The old hay rake sits idle in the pasture.


very well to my part of the country, Polk County,
and almost never, maybe just a couple of years,
when the corn got ripe. But we always had this tall
corn from Iowa. It went in the silo and it made poor
silage even, because it was usually too green at the
time it froze.
     "Then hybrid corn came along. My dad used to
laugh at me when I talked to him about planting
alfalfa, and maybe getting some hybrid corn, and
things to improve his crop production. Well, now we
have taken the major hazards out of farming. It's
kind of amazing, but during these golden years be-
tween the thirties to the fifties, we learned to write
prescriptions. We just told a farmer that if he'd do
this, and this, he'd get a hundred bushels of corn
next fall. We just learned to apply the kinds of
science and technology that got predicted results.
All of this came out of our land grant universities."
     But if the old families and the older citizens re-


member the lessons of the past, the same spirit
family and of love of land seems to be present in f
youth of today. Our observation is that the valua
that guided the older ones are still important. Loo0
ing at the 80,000 Wisconsin 4-H Club kids and t
27,000 Future Farmers of America members,
simply have to admit that it's the rural youth w]
have their feet on the ground. Part of it is t4
nature of the way they were brought up. It waaS
family affair: Father, mother, the kids, all shar4
and shared alike, cared about the land and the ai
mals, and kept up the traditions of the family. It
a proud thing to think about - the people came
settle the land at such great sacrifice and with s
hard work, and now their families, their young1
ple, are carrying on in the same spirit, even thou
the way they do it on the farm today is vast
different.
     The young folks do have definite pride and i


90