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Wilbur Maney appears in Foxfire's 40th
In the Spring 1975 issue of The Foxfire Magazine, students asked Wilbur Maney, who was then the agricultural extension agent for Rabun County, to identify some of the factors causing farming to pass out of favor as a way of life. Following is his opinion on the subject, beginning with an answer to the question of what was the biggest problem a farmer in Rabun County had to face. "Rabun County rain. With a slow horse, you can turn an acre . . . well, it takes quite a while . . . and we get eighty or ninety inches of rain, most of it coming around April and May, and you got to have your corn in by May 15 to let it grow good. Even though they had all the time they needed, the weather didn't always cooperate with them. That's it: getting the corn in the ground in the spring and, once it is made, gettin' it out in the fall of the year. You can't go in the field with a mule and a wagon when the wheel goes down a foot deep in the ground in the mud. "When they stopped the open range, that stopped a lot of agriculture. Two things that had an effect on that were the railroad trains and the highway. The train was killin' a lot of animals, and as the insurance companies found out, the animals that the train hit were the best ones in the herd. So the railroad people said, 'Let all these people put these animals in a fence.' And there was no insurance on cars, and the motorists said, 'We are tired of hittin' these animals. If a farmer wants to keep an animal, let him build a fence.' "Most of the land on Betty's Creek is in grass now - not much farmin.' Once it was all in corn and small grain. Corn is too expensive to grow now. People can make more money doin' other things. Now it cost $110 an acre to grow. That includes fertilizer, seed, labor, and machinery. You get anywhere from 140 to 150 bushels to the acre. Right now, corn is sellin' for $3 a bushel, which would bring you $300 clear profit, but this is the highest corn has been in my lifetime. Usually, corn sold anywhere from $1 to $1.50 a bushel. Back durin' the Depression, I guess a lot of people worked all day for a peck of corn, and it was at one time, the main crop. They fed it to their hogs, gave the shucks to the cows. They used every bit. "And when there was open range and the hogs could make it on berries and chestnuts and acorns, they could get really fat in the fall of the year 'cause there was a tremendous food supply from the chestnuts alone. But I don't guess there is a dozen hogs on Betty's Creek now. You have to feed 'em corn, and it isn't worth it. Most people don't like to feed hogs - don't like that odor. And then hog cholera killed most of 'em out in the late thirties. :Back in those days, they weren't the same type of cattle we've got today. That has all changed, too, over the years. Cattle then could survive on a small amount of feed. The cattle now would starve to death on the open range. Today's cattle are not bred for such. They are raised up to put the feed to 'em, and if they don't get it, they starve. "People quit keepin' cows because their families aren't so big anymore. As the times changed, people started sellin' the milk they didn't need. Okay, the laws began to change, and they put their milk in five-gallon containers, set it along the side of the road, and a man would come along and haul it to a creamery. Then people began to say, 'Well, this is not the most sanitary thing.' The law said that you've got to keep this in a milk house, keep it cool. Then with electricity came the bulk tank, and they are very expensive. Now only a few people own a cow." Wilbur Maney
Spring 1975
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