Hi Rick, We may have talked about this before? I was lucky to have a part time job working at a mom and pop ice cream stand. My parents believed since they feed me, bought me clothes to wear, etc. I should wash the dishes and cut the grass without an allowance. So working part time at the ice cream stand cleaning the parking area, emptying the garbage cans, etc. (you know janitor type work) I was able to earn a few dollars every week to purchase model railroad items. But I believe when I was purchasing Athearn Blue Box kits, they were $1.98 and not long after that they went up to $2.25.
Ah, so you were a good kid! Unlike the entitlement teenagers we have now! OK, to be fair, not all are like that but I've seen my share!
Hi Rich and Doug, How true! Allow me to qualify my first disclosure. I probably don't need to and you don't need to read this if you don't want to. The $1.25 a week was were I started out at. Hey, I got raises as you'll see here. The dish-washing at home came under the weekly allowance but the lawn's I mowed happen to be for neighbors who paid me $.30 to mow their front lawns. The mortuary paid me $.25 per car polished. And If I was an extra good boy I'd get $.25 a week allowance. If I did my math correctly that's $1.65 And your right the blue box Athearn Kits were priced at $1.98 or higher dependent on the type of freight car or the prices charged by the hobby shop. Memories! Wow! The lawns I mowed, cut and trimmed was for some extra nice elderly widows. You could count on cookies and milk as a tip or chocolate cake with a soda. That is if you trimmed the edges and groomed the flower bed. It was more of a mission of love. I even went shopping for them and did that for free. As I got older I did earn monies by working for a small ranch just outside of Hollister, CA. Bucked hay, milked cows, cleaned out stalls and chicken coops. Then there was harvest time where we dug out the fruit lugs from the storage shed next to the barn, loaded them on a flat bed trailer. Hauled them into the orchards along with everything else we needed. Turned around and loaded the full lugs back onto the trailer and hauled them back to the apricot shed or sorting shelter. Learned to drive a tractor at 13 years old. Some younger. I enjoyed it. Helped with the delivery of two calves. Raised a bull...stop...now it sounds like I'm bragging. It's just that we kids and I don't care who we/you were, we got out and earned extra money to pay for new clothes for school and school supplies. What I had left over went to my model railroad. Should the planting season come early the high-school would let us out so we could go to work and help the farmers. Today's, society and the legislative branches of our state and federal governments make it so difficult or tough on kids. Work permit's, limited hours and so on. Today's generation doesn't know the fun they are missing out on. I can assure we did have fun. Think farmer's daughter and boy cowboy. Ahh...uhh...err, that's enough. What it all meant is my layout grew in size literally and my train equipment slowly, one piece at a time began to resemble a small fleet of diesels, freight cars and passenger cars. Some of which I still have today. Cost of track wasn't cheap. Sound familiar? Yeah, I know. I did it again. Off track.
Hi Rick, My grandparents had friends who owned a dairy farm. Us kids were always volunteered when help was needed on the farm and especially when it was time to bail the hay. I never learned how to drive the tractor, but it was fun riding on top of the hay wagon on the trip from the field to the barn Back then the hay was still bailed in square bails and stored in the hay loft in the barn. I agree, the younger generation is missing out on things that once was a normal part of our childhood. And that farm where I helped out as a kid, is now a housing plan. What was once country is now urban.
The farm where I grew up is now what we in the Pacific Northwest refer to as "McMansions". (You CAN'T go home again, as it simply is not there!) I have one of the real estate sale flyers for a house built EXACTLY atop the footprint of my childhood home, on that farm. An ugly mess of three stories, plus basement, with weird dormers and other garbage. The cost of re-roofing it, in coming years, will likely exceed $25K! When new, it was listed for only $875K. Bleh.
The same thing is happening here in Canyon Country, Idaho. Anywhere there is fertile land for raising a herd of cattle or truck farming...... housing is moving in and cutting up the farmers land. There should be a law. Oh, gosh...oops...what was I thinking. They'll screw it up for sure and farmers will end up with something that resembles garden spots.
Southern CA destroyed some of the most fertile soil on the planet with tract homes by the Irvine Company. Losing to much land to grow food, wonder how much longer we keep doing this stupid practice........
Exactly. But too many folks don't comprehend the dangers lurking here. We can import, until the day when someone decides to hold us hostage, or another condition interrupts the chain. Then we are in HUGE trouble. (Especially the city people!) I keep thinking about the old National Geographic video "Love Those Trains", where they ride a train eastward from California. SP as I recall. Nicknamed the "Salad Bowl Express"...
American farms are the most productive in the world. It takes far fewer people and acres of land to produce the quantities of food we now do. In fact, we have a thing in this country called the welfare system and part of this welfare system is the farm subsidy program that the government pays farmers to not grow crops. Between 1995 and 2017 a total of 369 billion dollars of tax payer money was paid to farmers. In the state of Kansas in 2017 the farm subsidy that year amounted to about $350 per person. But back to the topic of the thread. I bought a caboose for $26.95. Until that purchase the most I spent was $21.95 on another caboose.
Been following this from the start. My answer would have to be a bunch of transfer cabeese from a TB advertiser. Don't remember how much each cost, but I have a total of 12. Not sorry I did it, I love every one of them. My MT Ringling Bros. train wasn't cheap. Total is about $1,300. Prices of each car varied. Same with my American Freedom Train. To me, my first N scale freight cars from 1973 (Arnold UP 40' boxcar & Southern gon) are worth just as much as anything I've purchased since. They all have their place, so it all averages out. There is one thing I missed out on, so far. Found 3 sets of Red Caboose Iowa Interstate coil cars on Ebay last year. Although they were reasonably priced, couldn't afford them at the time. GF has already been informed she may be up for trade if I see the set of 6 again !!!
Not really. The land can't be planted with a 'cash' crop but it can be planted with a 'cover' crop which is then plowed under later. In some circles it is called 'green manure'.
I was referring to the land that was developed, not land that was undeveloped. And also if the land has not been covered with a different crop and just left to fallow.