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The Bennett Century Farm Fred A. Bennett II - FB TT:Okay Mr. Bennett where were you born and raised? FB:I was born on Bennett property, what we call Slaughter Neck. And my Dad bought this place what is the Century Farm and we moved on it when I was five year old. TT:What were your parent's names? FB:My father's name was Edgar H. Bennett. And my mother's name was Ella M. Bennett. TT:When were they born? FB:Oh, oh. TT:Good question, right? FB:I can't give you the exact year right now. I can get it and give it to you. TT:Okay. RB:(Wife-Ruth) Do you have it here anywheres? FB:I have it on the tombstone. RB:In the cemetary. TT:Okay we'll look at that later then. What did they do for a FB:Farmed all their life. TT:Okay. Describe your family's farms. What types of buildings, what kinds of animals and crops were raised over the years. Like down through the years. FB:You mean down through the years? Through the years we started out with my..... Now you want me to go to my Dad or what or just eh? TT:As far back as you can remember. FB:As far back as I can remember on the farm that I was borned on my Dad started out with about three milk cows and we got up to seventy-five or eighty. And when my Mother passed away, my Dad he wanted it, he and I were fifty-fifty in business together and he wanted to quit. So I bought him out in 1954. That's when I started buying him out. And I sold the cattle. My son came along and he didn't want to... He didn't like to milk cattle so we went into a broiler business. And that's where we are today in the broiler business. I don't know if I got ahead of something where something should be or not. TT:Where did you go to school? Did you go locally? FB:I went to Milford School. TT:What was it like? Is it the same today as it was then? FB:Oh no. No way shape nor form. I started to Milford School when they consolidated the schools. My brothers and sisters went to a country school. It was right back of the farm where I was born and that's where I always wanted to go to school because my brothers and sisters did, but they started me in Milford School. TT:Was Milford a newer school? It was like newer, okay. An updated education. FB:And school buses. That's when school bus started and that's..... I started my first year with the school bus in the first grade at Milford School. TT:Oh, okay. Now your did your brothers and all, did they have to walk to school? FB:Walked to school. TT:Now how far is the school from your farm? FB:Oh it was about a quarter of a mile. TT:Oh. FB:Cross the field. No road, cross the field. TT:Oh wow. So this Route 1 which is out in front of your house now.... FB:It used to be 14. It was called 14. So when they put the dual through they..... It was Route 1. Now the old 14 goes off through Argo's Corner. TT:Where abouts is it? FB:That's right here. You turn right off up here further. TT:Oh the road before your farm here. Off of Route 1. FA:I'm setting this in here with you so you'll know where it is and everything. TT:What kinds of activities took place throughout the years on your families farms? Celebrations and things like that? FB:We didn't have too many celebrations. What we knew was eh... We had dairy cattle and peas and lima beans was out main crop. Outside of that what we grew like corn and hay was for the livestock. And what my Dad sold mostly was peas and lima beans to eh.... It was a local cannery. His name was George Draper and we grew for them. Then we went for Phillips Canning Company. Then different ones as they come in we grew for them. TT:Oh, I see. Do you still have crops that sell now? FB:Yes. We've been in the peas, lima beans but right now we're mostly in soy beans and wheat and corn and barley and mostly small grain crops now. TT:What did you do for fun growing up? FA:Play with the neighbor's kids. FB:I got up.... My uncle let me have a pony and on Sundays mostly for I had to work through the week even when I was a kid. TT:Did you get paid monetary for working or the pony was your...? FB:Well the pony didn't belong to my Father. It was my mother's cousin and I always called him Uncle Elwood and he let me have a pony until I got my license. That's how I had a pony. And on Sundays we would go to other boy's houses. Through the week we didn't know.... We worked. And since I was six year old I've milked cows and I cultivated and I worked in the fields. And I had to. TT:So that was your payment then? Your pony was your payment? FB:Well I didn't get much payment. I got my clothes, all I could eat, a little bit of spending money, and when I started to go running around like most boys do I got two dollars a week. And of course I lived home and I got my..... I didn't go hungry and I had clothes. Not like clothes like they probably have today. But, you know, we went to church and we had shoes for church and we had shoes to go to school with. TT:What type of church did you go to? FB:We went to the Methodist Church right up the road here. That's where I was raised and that's where I went to church. TT:So you had chores every day of the week then not...? FB:When I came home from school, we didn't have electricity, no, no, I had to get the..... My Dad had a cart that my Grandfather who was a blacksmith on my Mother's side and he built my Dad a cart that you pushed by hand. And when I got home from school I had to fill that cart up with wood out to the woodpile, bring it in and put it in the woodbox in the porch. That's my job. Then I had to go milk cows. I had to pump water and I had to help my Dad. So since I was five year old I have been to what we call the Century Farm now. And it's been down through the generations back to the early 1800s we can trace it back. TT:What was your farm community like? FB:What do you mean our farm community? TT:The area. FB:It was just a farmer lived here and a farmer lived the next place. And most every farmer had a little herd of cows and they grew just like we did. RB:Had a little country. FB:Had a country store and my Dad would go to it every night and I would go with him. And we was talking about the schools awhile ago and when I started to Milford School I didn't like it because I wanted to go to the country school. When I came home of nights with my lessons they were the same as they were in the country school only a different method of doing the work from the country school to the Milford School, town school. And maybe some of my brothers or sisters would try to help me and they was doing the method that was in the old country school, but it was different than the method in the Milford School. They would tell me I was wrong. We would get into a little argument. I got disgusted and I didn't much time, anymore time than I could going to school. TT:In the difference in the schools. In the country school did you have electricity and things like that? FB:Not at that time. TT:No. But the Milford School was the newer technology? FB:It had electricity. No there was no electric around here til the first electric..... My Dad on this Century Farm was one of the first ones. There was three that night. It was on July the 19th, 1938, about five o'clock. The REA had started. Roosevelt when he was President got us all electric out in the country. And my Dad and my uncle and a neighbor down the road was the first three that was hooked up to electricity and that was in 1938. TT:Okay. FB:I can take you back when I really started in the business with my Dad. My Dad owned what we call the Century Farm and we bought another farm that was my aunt's in 1947. It joins this farm. And I owned a little place myself with my Dad and myself. We farmed it together like fifty-fifty. I had a farm that I had bought and we had one together and he had this one. Then in 1954, July, my Mother passed away and my Dad wanted to retire, so that's when I bought him out. And I have been just working ever since to farming. And it is a struggle. TT:Because of the economy? FB:Yes, the economy and the weather. We get low prices for what we sell. Still do today. We work on forty year ago prices today. What crops were forty years ago in pricewise. But what we buy to operate is sure not on forty year ago prices. And when somebody wants to sell me something I say, "Yes I'll buy any amount you got, whatever you got if you just sell it to me for the same price accordingly that I'm selling my crops for". TT:What type of equipment as opposed to years ago would you say, like how has technology changed? FB:Well when I grew up, like with my Father we had, well we had three mules and three horses. We had two..... Well we had walking plows, but when I came into it my Dad had two riding plows. They were Oliver- 83 riding plows. TT:Is that the brand name? FB:That was what the name of the plow was. It was all iron and you hooked three mules to the one, or three horses whichever, but my Dad had two. It so happened we had three mules and three horses. So we'd hook three horses to one and three mules to the other. And myself of my brother did most of the plowing on the farm. TT:How long would it take you to do just an acre, about an acre? How long would it take. FB:I really don't know. You could plow for a week in a twenty acre field. Then when you got that done you walked back of the equipment driving the horses to work the ground and get it ready to plant the crop in. TT:Back then you used an Oliver was it called? FB:They were Oliver- 83 riding plows. TT:So what do you use today? FB:Well today we have eh.... One plow's a ten-bottom plow. We call it ten-bottom plow. We have another eight-bottom plow. TT:And what is the brand name of them? FB:One is a Case International. We have two..... What do you call it tractors, the big tractors? FA:Four-wheel drive. FB:They're two four-wheel drives. One of them pulls the ten-bottom plow and one of them pulls the eight-bottom plow. TT:Oh you mean like encased where it's airconditioned and radio and.....? FB:All tractors are airconditioned and radios. And if one breaks down nobody can't operate until that airconditioner is operating. FA:And the radio's going. FB:And the radio's going. TT:What a difference isn't it? FB:And we used to..... This is July and we'd cut wheat and put it in what we call stooks. We call it sheaf wheat and you stook it. We had a binder with three horses and then two horses in the lead. That would be five horses. We said we had trailers in the butt, two horses in the lead. I used to ride one of those horses in the lead to steer across the field. The lead horse. TT:And that's when you did your bundles? That type of thing? FB:Then we had a help to stook them. They'd set there to a...... TT:It was manpower then, right? What is it today? FB:We had wheat threshers that would be stationary then and they'd thresh then and they'd blow wheat out the spout and make a big pile of straw. And you'd catch your wheat in the bags down here as it come out with the grain on what we call baggers. TT:So that was the manpower. Now today it's a little different. FB:Today we have combines. TT:Okay. FB:We got three combines today. TT:And the combine does it automatically? FB:Automatically. TT:What other changes have you seen in farming since you were a child? FB:It's been a great change. I went from....... Well my Dad when he sowed peas out in the field he used to sow peas with a teakettle. You know what a teakettle is? You know it sets on the stove and ??????? TT:Uh huh. FB:Well, that's the way they started with peas as they planted them in the field, with a teakettle. Then we got a drill. Well we still drill 'em, the peas. But it's been a great change. TT:But you drilled it by hand before or by...? FB:You just take a hoe by hand and go out and make the rows in the field. TT:And now machinery does it today? FB:Now machinery does it. The teakettle is steamed all out. TT:So you would say it's less physical labor now as opposed to years ago? FB:It's less physical labor, but it's still a lot of hard work. TT:So farming you would say is really a hard job to do? FB:Farming is a hard job to do. Now people ride by the road that never farmed it, see everything working that looks like.... You know, my there, but it's not what it looks to be riding down the road. There's a lot of heartaches. There's a lot of bad seasons. A lot of low prices. A lot of high expenses for the stuff that you have to operate with and it's quite a task. TT:Why do you believe your family's farm has survived? FB:Well I'm going to give you the only reason why it survived. This may sound silly, I don't know. And I'm not eh..... A lot of people use the word religion. I don't even like the work religion. My faith is in God Almighty. So that does away with religion and He has took us through. TT:Can you tell me some stories, like on your farm some folklore or anything like that that has taken place over the years? FB:No I cannot. TT:No, okay can you remember like doing........ FB:What the big recreation day that we had back years ago. On the third Thursday in August. That's when they set that date somehow that that was the end of their farm season by working all summer. They had a little vacation til harvest, you know as far as the field work. So the third Thursday in August all the farmers went to Slaughter Beach on big Wednesday's Nights and Big Thursday's. That's what they were. TT:And Slaughter Beach is what only a couple miles down...? FB:Slaughter Beach is a couple miles down right. So Big Thursday was the day that all the farmers got together and had ice cream and all goes with a picnic. TT:That's neat. From the history of your biography that I read when did it become incorporated, your farm, and how? FB:After I bought my Father out and my son came into part of it. He was advised by a lawyer and a patent that with today's situation that we would be walking into business-wise with the farm, they advised us that we be incorporated. And I took their advice. And we incorporated the farms what we had in Bennett Farms, Inc. in November of 1974. And it's still in the corporation. We have some that's not in the corporation. And me and my son have some property together in a partnership. Then we have the farm of which I'm the President and he's the Vice-President and my wife's Secretary. That's the corporation. We have school busses now and that's into a corporation to itself. And the same goes for ????? President, Vice-President and Secretary. And we have now, we have two hundred thousand broilers. TT:Do you sell them local or? FB:They're on a..... What they call it? We grow for Con-Ag. Ain't that
what it is? Con-Ag and on contracts. FB:Feed conversion. The better, the lead feed and the least gas, the least that you can do and the more you can make the better you do. TT:Would you set up like someone I would know as like Perdue or something like that? FA:Same thing. Different company. FB:Same thing. But you don't grow chickens on a market where you sell yourself. They're on a contract with companies. I can't go out and..... We couldn't even go out and put three hundred chickens in and put them on the market and sell them. TT:Have you had any problem with this samanella disease? A lot of chickens have been getting this disease. Have you have ever had any problems? FB:We've not been bothered with it. Again we thank the good Lord. TT:Can you tell me a little bit about the farmhouse you were raised in, Mr. Bennett? FB:Alright when I was five year old. Just wait a minute. Let me get myself together. Now you don't want a history of how this farm came into being? TT:Just the house itself. How many rooms and things like that. FB:Oh you just want the.... Just a minute. Now we tore the back part down and put new up. That's been what five years ago. I'm just trying to think how to..... TT:Take your time. I'm in no hurry. FB:Do you want to know where the farm really, or do you just want to know what the house is now? TT:Just what was it like when you grew up. The house itself. How many rooms? Did you have a bathroom?
TT:A pump bench? FB:We called 'em pump bench. TT:And what is that? FB:It's just a big wooden bench that's been built and the pump. And you have your little zinc. FA:Like a basin. TT:Oh. Do they call that a drysink today? FB:I don't know. But we called it pumpbench. Now I'm giving it to you the way I was raised with just a plain old flat country English. That's all I know anyhow. Course this long porch and then the pump and the pumpbench. Then there was a kitchen. And there was what we called a diningroom and there was what we called the livingroom and there was what we called the parlour. And there was a big frontporch. And upstairs there was a..... TT:What was the difference between a livingroom and a parlour? FB:Well back in those days they had livingrooms and they parlours. RB:Everybody had parlours. FB:The kitchen was furnished as a kitchen. It was the oldtime way of furnishing. Cookstove, that's why I brought the wood in I was telling you about. And then you had what they called the diningroom. That was if you had some big company come in you fed them in the diningroom. And when they used the wheat threshings we'de use the diningroom then because they took the kitchen for the..... The women all got together and they helped one another from farm to farm. It took the kitchen to do, for half a dozen women to operate to get the dinner. See we..... Back then we didn't call it lunch and dinner. We called it breakfast, we called it dinner and we called supper. We didn't have a cup of coffee for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch and dinner. We had three full meals. My Mother cooked three full meals every day. TT:What did you diet consist of? A lot of vegetables or? FB:It consisted of hog meat, chicken that my Mother would go out..... She had maybe fifty laying hens. She took the eggs from these laying hens and we would take them every Saturday at about twelve o'clock to a hatchery and she sold the eggs from those chickens. And that's how we got our bread and butter and stuff like that. And the only thing we bought at the store at that time would be bread and much of that for she made her bread through the week. But on Saturday's we'd get a loaf of bread for Sunday. We grew our own wheat. We took our wheat to the mill and had it exchanged the wheat for flour. And she made her bread out of the flour. And we had hog meat. And we had lard that come from the hogs. It was all done ourselves. We used to have hog killings in the wintertime and that would run us until the next hog killing. And if she wanted a chicken to eat she'd just out in the chicken yard and ring a chicken's head off, clean it, and we'd have chicken. But about the only thing she would buy from Milford would be the coffee and soap powders and things you... But as far as what we eat was growed on the farm. TT:Your diet came right from the ground. FB:Right from the farm. And they say most recent hog meat will kill you today. Now my wife's Father he died two years ago. He was ninety-four and he'd never eat anything in his life but hog meat and the things on the farm. So after he got some age he went to the doctor and the doctor checked him all over and he said, "What should I do?" He said, "At your age what you've been used to just keep on doing." TT:That's great. Did you have a local doctor? Did he make housecalls? FB:Yeah, yeah. There's five. I have two brothers and I have two sisters which that makes five of us. My Mother was never in the hospital for the birth of any of us kids. They was all borned..... I was borned over here where my brother lives and my younger sister was borned on the Century Farm. But we just lived an ordinary farm life and that's what we're still doing. TT:What would say was some of the happiest times on the farm? FB:I didn't think at the time that it was but..... TT:Just get yourself together. It's no problem. Just take your time. FB:My happiest times were when I grew up on the farm. TT:Would you tell your grandchildren if they came to you and said that they wanted to be farmers would you discourage them or would you uplift them? FB:Well, he's my son. He loves to farm. Well my son, like I say, we're in here together now. I'm sixty-seven, he's forty-five. He's got a son. He's twenty-one. He's on the farm with us, working here on the farm. I can't drive him off, but I know there's eh, with farming today there's a lot easier occupation he could take than farming. But he seems to like the farm work and I'm not going to tell him not to do it for I've never seen a thing yet, as hard as it might be, that you're not able to make a living. It may not be the best and when it comes down to the accumulation of life if you handle it right you can accumulate your land. But if he would go today, my grandson would go today and get a job where he could get a pension in twenty-five years and get the benefits that there is in life today, he would be better off with that then with this farming. But I'm not going to tell him to not do it. I'm not going to tell him to do it. I'm going to let him make his own mind up and his father I'm sure is, you know, do the very same thing. But I would like to see, it's been in the family so long, I would like to see it go on and exist. It's going to be a lot of hard work for somebody to keep it going. That's up to my son and up to my grandson. TT:How many buildings are on the farm as opposed to original property? FB:Original property? TT:Uh huh. FB:Well we built those two broiler houses. We built them in '67. They wasn't on the property. We built them ourselves or had them built. Then we built two more in '76 and we had another older broiler house. It was put up in '68 and now we have destroyed it. We've just put up a new house in 1990 and another new house in 1991. TT:It's really grown. How long ago did you say Route 1 came in here? Was this Route 1? FB:They bought the right-away for this Route 1. It was 14 until the year it was changed. But they bought a right-away for it in November of 1958. TT:Was it always in front of your house or was it over further when it was 14? FB:No it's always been right here. Only it was a single lane. Now it's a double lane. When they made a double lane they changed it from Route 14 to Route 1. Now the old 14, like I was telling you, cut off right here and goes back right through where there's two stores at Argos Corner. And that's still what they call Old 14. But this is Route 1 right on through. TT:?????? FB:My wife lived home for two years with my Father and Mother and I still worked on the farm. TT:Okay was home the Century Farm? FB:Century Farm, that's right. Then the farm next to the farm a fellow by the name of Fred Sharp owned it. That's right on down, the next farm down on your right. FA:The fruit market's there now. TT:Hickman's Fruit Market? FB:????? used to be. FA:It's nothing now. FB:It's nothing now, but anyhow there was a farmhouse there and a farm. And in 1945 we rented the farm. And me and my wife moved down in the farmhouse. We rented the farm and it was put right in with our farm. TT:So you didn't work the farm at that time, you rented the farm out at that time? FB:That's not, not the Century Farm now we're talking about. I rented a farm to go have a house to live in. We were living right in the house with my Mother and Father for two years after we were married. RB:We had one daughter. FB:See what I mean? And that was on the Century Farm. So we rented a farm off'n a fellow by the name of Fred Sharp and I moved out from my Mother and Father into that farmhouse myself. But I never left the farm for our milk cattle and everything was here and I did the milking. You see what I mean? So we had a daughter at that time was born while we lived home with my Mother and Father, Marlyn. And he came along when we was living down in the rented farm. And we moved down there in Nov...., December.... RB:That's Fred the Third that came along. FB:That's Fred the Third. We moved down there in December of 1945. So we gave the farm up, what we had rented, in 1949. We lived there for four years. So he was born about the second year we were there. FA:'46. FB:'46 yeah. So he was born the next year. Then we bought, this is not in the Century Farm but it was a Bennett farm for years and years. My Father and myself bought it in partnership. So in the fall, in December of '49, my Father and Mother moved up on it. We rebuilt the farmhouse. They moved in it. We gave the rented farm up and me and my wife and my oldest daughter and Fred the Third we moved up in the Century farmhouse. Then we had another daughter came along after that, Ella. And so I raised my family at the Century Farm home. TT:Are any of your daughter's still in farming? FB:Yeah, yeah one of them is, yeah. She married a Webb, Norman Webb over at..... TT:Is that a local farmer? FB:Yeah, over by Greenwood. FA:She ??? for the Department of Agriculture. FB:Yeah. So he grew up and he didn't want to work away. He worked one winter up at Dover at Latex. He didn't want to work away from home so he came home and that's when we built our first chicken broiler houses. And then he got married and we built this house here. He lived here. Then my wife wanted to come here so we moved here and he moved there and that was in 1971 in that house. TT:And this house we're speaking of now is still on the Bennett Farm property? FB:Yeah. So he can tell you some things. You want to ask him? TT:Now I'm going to interview Fred the Third. Okay Fred. You were born..... When were you born? FA:December 9, 1946. TT:1946. Okay you were born at the Century Farm house? FA:No. I was born at the farm they rented. TT:The farm they rented, okay. But you grew up at the, on the Century Farm? FA:Yeah. TT:Okay can you tell me a little about growing up on the farm? FA:Well, the first thing I can remember really doing was, when they had lima beans I used to drive the tractor with the rake. I'd rake the beans over in like two rows I guess. TT:And how old were you then when you started working on the farm? FA:I don't know. Eight or nine or ten. Somewheres in there. And I probably fed calfs, you know. FB:Come home from school, you know, and had chores to do. TT:And that would be one of your chores? FA:Yes. TT:Okay where did you go to school? FA:Milford. TT:You went to Milford to the new Milford school. Okay what did you do for fun on the farm, Fred? FA:Slept. FB:Went to help the neighbors out. TT:And that was another farm, right? FA:Now not really. It was just a boy down the road and come summer we used to get on bicycles every day, me and him. And I'd go down there or he'd come up to my house, you know. ?????? farming. What we did we'd get on bicycles and go down here to Draper Canning Factory. There was two or three boys down there and we'd play around down there. TT:Do you think it was hard work growing up on a farm? FA:Well, not really. You know it was a..... After I got old enough to throw down silage out of the silo, that was the hard thing I had to do. TT:And when you went to school would you say the fellow students that you went to school with come from farming communities also? FA:The ones that eh.... See I was in Ag and FFA so most of my friends were yeah. TT:FFA is Future Farmers of America, correct? FA:Right. TT:Was that around Mr. Bennett when...? FB:No. TT:No, that's fairly new. FB:I don't know whether they had it when I went to school or not. I'm going to be very honest with you. I didn't go really that high in school. I didn't graduate. Like I told you I kind of got aggravated because I couldn't go to the country school, I went to Milford school and it was a different thing altogether. And my family, brothers and sisters and Mother, I knew what the teacher had told me how to do. I knew that and when I'd do my lessons they'd tell me I wasn't right. So I guess I've been a little bullheaded all through life and I got eh.... Well let's say I got mad. That's the old country way of putting it and I kind of gave the school up. TT:What grade did you go to in elementary? FB:Seventh grade. They told me that I would have to go to school 'til was sixteen or through the eighth grade. I didn't do either one. I come home and my Dad wouldn't make me go to school, but he let me work. But when I worked he didn't have to hire another man, you know. And I worked these horses and I milked these cows. TT:What time did you day begin? FB:Five o'clock in the morning. TT:What time did you day usually end? FB:Until. There wasn't any time to quit. If we were busy you just work on. We have worked all night long when we was hauling lima beans on wagons with teams. You had to take your turn with other farmers and you'd have to stay there and haul it on to a..... Go to a bean-viner. And you would take your turn. And sometimes you would set there all night to get your turn to unload a load of beans. And you'd pitch that off by hand with a pitchfork. TT:Are you still working today on the farm, Mr. Bennett? FB:Yeah. Well I'm on Social Security. I just eh..... I have to get in once in awhile. TT:Have to get your hand in. FB:He does the main manageing today. We talk it over together, try to work it out the best we know how. TT:So you're the two main families on the farm then, Mr. Bennett? FB:???????? TT:You and your son are the two main families on the farm? FB:That's right. TT:So then basically you're doing all the work then? FB:Well, we..... Our Grandson, his Son is with us and we have a couple of hired hands. TT:Do you have anything else you'd like to add, anything else you'd like to tell me? FB:Oh after you get gone I'll think of a lot of things. No I didn't know whether you wanted eh..... Well, I really didn't know what you wanted. But I didn't know whether you wanted to go back on, you know, how long we'd been here as a family or what, when I started. But my growing up has been, I've never worked a day in my life away for a salary nowhere. TT:So all of your life has been farming? FB:And I used to go to Georgetown in World War II. I was old enough to go in the Service. Every three months I'd go to Georgetown to the Draft Board. They'd give me a deferrment for three months. When that three months was up I'd go get another three months deferrment. I did that for two years. So the last time I went, his name was Mr. White, he was on the Draft Board, Chairman of it I guess. I guess that's what you'd call it. He said, "You've had enough deferrments." And he said, "You wouldn't mind going and fighting for your country would you?" The War was right in the heat of it, World War II, at that time. And I said, "Would you want to go?" And that's all me and him ever said. So I got my word from Georgetown when to be at Georgetown, six o'clock of a morning to get on the train going to Philadelphia to be examined. So several different boys that was the same thing that I was, they'd got deferrments, but they'd give us enough deferrments. So they put us on the train and we went through the physical. So about the last word that I got was from the one guy up there I remember, he said, "Go home and get yourself in order. You'll have your greetings within ten days." And that was in 1945. The War got over before the ten days was up and I never got any greetings. So I never worked off the farm a day in my life, never worked off for a paycheck. I've just been right here. The whole time that I worked home with my Dad he gave me two dollars a week, I used the family car and I was just one of the family. And when I set down to the table I got all I wanted to eat. TT:What kind of a car did you drive back then? FB:When I became sixteen year old I went to Dover, the very day I was sixteen, and I'd been dropped out of school, but I got my driver's license the very day I was sixteen. For back in those days you could get a permit so many days before your sixteenth birthday. Then you could go on your sixteenth birthday with this permit and they'd take you around town and if you passed the driving you got your license. So I was always one I could do what I wanted to do. And I could of went to school and I could have done it. But I just got aggravated with the whole situation. I like cattle. I like horses. I like the farm and that's..... I didn't think there was anything in this world but about twenty-five milk cows and six head of horses. And I stayed here and I got married when I was eighteen. I was still getting two dollars a week. I got a raise to five dollars a week after I was married awhile. TT:Did your wife come from a farming community? FB:Yeah and I have just been right here all my life. TT:So if you had to live your life over again, Mr. Bennett, would farming be your choice again would you say? FB:It eh..... As I was raised up on the farm it probably would. There's been other things that I thought I'd like to do, but there's things that would have been maybe a lot easier than this, but I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied but not contented. TT:Now what do you mean by that? FB:Well, a person that eh..... See my Mother was a..... My Father was a easy going kind of a man. And my Mother was altogether different. And from the time that I was fifteen year old my Dad let me do in the fields whatever I wanted to do. Whatever I wanted to put in he let me do it. So I started back with these mules and these horses and these plows and riding culivators and everything was done by hand. And we got our first tractor that my Dad ever....He didn't want a tractor, he like horses. In 1944 we bought a.... And it was right during the War and you couldn't get tractors, but Mr. Brown Thawley had two tractors come in. TT:And who's that? Is that a local....? FB:He was a local International dealer right here in Milford and I talked my Dad into buying this tractor. My Dad let me do as I pleased. If I wanted anything to advance the farming he didn't say nothing. Go get it. We'd pay for it somehow. We've made several trips to the bank to borrow some money. TT:What was the bank around here at that time? FB:Well the main bank at that time was the Milford Trust Company. Then there was a First National Bank which now is the Wilmington Trust Bank. And the Milford Trust Company now is the Delaware Trust Company. FA:Bank of Delaware. FB:Bank of Delaware. I bent my glasses yesterday and I'm not seeing to well. TT:There's truck leaving right now, a longbed, what's in the truck? FB:Well that is.... We're combining wheat. TT:That's wheat, okay. FB:Now we have four, you call them trailers to two tractors. Used to we would, like I say, we would bind this wheat with this binder. Now we got three combines, six trucks hauls the grain out of the field. TT:Now where's that going? FB:That's going to Milford Grain. And I'm storing it. We have four units in Milford Grain and we're storing it in Milford Grain to see when we might think we can get the high payment to let it go. FA:I think we've missed it though. FB:I think we missed that. FA:Last winter. FB:And it's quite interesting, farming. FA:You've always got something to think about. FB:Lot of disagreement. A father and a son can have an awful lot of disagreement. TT:What about the weather? Weather's a big part of farming right? FB:The weather is a big part of farming. A lot of farmers have irrigation systems. We don't have any. Like I said awhile ago we don't have any insurance of anything. When we sell a crop we sell it for what..... The one we sell it to tells us what they'll give us for it. We don't have any way of setting a price on it. When we buy something we don't have any way of setting a price on that. Wherever we buy it from gives us a price what they're going to charge us for it. So it's an uncertain job, but it's no more uncertain job than getting up of a morning and going back to bed of a night. One day I was coming out of the bank in Milford and a fellow that lived in town he had never farmed it. Course I was made to go to church when I was young. My Mother and Father always went to church. They didn't send us kids, they took the kids to church with them. And church has been a big part of my life. I've left different churches and helped start new churches. That's been part of my life. I enjoyed that. What I call independent churches to get out of the religious part of the church. TT:What's an independent church? What's that? FB:An independent church is made up of a group of people that's been every denomination that you can think of. They get where they can't agree with the denomination what it stands for so they'll get together and they're all denominations. TT:So it's like non-denominational? FB:A non-denominational church. What we just believe, like I said not the religious part, but we believe in God Almighty looking after us and taking care of us. TT:You don't follow a doctrine is that right? FB:No. We just...... Me, myself and I, I follow, try to follow, where God presses on me to do. Like I told you this fellow awhile ago, I was going in the bank and he was coming out, he got down the street aways he hollered for me to come back. So I went back. He said, "You know something." I said, "What is it?" His name was Fish or they called him Fish. I said, "What is it, Fish?" Here's what he said, "You damn farmers make me sick to my stomach." I said, "Well what have we farmers done to you to make you sick to your stomach?" He said, "I look up of a Sunday morning and you're all dressed up. Nice automobile. You're going to church and you're the biggest damn gambler there is on earth." FA:Cause we were farmers. FB:Cause we's farmers. Well you can call it gambling, but I don't. My farming I don't know what I'm going to do next. TT:Why does he consider it gambling? FB:Because you don't know what you're doing. It's risky. You spend a lot of money in the spring. You don't know what you're going to get back next fall. I've come out and didn't have enough money to pay out in the fall. So I said, "Now you wait a minute, Fish. Before you tell me I'm gambling farming". I said, "Did you get out of bed this morning?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Are you going back to bed tonight?" He looked right down at the blacktop. He stood there and he was speechless. He said, "No, I don't know." Well I said, "My farming is no more gambling than you getting out of bed or me getting out of bed. We don't know if we're going back to bed tonight or not." He said, "You know I never looked at it that way." And I said, "The only way that I could gamble in my farming is my neighbor I go to him and I'll bet him in the spring of the year that my crop will outdo his. I'll bet him that he could have my crop if it don't. That would be gambling. But right now I don't know what I'm doing farming, don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm doing it by faith and I'm not doing any gambling." TT:What do you think your crops are going to do this year? What is that out there now? FB:That's soybeans. I don't have the...... TT:With the weather? FB:Well, right now we really need rain and if it don't rain we will come up like I have come up years before and can't pay bills. I could tell you story about that now, but he's tired of listening at it and you probably wouldn't want to hear it. TT:No, no. FB:I say I'm going to tell you this. I say he's tired of listening at it, but this is great experience to go through. He was in school. He wasn't in the farming. It was back in the fifties. One year I came up, you paid your fertilize bill in November.... Back in the fifties, I believe it was the early fifties, my son was still in school and I was farming. Not too big. I had dairy cattle and we farmed it with the peas and the beans and the wheat and the corn and I had one colored fellow helping me on the farm at this time. And I remember very well that it was a very hot and dry summer. We didn't get any rain and the crops that we had to sell were very cheap. And we paid our fertilize bill, the dealer would let us go from spring to November to pay our fertilize bill. Didn't have to pay a thing. That was the way that it was done back years ago. Didn't think about paying a fertilize bill until November or December. I bought eighty-five hundred dollars worth of fertilize off the local dealer in Milford. And it came November and it hadn't rained very much all summer. The crops were very cheap and I didn't have any money when November came to pay anything, fertilize bill or nothing. All that I had was just a milk to keep my family with and it wasn't too big either because we didn't have all that many cows. So when November came and I had not money I hated to go to this very good friend of mine that sold me the fertilize and tell him that I had no way of paying him. And I didn't want to go to the bank and ask my good friend in there for money to pay a fertilize bill that I couldn't pay. For that wouldn't be -- wouldn't sound too good in this banker's ear, you know, for I already had borrowed some operating money to operate the farm. So November came and I went to the fellow and I said, "I don't have any money to pay you. I can't pay you." Well he said, "You'll work out something down the line." I said, "I don't know what for winter's coming." So I kinda wore some bedsheets out wringing and twisting down through a couple of months how to get that fertilize bill paid. So morning in January had come. That was over in another year. The fertilize bill still wasn't paid. So I got out of bed and I said, "I got to do something". Mr. Brown Thawley was a good friend of mine. He'd trust me for anything. He was in the machinery business and he was in the Milford Trust Company, a director. And I was dealing through the First National Bank. And Mr. Jim Davis was president of the bank. One was a director in this bank that I did business with and was doing my financial business over where, in the First National where Mr. Davis was. So I got up one morning and I got in my car and I went up to Mr. Thawley's and I said, "I need a new tractor" and I couldn't even pay my fertilize bill. He said, "I got just what you need." Took me out and showed it to me. It was a new International tractor. This was in January. I said, "How much is this tractor?" He said, "The list price is eighty-five hundred dollars." My fertilize bill was eighty-five hundred dollars. So I said, "Mr. Thawley, I'd like to have that tractor. Spring's coming but I couldn't buy and pay for that now." He said, "You don't have to worry about that. You can get the tractor. You can have it and you can pay me down through here as you can." He never took a note or nothing. So I went to the, over to the bank where I dealt with, to the president of the bank. I said, "Mr. Davis I was looking at a tractor and I don't know whether to buy it or not ??????." He said, "You want that tractor, you get it." I said, "Now wait a minute, I got to have money." He said, "How much money do you need?" I said, "Eighty-five hundred dollars." He got right up, made me out a note like they do in the bank, put that eighty-five hundred dollars in my checking account. Now I say here I am, I'm in the middle. Now there's Mr. Thawley's in the Trust Company Bank. He's the director. Mr. Davis is president of this bank and they're good friends. What will I do? And I had this man settin' out here waiting for eighty-five hundred dollars. So I couldn't say nothing he had done put the money in my account. I went back to Mr. Thawley. I got out of the bank and went back to Mr. Thawley. I said, "I'll take that tractor." Now I said, "I can't pay you nothing now." I said, "In three months from now, that'd be in March, I'll give you half of it and then I'll give you the other half when I sell my peas or something." Taken that long shot. "That's fine." I took that eighty-five hundred dollars, I never told the president of the bank and I never told Mr. Thawley, and I never told the man where I got the money that I paid the fertilize bill. I paid that fertilize bill. March came. I went back to the president of the bank I said, "Mr. Davis I got to use that tractor and I got to have some operating money." He said, "What do you want?" I said, "I need thirty-five hundred dollars." Got right up and made me out another note. Three months later and I went and gave that to Mr. Thawley. I was living off of my milk check to keep going. TT:Just a note, just a promissory note? FB:Yeah just a promissory note. So I got it all finished, I got it all done, nobody never knew, but I was going to tell Mr. Thawley and Mr. Davis for they would have laughed, but they passed away before I got up the nerve to tell them. RB:Maybe it was a good thing. They probably knew it. TT:That's good. FB:So you know, it's quite interesting. TT:It sure is. FB:You get a lot of experience with eh..... Well I don't have education, a school education. Oh I can ..... But I take care, now we're tilling two thousand acres of land, we got two hundred thousand chickens, we got four school buses. I'm not bragging I'm just telling you how we have..... TT:That's great. FB:And I take care of all the book work and I don't have no education either. RB:You have an accountant. FB:Well I have to have things ready for the accountant. And one time the accountant said, "Fred sometimes it's good that you make things, you know, misunderstanding in the tax." So I said, "That's fine." So when he come back the next time he said, "Fred, I didn't say over-do-it." TT:Do you do any canning? RB:I used to. I don't anymore. There's just the two of us now. I just baked some zucchinni bread. A couple loaves today and a couple of loaves yesterday and gave them away. FB:She's just a plain old farm girl. RB:Yeah, I was raised on a farm too all my life. FB:There's eleven head of them. RB:I had ten brother's and sisters and I made eleven. FB:And her Mother and Father took her out of school when she was in the eighth grade. And she's the second to the oldest girl and she raised the kids. RB:I had to help out with the children and I worked in the field too. TT:Don't you feel her coming from a farm helped her a lot? Helped her to understand farming better as opposed to if you married someone who wasn't raised on a farm? FB:Like I say as I got my license the day I was sixteen. And the kind
of guy that I had been in school with other kids I was backward and
I hated to walk down the street sometimes. So she didn't know me and
I went off the first night that I was sixteen. My Dad had bought a right
brand new forty-one Chevrolet when I came sixteen. Right brand new.
He let me use it three nights a week and I never used it no more than
that. He furnished me gas. He furnished my two dollars a week and my
gas and my car and my clothes. The third night that I went off she was
a settin' along the street with her sister and I stopped and picked
her up. FB:Well, it's just been since that. And I was sixteen. When I was eighteen I got married. And I have been here that length. RB:Turn that off a minute. I want to tell you something. TT:This is the completion of an interview on July 8, 1992, given by
Theresa Tuchi of Delaware State College interviewing Mr. Fred Bennett
II and III and Mrs. Bennett of the Bennett Century Farm, Milford, Delaware.
Thank you.
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