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Clay Mclivain
2714a 380th St.
Madison, KS 66860
Brett Stubbs
414 Cherry St.
Madison, KS 66860
Clay: my grandfather moved here in1946 the house and barn are still standing and... Cents
1946 of course it was homesteaded by other people
Blake: right
Clay: but that's when they took ownership of the house witch was right after world war 2
The depression my dad was born in 1936 and my grandma and grandpa owned a place
near Madison and the depression than they lost it they moved several times to Hamilton
to Lamont and lived in and rented several places till 1946 when they bought this place
Blake: so have you found it harder um now than back in the day than now
Clay: what do you mean by harder
Blake: like to work all the land because of all the manual labor
Clay: the...when grandpa moved here dad was a little boy it was more labor intensive
everything required manual labor they could go out and work ground all Day and get
done what was assumed to be big at that time
Blake: right
Clay: today you can go out and work in the field the same amount of time but you will get more
done so as far as they could do with what they had and today we still do that
Blake: yea
Clay: but you have to have larger equipment do get a lot done
Blake: so do you just farm or do you do cattle also
Clay: cattle and row crop both
Blake: so like how has sprays changed like pesticides
Clay: oh my when I was a boy you would net even know what the word pesticide was or I didn't
as far as farm chemicals there was none you fertilized it and my dad also sold it to the
farmers around here who didn't you would put it would and it was just amazing to see
how it grows
Blake: yea
Clay: my gosh we went from a fifty pound sack to today we are getting in a semi truck full of
liquid fertilizer tomorrow um putting it on in liquid form
Blake: yea
Clay: and it's just uhh that just one large change um the spray is the chemical we use for weeds
or our beans just makes it so you can do more acres so much faster back than you
planted your crop than you ran a cultivator you could plan on cultivating your corn at
least three to four times
And you went out there then it was real small so you could get the weeds and than you
would cultivate to keep the weeds down now we walk in there and plant than drive a
sprayer and spray round up and 24-d
Blake: so when you first started planting how many acres did you plant
Clay: around one hundred acres fifty of wheat and fifty corn the combine we used took five rows
at a time compared to today where we can take sixteen rows at a time.
Blake: thank you for your time and letting me interview you about the history of the farm