When Joanne and I were farming full-time way back when, winters were a financial challenge. A hard frost meant the end of our yearly income from produce sales, and we had to do whatever we could to pay our bills. (The rest of the year could be a challenge as well.)
We spent a couple of winters building pasture fences for others. We repaired some damage done to Edward Ballard’s pasture fences by timber harvesters on his property on Fletcher Ford Road. The tough part of that job was we had to carry the posts and wire into the woods by hand, then clear a path before rebuilding the fence. The big timber company responsible for the damage paid us well for our work.
We also built fences for Crawford Bailey on some property he had in Clayton County. What stands out about that project was one Saturday a magazine writer came by and interviewed us about what we were doing. We reluctantly agreed to have our pictures taken.
I’ve always been bad about wearing raggedy clothes for work, especially when doing a job like fencing where your clothes are likely to get torn to shreds handling barbed wire.
When we saw how we looked in that magazine, our only hope was that our friends and family never saw it.
We cut, split and sold firewood, and did other odd jobs.
One year we planted spinach late in the fall. When it warmed up around the second week of February, as it historically does, the spinach took off growing, and one Saturday we cut a pickup load and got a check for almost $400, which went a long way at that time. (That amount of money still makes a big difference.)
The best winter windfall we ever had came courtesy of our friend the late Bub Carden.
Pictured: The late Bub Carden sitting by his coal potbellied stove in Carden’s Garage.
A pasture he had been renting was sold, and the fescue grass he’d been fertilizing had gotten about knee deep before winter set in. Our area was experiencing strong residential growth, and mulch hay was in great demand.
Mr. Bub knew of a potential buyer and told us we could cut that field and sell it. He told us he didn’t want to bother with baling it, but looking back on it, it was more likely that he just wanted to help us out.
The grass was so rank that our sickle mower wouldn’t cut it, so we borrowed a disc mower, and it did the job.
It was ready to bale on a cold New Year’s Eve. When we drove through Woolsey, with Joanne pulling the rake and me following with the baler, a light snow was falling.
Luckily the snow stopped, our equipment worked flawlessly, and we raked and baled 1,105 bales, which we sold for $1 per bale to a customer who was responsible for picking it up.
Thanks to Mr. Bub’s generosity we were able to start the new year with a nice cushion in our checking account.
Happy New Year to you all, and we hope 2026 brings you the kind of peace and prosperity that Bub Carden steered our way back in the day.