I came here because I have 65 years of agrarian background that got pretty much shelved due to being permanently crippled by a more than likely drunken hit-and-run driver that left me to die in a ditch 11 years ago. It was my dream to farm. I spent the first 55 years of my life honing farming skills. My hope is to share the knowledge that I have acquired with any and all who wish to share in it.
For the first eight years of my life I lived on a dairy farm in Storrs, CT where the University of Connecticut Huskies are found. I and my two brothers had the run of the farm. I loved that time of my life. We would be given a nickel and would walk, unsupervised around the two miles into Storrs to spend it on the typical junk that enamors any young kid.
We moved to Arizona in 64 and everything changed. From having the run of an entire farm to living on a postage stamp urban lot. Peoria at the time was a farming community. There was an alfalfa field that backed up to our back yard, so it wasn't entirely citified living. I proceeded to fill the back yard with chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, a few ducks, etc., kind of Dr. Doolittle in miniature.
I got my first job throwing newspapers at the age of ten. I was too young, to get the route on my own so I conned my 11-year-old brother into getting it and then split it with him because 11 was old enough to have a route.
Work history as best as I can remember:
I started throwing the Phoenix Gazette at the age of 10. I kept a menagerie of chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, and rabbits in the back yard, I've worked in the cotton fields, tromped cotton, baled alfalfa, worked alongside the non-English speaking field workers from South of the border in the watermelon and onion fields, was a grocery carry out and worked at a pizza parlor all before graduating high school in Peoria, Arizona.
Learned how to weld in Vocational Agriculture shop. Pounded nails framing houses. Worked at a warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona that handled all of the cigarettes for the entire state. Was a teacher's aide in the Vo Ag department at Peoria High School. Delivered roof trusses around greater Phoenix.
Worked sorting feeder pigs in Ava and Thayer, Missouri and on a cattle on a ranch, doing everything from castrating/dehorning to building fence in Arno, Missouri,
Worked on a 300-cow, total confinement 3X a day milking dairy in Ellington, Connecticut and an 85 head 2X a day dairy in Randolph Center, Vermont. Worked at a sand-molded clay brick manufacturing company in Middletown, Connecticut and a Machine shop in Newington, Connecticut that did machine work for Pratt-Whitney Aircraft and some work for NASA.
Worked at a Rainbow trout fishery, and as a deputy sheriff in Ava, Missouri, I rebuilt hydraulic cylinders, (re-sealed, straightened bent chrome rods, replaced honed tubes and liquid-tight arc-welded, cut threads and machined any part necessary from steel or cast-iron stock in order to fix them.) I can arc weld flat, vertical and overhead, MIG weld, TIG weld, carbon arc, plasma cut, and ornamental ironwork. I've been a portion-controlled meat cutter, commercial sign installer, construction equipment transporter/operator (backhoe, dozer, track loader) and run dump truck. I've worked with draglines, wheel loaders, jack hammers and just about any kind of construction and industrial equipment and hand tools you could name. I've delivered class eight trucks all over the lower 48 and overland from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia, Canada for a company based out of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
I consider myself a cattleman. I judged dairy in FFA, took an AI course and studied embryo transfer. I can get a full breach calf out of a cow, raise it to slaughter, butcher it, cut it up into retail cuts, cook it and serve it to you.
