Roy ROGERS still farming at age 85 -- 2012

ROGERS

Posted By: Joey Stark
Date: 5/19/2012 at 13:29:59

"The Fairfield Ledger"
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Front Page

85-year-old farmer plants his 69th year of crops this spring
By Julie Johnston
Ledger photographer

Roy ROGERS of rural Fairfield won't be 86 until July, but has been continuously planting and harvesting on the farm where he was born since he started farming back in 1944. Retirement isn't part of his vocabulary. This is his 69th year to plant a crop.

Monday, ROGERS was in the field at 6 a.m.

"Well, I slept yesterday afternoon [Sunday] so I had plenty of rest," he said as a way of making light his early rising. "I'm not as good as I used to be, but I can still get things done."

In addition to the 100-plus acres he puts in on his own, he does some custom work for another farmer, with the help of son Danny and grandson Andy.

Times have changed considerably on the farming scene since ROGERS began his agricultural career. Back then ue hsed a two-row horse-drawn planter with a tractor hitch, which he pulled with his dad's brand-new John Deere B tractor instead of horses. Now, he drives his recently restored 1964 John Deere 4020 Diesel and pulls a six-row planter.

Speaking about the old tractor, ROGERS said, "Dad was fortunate. That was during the war, you know, but he got rubber tires on that tractor. A lot of them only had steel wheels."

Rubber was one of the rationed items that were pretty much unavailable to the general public with everything going toward the war effort.

ROGERS said the biggest change in farming is in the way harvesting is done.

"I am probably one of the few old farmers still living who shucked corn by hand with a shucking hook," comment ROGERS about the early years. His sense of humor intact, he related he recently had a couple of bankers out to the farm and told them he wanted them to appraise a cornpicker. With his ever-present chuckle, he said he then showed them his shucking hook. "They got a kick out of that."

Since his hand-shucking days, ROGERS said they went modern and got a two-row pull-type cornpicker, followed by another, then a mounted picker. His first combine was an Allis-Chalmers two-row pull-type. In 1976, he purchased the 4020, used. This past winter, Danny and Andy restored it, and gave it a new paint job.

"We completely went through it and made sure it is mechanically sound," said Danny.

The pair also added a couple of steps to make it easier for his dad to climb up. Apparently inheriting his father's sense of humor, he added with a chuckle, "Dad has it pretty easy. He can drive to plant and harvest and deliver the grain to Richland, but if he needs anything mechanically done he just calls Rogers' Ag Repair."

Rogers' Ag Repair is the business Danny has operated for 26 years, and in which his son Andy now works as well. They keep all of Roy ROGER's machinery in good repair and get it ready to go in spring.

ROGERS has always been conservation minded. A district conservation award was presented to him in the 1960s for his efforts to conserve the soil. Contours, terraces and crop rotation are his norm to prevent runoff and erosion.

"We always rotated our crops, oats, hay, corn, then beans when we started growing them," he said. "The only fertilizer we had was manure from the livestock we raised and green manure. There weren't any chemicals for weeds back then."

Danny added, "Dad taught me about contour farming. He always farmed around the hills and had buffer strips."

"I still rotate crops, but only between corn and beans. I don't have hay or oats anymore. It's probably been 30 years since I used a moldboard plow. I just disc cornstalks and try to leave as much trash on top as I can," said the elder ROGERS.

Regarding yields, ROGERS said, "A good [corn] yield back then was 55 or 60 bushels to the acre. A few years back, I had corn that made 200 bushels [per acre]. The last couple of years weren't so good."

"When I was a little boy, I remember there weren't may soybeans. I was born on this farm. Dad bought 52 acres from Clyde Coffin for $100 an acre. It's wild. I spend more now [per acre] just to put the crop in than he paid."

ROGERS has had some vision problems with his left eye for which he is seeing a doctor, but the right eye has perfect vision, and his hearing is better than most.

Regarding his general health, ROGERS said slyly, "Well, I don't have all original parts anymore."

He has had both shoulders and both knees replaced.

"The nurse at the clinic calls me the Bionic Man," he said. "Now, if I can get a brain transplant, I'll be in good shape."

Most anyone would be glad to be in the shape ROGERS is in at nearly 86, son Danny included.

"It is a challenge for me to look ahead and think that I will be in that kind of shape when I am his age," he said.

The agile ROGERS quickly walked over to the 4020, climbed up and resumed his disking. It is hard to imagine that he will quit farming anytime soon.

*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s) mentioned.

Jefferson Documents maintained by Joey Stark.
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