Hey Vesta, I was raised on a farm. I have made most of my livelihood working for farmers. I've watched farming in my area die. As a child there used to be 6 dairy farms within a mile or so of home...now there isn't a single one left in the county...and none in the adjoining counties. As for plowing the fields and growing grain, cotton, etc.. that all died out in the late 70's. Nothing around here now but cows, hogs, chickens, turkey factory farms and city slicker hobby farmers baiting deer.
You know, as a 10+ year old I made good money plowing small garden spots after school with a IH Cub tractor...then at 12 years old, daddy bought an 8N Ford tractor for me and I got rich 
By my senior year in high school I owned a Farmall MD and a IH TD-9 bulldozer. I mowed pastures, did hay baling, cleared land, built ponds. Call me a selfish, greedy, conservative republican if you'd like but I loved earning money back then...and I saved it...then I got a job and continued to work on the side....then I got what I call stupid...I went into business full time and hired people, mostly DUmmies, and things were down hill then because they felt you owed them a living equal to or better than the one you had.
As one older gentleman told me, "Didn't make much money but didn't we have fun".
Johnny, I too grew up around farmers, not in Maine but New Hampshire. I spent my summer vacations with Grandparents until Dad retired from the Navy and built a modern home on Grandparents property. The plans may have come from a Sears Kit, first open area home in the area and my friends thought it way cool. We had a half bath downstairs and a full bath upstairs. the full cellar became a game room.
Small school, 3/4 of the school had children whose parents were farmers of one sort or another. Only social life for us kids was the small Community Church-------I was perhaps one of the 6 others whose parents were not Farmers.
Those friends that were farmers fascinated me, these kids had their parents around from birth 24/7 all their lives. Me I had to adjust to seeing my Dad just for a few months each year. When he retired he took a 3-11 shift at a ship yard so I seldom saw him during the week.
I joined 4H but was allowed just one dog, no cats, and all my friends had cows, chickens, hogs, rabbits etc.
Being an only child I spent much time with my friends on the farms. I learned to candle eggs, milk a cow and goats by hand and to shuffle across the barn floors when the chicks were raised.
I soon learned why the kids thought my family was wealthy, the life of a farmer was so different from mine. My dad had a pension at 38, the farmers his age had another 30 years of work to retirement.
I was glad to pitch in and tread hay on a waggon, piled in loose and loaded into the barns with a metal Jaws thing on a block and tackle rig. Some of these farmers had no inside bathrooms and just the trusty red water pump in the kitchen sink. Had to at 10 years old remember to leave water to prime the pump for next use.
I saw the life of a farmer back then, the mothers of my friends looked to be about the same age as my grandmothers, none wore clothing like My mother or worked outside the home. Theirs was a hard life, a simple twisted ankle meant the woman had to take over duty's to the live stock in addition to their own duty's.
I saw the accidents also, a hay rake spine pierced a classmates lung, broken arms, legs and head injuries, burns some very bad and death to one boy that fell off the back of a tractor and broke his skull.
These days came to an end with the war and the draft. My classmates the boys could have gotten a deferment but ended up in Asia, my girlfriends married service men and left the family to either sell the farm or allow the tax man to take it.
Some did return, not to farm but to become business men and woman. I know of no classmates that today work the land for little reward, few want to grow old before their time or to raise a family as they were raised.
It is no wonder to me that the big farms are owned by a big company, sad as few kids will know the thrill of climbing on the rafters of a barn and jump 10-15 feet into loose hay, being allowed into a barn to watch the birthing of a baby milk cow, or horse.
[ in one case I was kept out of a barn when a cow tried to birth twins and the baby's were removed with force, bad luck I was told, one baby had to die as the mother could not feed two. I never did find out if this was fact or a superstition among the milk cow farmers.]
Farming, not for the faint of heart or anyone that wants to make money, Farming is a life or death struggle on any scale, sooner or later the animals we raise from birth end up on someones dinner table.
Then there is the terrable problem the cantaloupe growers faced when their entire crop was found to be contaminated.
North Carolina, down through the Dismal Swamp area, some farmers buy the fertilizer made from sludge, I can tell just when driving through by the acid smell. The small farms that use good old horse or cow manure smells sweet, a product of grass eating animals, to city folks this stinks but to me it is a comforting smell from the past-----
The Black farmers in the pictures may be the last of the small time American farmers, all or most of the big time farms are owned lock stock and barrel by foreign company's that hire Americans to work on American soil.
I do remember my Dad joking in the early 1960's that as farmers were being paid to not plant some crop or another he was going to check into if the government would pay him to not raise Hogs. He realised the insanity of the government at that time so long ago, unfortunately he was a bit scared of hogs, darn that money could have put me through a 4 year college, all he had to do was threaten to open a hog farm and there would have been a twice yearly check in the mail.
Things never change, just wear different hats.
