Farms, Farms, and more Farms.

The biggest topic that we have been talking about in class is mainly western migration and farms. Mining and Ranching seem to be a huge topic as well. All of these topics are quite interesting because we learn many things that I didn't even know were possible. Like giving steriods to cows to make them huge and muscular to get more meat out of that one cow. They also have been able to genetically alter plants to make them bug resistant and even drought resistant. But back then things weren't so easy to start a farm and make a decent profit out of it.

When everyone moved West the problems seem to just come over and over. First, they had to get the money to even be able to pay the $10 for the farm. Then they needed to be able to take everything and their family on the journey to the west to reach the farm. Then they needed to work the land which was the hardest part of it all. The west isn't the most moisturized part of the U.S. so it was really hard to get plants to grow with such lack of rain. But once it did rain it would just float above the surface and wash all of the topsoil away. Even if it didn't rain the wind would blow the topsoil away then too. So that would mean they wouldn't have to good of dirt or soil to work with. Also because of having so much land the time to plow it and plant everything took time.

But industrialization soon came into play. They made machines to help plow, and tractors, and wheat thrashers and a bunch of other good stuff to help time go by faster and production a lot faster. These new things were good but they had an impact as well. First, the specialization of the machinery like a wheat thrasher costs a lot of money to by and the farmers already being in debt went into debt further just to buy it. Then since its a "wheat" thrasher they would only be able to plant wheat or mainly wheat to put their investment to work.

There were many types of farms from small ones owned by one farmer to big ones that were worked by alot of farm hands and they were able to obtain more efficient plows and such like grain spreaders and steam powered threshers. There were farms called Bonanza farms which were huge farms run by big businesses and operated by professional managers. These farms basically focused on cash crops. You can see a big improvement in the production and skill level of farming from then and now. Now we are able to produce things much faster and much more efficiently and even make super huge diesel cows. =]