been a very difficult career.
If I look at my own family - my English quarter were all farmers and they did OK. They lived to a ripe old age (my gggg-grandmother died of “senility of age”, she just got old and something stopped working) and had many children, all living in pretty flexible multi-generational units that allowed a flexibility to take in waifs and strays (an illegitimate child could work the land just as well as anyone else, so a grandparent or uncle would always find room for them). A ggggg-grandfather found himself at 63 with his wife and 7 or 8 kids dead, so he married a much younger woman and got a similar number of kids. He died at the age of 79. His grandfather died in 1767 at the age of 84. His father died in 1746 at the age of 90 (although he was a priest).
Meanwhile on my Dad’s side, all his great-grandparents were born in Ireland and all his grandparents were born in Liverpool. The majority of his male ancestors from those generations died nasty deaths in their thirties, largely because the Industrial Revolution ground such people up and oiled the machinery of progress with their blood (literally so for his maternal grandfather).
So farming would have been a tough job but it was preferable to a lot of the urban options.
Yeah, that’s probably true for some farmers. Life was terrible, but life in the city was even worse.
the Industrial Revolution ground such people up and oiled the machinery of progress with their blood (literally so for his maternal grandfather).
Literally? I wouldn’t think blood would make for good oil for machinery, I’d have thought it was too sticky. And, since it’s water based it will evaporate quickly at high temperatures, so it’s not really suitable for most machines where temperatures can easily exceed 100C.
We’re STILL coming out from under that shit. Me and my father have a wood shop, and I have to get after him about eye and ear protection. And yeah, he’s an IT guy and I’m a mechanic, I was shown those gory training videos, he wasn’t. Things I’ve heard him say, “I’m wearing my regular glasses,” “It doesn’t sound that loud, it doesn’t bother me.” Especially with hearing protection, I think he’s just being macho. I’ve had sensitive hearing since I was a kid and sometimes I’ll just sit around in my ANR headset not listening to anything just…shutting the HVAC and the fridge and the rumble of society out.
If I look at my own family - my English quarter were all farmers and they did OK. They lived to a ripe old age (my gggg-grandmother died of “senility of age”, she just got old and something stopped working) and had many children, all living in pretty flexible multi-generational units that allowed a flexibility to take in waifs and strays (an illegitimate child could work the land just as well as anyone else, so a grandparent or uncle would always find room for them). A ggggg-grandfather found himself at 63 with his wife and 7 or 8 kids dead, so he married a much younger woman and got a similar number of kids. He died at the age of 79. His grandfather died in 1767 at the age of 84. His father died in 1746 at the age of 90 (although he was a priest).
Meanwhile on my Dad’s side, all his great-grandparents were born in Ireland and all his grandparents were born in Liverpool. The majority of his male ancestors from those generations died nasty deaths in their thirties, largely because the Industrial Revolution ground such people up and oiled the machinery of progress with their blood (literally so for his maternal grandfather).
So farming would have been a tough job but it was preferable to a lot of the urban options.
Yeah, that’s probably true for some farmers. Life was terrible, but life in the city was even worse.
Literally? I wouldn’t think blood would make for good oil for machinery, I’d have thought it was too sticky. And, since it’s water based it will evaporate quickly at high temperatures, so it’s not really suitable for most machines where temperatures can easily exceed 100C.
We’re STILL coming out from under that shit. Me and my father have a wood shop, and I have to get after him about eye and ear protection. And yeah, he’s an IT guy and I’m a mechanic, I was shown those gory training videos, he wasn’t. Things I’ve heard him say, “I’m wearing my regular glasses,” “It doesn’t sound that loud, it doesn’t bother me.” Especially with hearing protection, I think he’s just being macho. I’ve had sensitive hearing since I was a kid and sometimes I’ll just sit around in my ANR headset not listening to anything just…shutting the HVAC and the fridge and the rumble of society out.