Grandpa went high tech

no real world experience to share. It made me remember a British show on the Victorian era when machinery became available to the farmers.
The presenter said there are many first hand accounts of farmers yelling whoa to make the tractor stop, panicking and wrecking into something.
I imagine that happened with all sort of motorized vehicles at first.

 

Nope....he used a milk crate as a booster seat!

 

Question for you, Backwoods Savage, or anyone else that knows, I suppose...

I happened to be looking up old plat maps of my property last week, and noticed that Consumers Power (I think it's the same utility up by you as well) was using Reddy Kilowatt to encourage folks to electrify their farms and cottages in every edition up until the mid-70's. Live better with electricity, stuff like that...

This surprised me, since I thought pretty much everyone had electricity by the 50's or so.

Since it seems that your grandfather had a farm in your area, do you have any knowledge, or family history of when electricity came through to the farms up by you? (Or anyone else that happens to know the old stories.) Just seeing the old ads made me curious, and since you posted about your grandfather fairly recently, it seemed like a good place to ask...

1972:



1974 was the last consumers ad that I noticed:

 

Wow, must have been tough on those sub-zero winter nights. We're not so tough anymore, I think...
Ah, it was worth a shot on the electric question, I guess. Thanks for the answer!

 

SloMoJoe I have a little bit of information on electricity on the eastern side of the country. My grandfather owned 800 acre farm outside of st. Johnsbury VT. He sold the farm in 1946 for I believe 16,000. Two years later the co-op put power through the property and paid $17,000 for the right away. He always tended to grumble about that..

 

Thanks for the information Canadian border VT... I drove US 2 through St Johnsbury a couple of years back. Pretty country.

Was it dairy? That area must be better soil than SE Vermont was. Interestingly, I saw this sign a while back on Mt Equinox. It caught my attention, how it tied Michigan to Vermont, although I believe Vermontville, MI pre-dates the Civil War.

 

Yup SloMoJoe it was a dairy farm providing cheese milk butter eggs to St. J During the depression era. Apparently when the tax collectors came to get it in the mid 30s. A group of concerned citizens wouldn’t let them up the road and they might have had deterrent with them. They said the revenue er. You take the farm and our kids starve! Soil there was good but it was very hilly and Rocky. If you drove down the Western Part of Vermont My grandfather used to drool over the flat Lake delta lands.. Used horses until he sold it Because there wasn’t a single tractor that could do the backfield on the hill

 

Hats off to your grandfather... That must have been a tough way to make a living. What became of the land? Is it still a farm to this day? Sadly, my great grandfather's farm is now a big UPS facility. I'd love to see the old farm as an adult; I just have a few memories of it as a kid.

I took US 2 from where it starts at the Mackinaw bridge to where it dead ended in Everett, WA a while back, so back roads across most of the country, following the old Great Northern RR a good bit of the way. A couple of years back, I decided that I needed the whole US 2 experience, so picked it up where it starts again in the Lake Champlain islands, and took it into Maine, but ran out of time, before I could finish. Too many interesting things along the way. But, I did see the western plains you mentioned, and that looks like pretty good farmland. I can see why he was jealous! And great to see all the really old barns. Old here is only 100 years or so. Really old is 150 years.

 

80 acres, sugar woods, barns still there family goes up once a year for picnic. Rest is 20-30 acre lots with homes.

real plus to build a house next to power in 40s!

on 2 in islands about 10 miles from house if ya swim or own boat/helicopter