Oral History Interview with Ben Tussey

1983OH02.10

1983OH02.10

Family Farm Oral History Project

Interview with Ben Tussey

August 3, 1983

Conducted by Ginny Scott

© 1983 Kentucky Oral History Commission

Kentucky Historical Society

�

Kentucky Oral History Commission

100 W. Broadway ( Frankfort, KY 40601

502-564-1792 ( (fax) 502-564-0475 ( history.ky.gov

Use and Quotation Policy

Authorization must be granted by the Kentucky Historical Society (which includes the Kentucky Oral History Commission) to use or publish by any means any archival material to which the Society holds copyright. To obtain authorization, users will submit a completed Use Agreement to the Kentucky Historical Society Special Collections & Reference Services. Fees for all uses, excepting non-profit or other use, with the intent to enhance understanding of or appreciation for Kentucky’s heritage will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and added to the cost of reproduction.

Users may not alter, distort, or change in any way the text or the image to be used, unless otherwise authorized by the Society. Researchers are responsible for obtaining permission to publish by any means any material held at the Society but to which the KHS does not hold copyright. The Society is not responsible for any copyright infringement.

Users will not quote or otherwise reproduce in part or in whole any archival material, without citing the “Kentucky Historical Society,” and without giving explicit written acknowledgement of the collection from which it was obtained, as designated by the Society.

Users will present to the Kentucky Historical Society Special Collections & Reference Services one (1) copy of any publication using materials held by the Society or will provide any other proof of appropriate acknowledgment and citation as the Society will designate.

Only material that will not be physically damaged by the process of duplication will be copied. The Society reserves the right to withhold permission for the reproduction of any material involving unusual difficulty or great risk to the original.

This is an unedited transcript. Quotation of materials from this transcript should be corroborated with the original audio recording if possible.

The following is an unrehearsed taped interview with Ben Tussey, a dairy farmer in Jackson County, Kentucky. The interview was conducted by Ginny Scott, for the Kentucky Oral History Commission. The interview was conducted at Mr. Tussey’s farm on August 3, 1983, at 2:00 P.M.

An Interview with Ben Tussey: Scott: First of all, I’d like to thank you for letting me come. I know it’s a busy time for farmers. I’ve had trouble finding farmers at home, as a matter of fact [laughing].

Tussey: ( ) out of heart, they just leave home [laughing].

Scott: Is that it? Shoot, they all told me they were working! I’d like to start out with you telling me about your personal background—when and where you were born, who your parents were.

Tussey: I was born at—at the time I was born it was Middlefork, KY. Post office right here.

Scott: Right here in Jackson County. Right here on this farm.

Tussey: Yes, right here on this farm.

Scott: Oh.

Tussey: I’ve farmed all my life, except 13 years, I worked for the REA.

Scott: Here in the county?

Tussey: Right here.

Scott: But you’ve never left this farm?

Tussey: No.

Scott: Were your parents from here?

Tussey: Born and raised right here, my daddy was.

Scott: And what were their names?

Tussey: Scott Tussey and Hattie Tussey.

Scott: Were your grandparents from here also?

Tussey: No, my grandparents come from Virginia; Jake Tussey, he come from Virginia. And as to Grandpa Durham, I don’t know where he come from. I don’t have the history of it.

Scott: But your Grandfather Tussey started this farm?

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: How many acres was it then?

Tussey: It was about 300 acres of it, at that time, and there’s been some sold off of it, and some added to it, and this that and the other. In my operation right now, there’s roughly about 400 acres.

Scott: That’s a lot of farmland.

Tussey: Well, there’s a lot of timberland on it, too.

Scott: What percentage is timber?

Tussey: Oh, there’s about one-third of it.

Scott: Is it good timber?

Tussey: Young timber, it’s been cut over, and worked over.

Scott: Now what part of the county are you located in?

Tussey: Well, I guess, you could say the western part of the county.

Scott: How far is it from McKee?

Tussey: It’s nine miles, back into McKee.

Scott: Now what’s on down this road?

Tussey: Just farm land.

Scott: What’s the next town?

Tussey: Livingston.

Scott: And how far is that?

Tussey: It’s eighteen miles to Livingston.

Scott: So you’re not too far from the Rockcastle line.

Tussey: No, I’m six miles from the Rockcastle line.

Scott: Well, it seems like everywhere I go, I go through the Rockcastle County [laughter]…a little bit of it.

Tussey: Yeah, it’s just like coming here, see you come through….

Scott: …through Rockcastle.

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: I thought maybe it was closer over there, than eighteen miles.

Tussey: No. Rockcastle is, well I can get to Rockcastle quicker than I can any other county.

Scott: Yeah.

Tussey: I’m about eleven miles from Laurel County line.

Scott: Well, then Clay County’s not….

Tussey: Oh, Clay County, I’d say it’s twenty miles from here.

Scott: It’s on the other side, on the other side of 421.

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: Well did you have brothers and sisters, Mr. Tussey?

Tussey: Yes ma’am got three brothers, and three sisters.

Scott: And do they live here? Did they stay here in the county?

Tussey: I’ve got two brothers, and a sister that lives here in this county. And then I’ve got two sisters and a brother that lives in Ohio.

Scott: All of them farmers that live here?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Well, did you inherit this farm? That’s not a good question is it?

Tussey: No, I bought it.

Scott: You bought it from your parents?

Tussey: From my heirs.

Scott: So it was split, at one time.

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: Sometimes, they’re just handed down, and sometimes they’re split up.

Tussey: Well, it was never split, only, I mean, there was heirs’ parts in it, and I just….

Scott: Just bought them out.

Tussey: Yes, bought them out.

Scott: Well, you farmed all your life. You grew up farming, with your father.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: Tell me about farming then. The tools…how’d you manage your crops and that sort of thing, what did you grow then?

Tussey: Back then, we growed corn and tobacco. We started growing tobacco in about ’37 or ’38. We grew corn, as long as I can remember.

Scott: How much tobacco did you have?

Tussey: Well, I’ve got of my own, I’ve got about a 9,000-pound base, and I lease, I lease in about 10,000. I grow about twenty….

Scott: Twenty thousand.

Tussey: …between twenty and twenty-one. Just according to the season.

Scott: That’s good money.

Tussey: Sell so much, 10% this that and the other on it. Last year I sold…I believe it was 24,000 pounds.

Scott: My gosh. What’d you make last year; how much did it bring a pound?

Tussey: It averaged, all the way through, it averaged $1.84 after the floor expense.

Scott: How much was floor expense last year?

Tussey: I believe fourteen cents.

Scott: Is that going to be higher this year?

Tussey: Yes, it’s going to be higher. Well they charged us a nickel last year for the support price; they’re going to charge us a dime this year.

Scott: So that’s going to cut into your profit some, isn’t it?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Well, how much does it cost you to get that to market?

Tussey: You mean fertilize, or…?

Scott: Everything.

Tussey: Everything. The best I can figure, with what I lease, and the fertilize, and the labor bill on it, it’ll cost me in the neighborhood of about 80 cents a pound.

Scott: So you’re still making a dollar…

Tussey: Yeah, roughly a dollar.

Scott: A pound.

Tussey: Or maybe a little better, yeah.

Scott: Well, that’s still good money, even with all the expenses. Tobacco is….

Tussey: ….is still, yeah, it’s one of the best things that’s going, I mean, for this part of the country.

Scott: Well, did you, how much tobacco did you grow, when your father had the farm?

Tussey: We had it on base then, I mean acreage. There wasn’t no such things as leasing tobacco, or nothing. You just had a base, and you grew it. We growed about, on the average, two acres, two and a half.

Scott: Do you know how many pounds came off of that then?

Tussey: Well, used to, if we got 900 pounds to the acre, we was a flying, when we first started out [laughter]. But as time went on, and about the last year that we was on acreage, I believe we growed about 3500 pounds to the acre.

Scott: With the fertilizer, and everything coming on.

Tussey: Everything, and the build up of the land, you know, over time.

Scott: Of course, it didn’t cost as much then.

Tussey: Oh no.

Scott: To raise it, but you still make a better profit…

Tussey: No, but we sold it for a quarter a pound [laughs].

Scott: That’s a lot of work for a quarter a pound! How’d you set it out?

Tussey: We used to set it by hand. We set it all together with machinery now.

Scott: But used to you set it with a peg?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Pegged it in?

Tussey: Or an old hand, they had a hand tobacco setter.

Scott: A jobber?

Tussey: Yeah, if it was real dry, you set it and give it so much water with this setter. It took two, one to run the setter, and one to drop the plants. You could set about an acre a day, if you’d get a good early start.

Scott: With two people?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: That’s still a lot of hard work.

Tussey: Yeah. In ’39…. I believe it was, now I believe this is right, my dad growed an acre and a half of tobacco, and took it to the warehouse and sold it, and they sent him word that—wrote him a letter and told him that he owed him a dollar and half to pay the floor expense on it.

Scott: Oh no! [laughter] Oh no! A year’s work!

Tussey: A year’s work, and it didn’t bring enough to pay the warehouse for the…

Scott: Did he grow it in ’40?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Tried it again. Was that the only crop he sold? Is that the only thing he grew to sell?

Tussey: Yes, that was the only thing. We only at the time just kept enough cows to give us kids milk, and always kept the heifer calves, and stuff, and maybe sell 4 or 5 steers a year or something like that.

Scott: Just people who wanted beef cattle.

Tussey: Yeah, or take them to the market, you know, and sell them.

Scott: And the corn, you grew that to feed?

Tussey: We tried to grow enough corn to go to mill on, and have our cornbread, fatten our hogs and feed our team.

Scott: So you had hogs too?

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: Just have one team?

Tussey: No, we had two teams.

Scott: Two teams. That’s a little bit cheaper than a tractor, isn’t it?

Tussey: Yeah, I’d say they’re coming back; I say they’ll be back in style in ten years.

Scott: Think small farmers, gonna….

Tussey: Well, that’s the only way a small farmer can operate.

Scott: …can do it. He can’t pay his expenses any more, can he?

Tussey: No, well what’s the use in working if you’re going to just swap money. I bought a new tractor back two months ago, $26,000—one tractor.

Scott: That wasn’t with any machinery, or anything, just the tractor?

Tussey: No, not a piece of equipment with it, just to buy the tractor.

Scott: Gosh. Will that tractor pay for itself?

Tussey: Yeah, in time to come.

Scott: How long?

Tussey: Well, it’ll just about have to run trouble-free for ten years.

Scott: Small farmer couldn’t….can’t do that.

Tussey: No, I mean, that is where we’re ahead. You’ve got to either be big enough to pack the load, or you either gonna get out.

Scott: Well, that’s what’s happening.

Tussey: And here’s where it is. The small farmer owns enough land to he can raise enough food to survive on.

Scott: To eat on.

Tussey: But he ain’t going to invest no money, or do no excess work to help produce food for the other part of the nation, if they don’t get something done for them.

Scott: What could be done?

Tussey: Well, they could pay the farmer a little more for his product. They could cut his machinery repairs down. My point of view, and the way as I look at the economy and the way I think about it, there ain’t but one thing that’s destroyed everything, and that’s labor unions [laughs].

Scott: There’s a whole lot of people…

Tussey: Maybe you believe in it, and maybe you don’t….

Scott: No.

Tussey: That’s why I paid $26,000 for a tractor out here.

Scott: When it’s worth….

Tussey: When it’s worth, well, say roughly, if you went to buy it at its worth, you’d pay $10,000 for it.

Scott: And the other $10,000 or $16,000 went to…unionized labor.

Tussey: Unionized labor, that’s right. The way I see it, we’re all equalized; we’re all going the same way—rich, poor, whatever. There’s nobody in the United States that is worth over five or six dollars an hour.

Scott: But yet, we have people working on that tractor, on an assembly line, making 25 and 30 dollars an hour.

Tussey: Yes, 25 and 30 dollars an hour. Well, you see who’s paying for that? Me, the farmer.

Scott: The farmer.

Tussey: All right, when I go to sell my product, they tell me what they’ll give me. They don’t tell me, they don’t ask me, “What do you have to have?”

Scott: Well, you don’t have a choice, either.

Tussey: No, no.

Scott: You have to sell that product, and you have to buy back.

Tussey: That’s just like I milk, I milk 63 cows. I can’t buy dairy feed, I can’t pay electric bill, and pour my milk out, to get more money.

Scott: No, you have to get rid of it.

Tussey: Yeah, that’s like the government see stepped in and they put 50 cents a hundred on my milk. They take that out of my check before ever I get it.

Scott: Now what does that go for, that 50 cents?

Tussey: In order for them to support the milk. Instead of them taking 50 cents out, they ought to give us 50 cents.

Scott: Well, that supporting the milk, is that why we’ve got all these….surpluses?

Tussey: Yeah, to some extent, to some extent. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got to have rules and laws and this that and the other but DI, that’s who I sell my milk to, that’s a big organization. They keep our money two weeks before they give it back to us.

Scott: Before they give it back to you.

Tussey: They’ve got two weeks to operate on.

Scott: Sure.

Tussey: They take so much a month out of our check to operate on, capital gain. Then, they’re not allowed to sell the milk for what they want to sell it for, they have to sell if for what the government sells it for. Just like, if the government wasn’t in it, DI instead of having all this surplus milk and cheese and butter, that they’re giving back to this class of people that won’t work, they could sell it to these foreign countries.

Scott: And eventually some of that money would trickle back down to the farmers.

Tussey: Yeah, well here…if I’m making candy, and you’re selling it, if you can sell it for a dollar a pound, and I can produce it and get it out, and you make a little—I make a little. All right, if you raise it to a dollar and a quarter, I’m a looking for a little bit back to me.

Scott: Right, the trickle down.

Tussey: That’s the same way the milk does. If DI can move the product and get rid of it, sell it to the foreign country, that’s begging for it, and if they can get fifteen dollars a hundred over there for it, why not; they can afford to raise our price. But now, they’re going to cut the support price on our milk, see, a dollar. Well, then they’re going to put another 50 cents—that’s two dollars they’re going to take off the farmer flat right there.

Scott: Two dollars per hundred pound.

Tussey: Yes, per hundred pound weight. Well, we’re getting thirteen and a quarter for milk right now, and we’ll be getting eleven and a quarter.

Scott: Well, this doesn’t seem like the time in the economy to be cutting anywhere, and the farmer, the least one.

Tussey: Well, here’s what’s going to happen. When they wake up some morning with nothing to eat, they’re going to say well why haven’t we done this, or why haven’t we done that.

Scott: Well, why do you think that happens?

Tussey: Well, they’ve all just kicked the old farmer around any way they wanted to [laughs].

Scott: Is it because those people that’s making those rules and decisions, aren’t farmers?

Tussey: That’s it, that’s it.

Scott: Do they not know enough about farming to…?

Tussey: They don’t know enough, or got, well…it’s your politicians who’s done it.

Scott: Well those politicans….

Tussey: They don’t give a snap for nobody, only their self, when it comes right down to the brass tack. Here’s the way I see a farm. You take, I may, …me and that boy of mine, will run a hundred thousand dollars a year in farming. That’s milk, tobacco, baby calves; we’ll run through a hundred thousand dollars. Well, in our operation, we’ve got around three hundred thousand dollars in investment, tied up in cattle, milking equipment, machinery, and land, and fertilize.

Scott: You’ve probably got more than that.

Tussey: Yeah, I’m just saying that. You take three hundred thousand dollars at eight percent, and see what that would make. But we’re barely lucky enough to put grub on the table for us to eat, and meet our…buy a few pieces of new equipment occasionally, just like a tractor, or something.

Scott: Well, is that the reason so many small farmers are just giving up, and going out to sell their farms, and put that money on interest?

Tussey: Yeah. If I had what I’ve got invested in land, machinery and cattle, I’ve got eighty-something thousand dollars invested in milk cows. If I had all of this money, and put it on interest, I could live like a king, and never turn my hand.

Scott: And yet, you’re not even counting your time.

Tussey: No, no.

Scott: All your life is an investment. Why do you do it?

Tussey: Well, I just enjoy it [laughs]. I just enjoy it. And I’ve raised a boy, that says…I’ve talked to him and begged him to let me sell it, and he won’t agree to it for nothing.

Scott: Would you have sold it, if he’d let you?

Tussey: Yeah, I’d sell it right now.

Scott: Would you?

Tussey: Yes, I’d be foolish for not selling. Because I see where things are going to worse before they get better.

Scott: I think they are too. Well, how old is your son?

Tussey: He’s 22.

Scott: And he’s going to be a farmer, I take it.

Tussey: Yeah, he practically, well he does about all the work now. The biggest thing I help with is milk.

Scott: How long does it take you to do that?

Tussey: Takes about three hours a day.

Scott: What time do you start?

Tussey: Start at six in the morning.

Scott: And at six at night?

Tussey: Yeah, well, since it’s hot weather, we may hold off until seven….

Scott: Until it gets a little bit cooler.

Tussey: Let it cool down a bit.

Scott: I guess you don’t know gallons; you know pounds. How many pounds do you milk a day?

Tussey: A day? Well, we’ve been milking about 3,000 pounds a day.

Scott: Now, is that right in the tanks, and then they pick it up?

Tussey: It never hits air; from the time it leaves the cow, it never…no air don’t get to it. All lines are vacuum sealed, and tanks, and….

Scott: Well, that’s got to be a big expense too, for all that equipment.

Tussey: Oh yeah. I started milking six years ago. I paid a dollar a day for electric. Now I’m paying near four dollars a day ( ). Through these hot months, it’s running a little over four dollars a day. Through the winter months, it’ll run about four.

Scott: Well, now, is that…does that runs your barns and your equipment?

Tussey: That’s just the milking parlor.

Scott: Oh, just the milking parlor. That doesn’t include your house.

Tussey: No.

Scott: So you have to make a big profit on that milk.

Tussey: Well, you’ve got…I mean, that’s like a said there back a few minutes ago, by the time you take your electric bill, your insurance, your repairs, phone bills, your groceries, this that and the other, you ain’t got nothing left out of a hundred thousand dollar operation. Feller said, “Lord, look at the money you made”—they don’t see the feed that you buy, they don’t see the veterinary calls you’ve paid for.

Scott: Is that a lot, does that run a lot a year?

Tussey: Well, some years, some years maybe I won’t have a veterinary more than once or twice, then some years, I may have him twenty-five times, it’s just according.

Scott: Well has this hot weather affected your cows any?

Tussey: Yeah, it’s caused them to have a little loss in their milk.

Scott: But you haven’t had any mastitis?

Tussey: No, no mastitis.

Scott: A lot of farmers are having bad problems with that.

Tussey: Well, I’ve got a neighbor that’s had a little mastitis problem, and I don’t know why, but he has had it through this hot weather.

Scott: They said the last week they were just having fits over it.

Tussey: I’ve had one cow in the last two years to have mastitis.

Scott: You’ve lucky.

Tussey: I’m bad lucky.

Scott: I’d say. Well, do you ever run beef cattle, as opposed to dairy?

Tussey: Yeah, yeah. I run beef cattle back twenty years ago.

Scott: Do you prefer the dairy cattle?

Tussey: Well, that’s the only route I can sure know I might make a dollar right now.

Scott: Beef cows just too big a chance, isn’t it?

Tussey: That’s right. Well, just like, if you’re running beef cattle, maybe this year they’ll bring 300 and next year they bring 100.

Scott: It’s just not worth the risk.

Tussey: No, and it’s come around to where the farmer has got as many monthly bills as the city folks has got.

Scott: Or more.

Tussey: Yeah, or more.

Scott: Right. So the only kind of farming that’s going to survive, small farmer, is going to be one that has an outside job.

Tussey: That’s it.

Scott: And grows his own food, grows his own beef, or raises his own beef rather.

Tussey: You take fellers, well, right now, if you really wanting to make money in the dairy business, you…I need fifty more cows.

Scott: Do you have space for them?

Tussey: Yeah, I could handle fifty more by going to a dry lot; I mean keeping them on concrete at all times, but that would cost me another $10,000 to fix the lot.

Scott: And how much for the cows?

Tussey: Well, roughly $50,000 to $60,000 so….

Scott: That’s a big gamble isn’t it?

Tussey: Yeah, I mean, there you go. And like I said, with the government going to take a dollar out and cut our support price a dollar, and high interest rates, there’s no point in me trying to get any bigger.

Scott: Trying to make any more, really. It’s just going to go….

Tussey: No. Here’s what I think we ought to do, what the whole thing is. They ought to take these big young stout husky men that’s sitting back drawing food stamps, never hit a tap in their lives, they ought to give so many to each farmer, and say he’s got to put in so many hours a week.

Scott: Right.

Tussey: You’re his boss. Let them have a certain place for you to pick them up. If you don’t need them, give them to somebody else.

Scott: And then take that money they’re taking out, that dollar and a half….

Tussey: Well, now that’s right where this here dollar that they’re taking out of our milk right now. The reason they started that was in order to have money to pay the food stamp program.

Scott: And they aren’t doing anything in return, are they?

Tussey: No.

Scott: Are there a lot of people in Jackson County on food stamps?

Tussey: Lord, yeah. I’d say 90%.

Scott: Is that high?

Tussey: Yes, or more [laughs].

Scott: These are people that are able to work, too.

Tussey: That’s right, yeah. Here, don’t get me wrong. I ain’t no criminal, or nothing like that, but I don’t believe that there’s a person that’s under 65 years of age, that can’t do something.

Scott: Right. Cleaning the garbage off the road is better than doing nothing.

Tussey: That’s right. And if it’s a woman, she can piece quilts, she can sew, she can do something. But now this here 10% of people that are working, and 90% sitting, there’s going to have to be an end of it to that—somewhere down the road.

Scott: Well people that are hurting are people like you and me, that work everyday.

Tussey: Yeah, that’s right. There’s nobody that waits on me. If I owe somebody, they’re looking for their money; I’ve got to get it there.

Scott: Right, and if you need groceries, if you have the money, fine; if not, you don’t buy the groceries.

Tussey: If I get sick and go to the doctor, he don’t cut his charges on me, because I ain’t got a Medicare card. I still have to pay.

Scott: Well, is there anything those people have to pay?

Tussey: No. They get help for their fuel bill, they get help on their light bills, they get a Medicare card, pays for anything—medicine, doctor bills, hospital. They get so many dollars worth of food stamps a month.

Scott: Well someone told me that if you burned wood, and you were on welfare and you needed help to buy your wood to burn, that the government will help you.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Couldn’t all these people…

Tussey: Everybody.

Scott: ….go out and cut their own wood? That’s amazing.

Tussey: I’ve got a sister-in-law married a feller. They raised four kids. I bet you that man has never worked out as much as a hundred dollars and bought it up in groceries for them children. The government has given them food stamps, and paid their bills.

Scott: And yet those kids probably ate better than mine or yours.

Tussey: Why sure, they had steaks.

Scott: Yeah.

Tussey: Mine didn’t.

Scott: Yours had bologna, if like mine [laughing].

Tussey: …or what they could get.

Scott: Isn’t that kind of what’s wrong with….

Tussey: That’s what’s wrong—there’s too many free handouts. I believe back in the forefathers’ times, there wasn’t no handouts. Everybody worked; if you were ninety, you were still trying to work.

Scott: I don’t have anything against helping people.

Tussey: No, but be sure they need it.

Scott: Right, if they’re trying to help themselves.

Tussey: If I come along and give you five hams of meat this month, and I come back next month and say, I’ll give you five more, if you ain’t eat them all five, you don’t them five. That’s just the way of these food stamps.

Scott: Well, you do if you have dogs.

Tussey: Yeah, yeah. Well, see, they won’t allow them to buy dog food and stuff like that with food stamps, they go…I’ve got a brother-in-law that runs a supermarket in Lexington, and he says them people in Lexington buys steaks, hamburgers, anything, to feed their dogs.

Scott: But they have enough.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: It’s not like you and me going to the grocery and having to….scrimp and save.

Tussey: You can go to a grocery store. If you ain’t thought of it, or tried it, you just go to a grocery store, and ( ) get me a stop and just watch.

Scott: Well, I have, I have. I do every time I go [laughing].

Tussey: And you can tell just as well when a food stamp person rolls up as day and night.

Scott: Well, in Richmond at the grocery I go to, I can always pick them out, because they have family packages of pork chops. I have never bought a family package of pork chops. If I had the money, I don’t think I would, because I know everyone would think I had food stamps [laughs]. They buy the family packages of meat, and they have everything in the world.

Tussey: The best of grub.

Scott: And they’re my age and younger. You know, they’re not elderly. We see very few elderly people, people that look like that need them, we see little old ladies that look like they need them, but you never see them with them. It’s always, like you said, the big strapping young people.

Tussey: That’s why, that if they would say, everybody has to work so many hours, they wouldn’t have to cut them off of food stamps, they wouldn’t have to cut them off.

Scott: And help grow, raise these crops.

Tussey: That’s right. You give me five workhands so many hours a week, why, I could triple my business and not cost me a penny.

Scott: Yeah, and you wouldn’t have to raise your prices any.

Tussey: No.

Scott: And hold at the same price.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: I think eventually they’re going to have to, they’re going to have to do something; you know the farmers can’t keep going, can they?

Tussey: No, they ain’t going to.

Scott: Well, like you said, not when you could put $300,000 and live off the interest, you’re not going to break your back to make it.

Tussey: No, that’s right. Just like I said, if it wasn’t for this boy of mine, that dearly and truly loves farming, been born and raised and brought right up in it, cut his teeth on the steering wheel of a tractor, I’d sell it this evening.

Scott: But his love of the land is keeping it.

Tussey: Yeah, that’s right. [tape interruption]

Scott: Well, now are there a lot of farmers in Jackson County going out of business? Have you seen that much?

Tussey: Yes.

Scott: Who are they selling to?

Tussey: This, well more or less, the farmers here in Jackson County are quitting. They’re just….

Scott: So are other small farmers picking them up?

Tussey: No, well they’re leasing their tobacco, and then they’re just holding onto their home and stay place, and if somebody comes along that wants to cut the hay or rent the farm, they’ll rent it to them. Otherwise, it’s just lying there.

Scott: But those are the people that don’t owe anything on the land.

Tussey: That’s right. Don’t owe nothing, got no obligation.

Scott: Just letting it grow up.

Tussey: Just letting it grow up; see they can lease their tobacco for so much a pound.

Scott: And that takes such a little amount of land.

Tussey: That’s right, and so, I mean, that’s like they talk about turning tobacco loose. If they turned it loose in the morning, there wouldn’t be as much tobacco growed as there is being grown now.

Scott: Probably not, probably not.

Tussey: Instead of me getting out here and leasing tobacco, and paying so much a pound for it, I’d just grow what I had barn room to house, and….

Scott: And you wouldn’t have to go through all this leasing.

Tussey: No, that’s right. But the people that would that hurt from that, when they turned it loose, is old, retired people that are not able to raise tobacco, that’s leasing say a thousand pounds of tobacco for $600 a year.

Scott: Which is for them so extra money.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: More money to live on.

Tussey: Yeah—which they need.

Scott: Well, do you grow, do you raise hay and corn now?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Use silage?

Tussey: Silage all my corn.

Scott: Does that feed your cattle?

Tussey: Yes, that’s one part of the feed.

Scott: But it doesn’t….

Tussey: No, I buy all my dairy feed.

Scott: What’s your feed bill a year?

Tussey: I’d say it’ll roughly, it’ll run about, between $25,000 and $30,000 a year feed bill.

Scott: That’s a big chunk out of the $100,000.

Tussey: Yes, and that’s just dairy feed alone now.

Scott: And you’ve got your machinery, replacement, breakage, what-have-you, fuel oil, fertilizer, seeds….

Tussey: Fertilize bill runs approximately $7000 - $8000.

Scott: What about fuel bill?

Tussey: Fuel bill will run around $2500 for the tractor.

Scott: How many tractors do you have?

Tussey: Two, and then there’s your repair bill. Some years it’ll run $4000-$5000, some years it may not run more than $2500.

Scott: But you still plan on….

Tussey: You’ve got so much to plan on. So you take 25 for feed and so much for fuel and fertilize, and directly…it costs me in insurance and interest and tax, cost me $350 a day to get out of the bed.

Scott: Oh my gosh [laughing].

Tussey: Now, that’s no lie.

Scott: Well, we’re not going to have young people going into farming without inheriting.

Tussey: No, that’s what I tell Scottie. There’s no future in him staying in, and working like I’ve worked, when he can quit, and live, and live, and fare better. But he….

Scott: But he wouldn’t be happy.

Tussey: No.

Scott: That’s the thing with farmers; they’ll hold on until the bitter end.

Tussey: Yes, but you see quite a few farmers holding bankrupts….

Scott: Farmers that had to go out and buy the land in the last 25 years.

Tussey: And you see dairy farmers, they’re going out of dairying one after another.

Scott: Future don’t look very bright, does it?

Tussey: Well….

Scott: For the food supply of the nation.

Tussey: That’s right. It will, I’d say, that’s it got to get in bad shape. You let this dry weather hold on three more weeks right now. They showed on television the other night, up in Indiana where them corn fields, hundreds or acres of corn, the shuck done turned brown on it, nothing but a cob.

Scott: Well, what’s the Soil Bank?

Tussey: Well, it’s destroyed us.

Scott: If we don’t get rain, the Soil Bank is going to destroy cattle and….

Tussey: Where I’m paying $200 a ton for feed, right now, I figure by the first of the year, I’ll be paying $250 or maybe $300 a ton.

Scott: If we don’t get the rain.

Tussey: Still no, still no promise of a raise in the milk.

Scott: Do you think there’ll be one?

Tussey: I doubt it, I doubt it.

Scott: How do they expect you to keep going?

Tussey: They [laughs] just want us to starve.

Scott: But this size farm, this farm that’s producing and feeding. The little farmers aren’t, like you said, they’re just living on it, and…

Tussey: Just a stay place.

Scott: Yes, just a home place.

Tussey: Yeah, just a home place.

Scott: But this size farm is feeding numerous people.

Tussey: Yeah, you take this, the milk alone, you look at the people…

Scott: That you supply milk to.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: Looks like something’s going to have to be done, somewhere down the road.

Tussey: Our congressmen, or senators, stuff, president thinks we’re making all kinds of money, I reckon [laughs]. Scott: I wish they could go around and talk to twelve farmers, with your size farm and smaller.

Tussey: That’s right. I’d hate to own a man that puts this story up.

Scott: Straight down the line, the same thing. If I went out now, and bought a farm, a 200-acre farm, bought the machinery to run it, and put, I won’t even say dairy cattle, because of the expense getting into it, say I put beef cattle on it and stocked it. Am I going to make enough to pay the interest on that, if I work 24 hours a day?

Tussey: No, there ain’t no way.

Scott: So you cannot expect young people to work as farmers.

Tussey: I’ve worked 50 years; I’ll be 50 year old in December. And I started working and saving and trying to make money when I was 16 years old and buying land. And I’ve been this long, and I can see where…. Well I’ve got a son-in-law that owes for a farm, right now, that I helped buy, and he’s running about as big an operation as me and Scottie run, and he’s paying interest on about $118,000-$119,000. He’s milking about 40-something cows, raising about 20-something thousand pound of tobacco, and if it wasn’t for his wife working, and for me and Scottie helping him, that family, there’s three of them, would go hungry.

Scott: And they’d lose the farm.

Tussey: Yes, they’d lose the farm.

Scott: So there’s no way a young person can….

Tussey: No, no, there ain’t no way. There ain’t no way that a young boy and a woman can step out and buy a farm today, and pay the interest rates, and buy his, and start out, and pay the interest, let alone…anything on the principle.

Scott: Anything on the principle. And have no kind of life, whatsoever.

Tussey: No.

Scott: Well, what’s going to happen, will people with a lot of money buy these farms up and run them, or just as tax shelters?

Tussey: Well, no, not as long as the interest is like it is; people with money is foolish to pull it off of interest to buy land, when…they’re just creating a new worry on the problem.

Scott: I know in Madison County, they’re developing farms. We were counting last night how many big farms had gone to subdivisions in the last six years.

Tussey: Yes, you look at the thousands of acres that has went into subdivisions, went into roads, and there ain’t near the farmland that there was twenty-five years ago.

Scott: Oh, no, not nearly. Well, McKee doesn’t have a, any industry?

Tussey: They’ve got one little woodcraft plant and a doll factory up here, they call it, Possum Trot.

Scott: Oh, is that in McKee?

Tussey: Yes, that and the rock quarry is the only industry, besides the rural electric and telephone that there is in this county.

Scott: Why haven’t some more industry moved in?

Tussey: I don’t know.

Scott: You think they would…the labor’s here.

Tussey: It’s here, yeah.

Scott: If they’d just move in and use. I know McKee doesn’t seem to have grown any since I lived in Clay County. It still looks the same size, and yet Richmond is taking over Madison County.

Tussey: That’s right. Richmond and Lexington will join in ten years.

Scott: Yes, without a doubt. We live on the north side, and there’s ten big subdivisions between…Richmond, between the interstate on north 25 and the river. Ten big ones, I mean between 200-250 houses, and all those in the last six years, from prime farmland.

Tussey: They’ll join in the next ten years.

Scott: Well, McKee’s lucky in that respect.

Tussey: I guess [laughing].

Scott: The industry stays out; well, the farmland stays in. It may grow back up. But this will never be farmland again. Where you put the subdivisions, is never going to be farmland again.

Tussey: No, it’ll never be put back in farmland. But, where I, what I see will come out of it, before the farmer is ever known, or they appreciate him, is they’ll wake up some morning and nothing for nobody to eat.

Scott: Is it going to have to go that far, before…?

Tussey: I’d say it will.

Scott: We’re going to have to get close, at any rate, aren’t we?

Tussey: Yes, you let a drought hit, seem like this one is hitting pretty, well, nationwide, and you let that happen this year, and with what farmers that will go out with good years, study what will go out with the bad ones.

Scott: Oh, we’re going to lose half of them. We’re going to lose hog farmers.

Tussey: I was just reading that in the REA book, how many, how many millions of farmers short today to what they was in ’70. The census showed it, and they wonder what from ’80 to ’90 will bring. I can tell them what it’ll bring.

Scott: It’s going to bring a lot of people like you with $300,000 in the bank drawing interest and not caring anymore what happens to that.

Tussey: I can take an acre of ground, and raise my garden, and live on it. Fish seven days a week [laughs].

Scott: Well, you grow your own beef now, I guess, don’t you? Do you grow your own pork? Did you ever grow hogs commercially?

Tussey: One time in my life.

Scott: Why’d you quit?

Tussey: Well, after I got in the dairy business, I couldn’t hardly operate two enterprises. They both required time about the same time together, and I mean, I just dropped out of the hog business.

Scott: Was it pretty chancey?

Tussey: Oh yeah, yeah.

Scott: Now, it’s not as bad as…I mean, it’s far more chancey than dairy cattle.

Tussey: Yes. Dairy business has been a pretty good thing. But I see, I mean, I’m seeing where it’s getting in bad trouble right now. With feed prices going up, and this, that and the other, it’s going to get like beef cattle, or hog prices.

Scott: Well, Nora told me by the time you got a calf to market, you didn’t make anything on it.

Tussey: No, no.

Scott: She said the only thing that their cattle was doing, was keeping the farm clean, keeping it from growing up.

Tussey: Well, anybody that’s farming has got to have so many cattle to pick the rough land.

Scott: Yeah.

Tussey: Or it’ll just grow up

Scott: Grow back up.

Tussey: You can’t afford to buy fuel, and run this costly equipment just to clip off a piece of ground, to keep it looking good.

Scott: In three or four years of that, and it’s grown up. It’s a bleak outlook, to say the least for the farmer.

Tussey: That’s right. I see, I see where the farmer will fold and quit as fast as the factories has.

Scott: There’s going to be a lot of hungry people, though.

Tussey: Well yeah. That’s when, I mean, when the government has got, they may have plenty of food stamps to give this sorry class of people, don’t get me wrong, but if this sorry class of people can’t find nothing in the grocery store to buy….

Scott: It’s going to make a difference.

Tussey: That’s right. Here, I’ll put it like this. I’m strictly against food stamps. But if wasn’t for the food stamps right now, the way the government has operated, and the way they feel towards the farmer, and the way they set the prices, and the way they’re doing, the farmer would have done been hurting, a lot worse than what he’s hurting.

Scott: Yes, especially in this economic times like it is, probably so.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: But it still isn’t right.

Tussey: No, no. I still say if they want to give them to them, go ahead and give them to them, but let them work so many hours….

Scott: To pay for them, doing something.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: Like you said, everyone can do something.

Tussey: That’s right. I can think of ten thousand things that these food stamp people…you take these here big fourteen, fifteen year old boys and girls that don’t do nothing but lay at home on the couch and watch TV, that is being fed right off of food stamps. Wouldn’t it be more honored, and more charitable, if they had to work so many hours a week picking up bottles, and cigarette packs, and tin cans, and stuff off the roadsides?

Scott: Oh yes. What worries me is not just those people, but the generations we’re raising up like that.

Tussey: That’s right. You’re what you’re raised to be. If you’re raised to work, you’ll work. If you’re raised to lay on a couch and let somebody feed you, you’ll do that.

Scott: And we’re running into each one of these families have four and five children.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: And we’re raising just another hundreds and thousands….

Tussey: Well, they’ll marry off by the time they’re fourteen or fifteen and start them a family, so they can get on them.

Scott: So they can get the money.

Tussey: Yes sir.

Scott: And pay nothing. It just blows my mind when I think about it [laughing].

Tussey: I mean, that’s….

Scott: People that have had to work all of their lives, like you and I, and then just give it away.

Tussey: It’s not right, it’s not fair.

Scott: Well, your son will inherit your farm and keep it going, I’m sure.

Tussey: Like I say, he’s got…if he’d stop and think, he’s got no future to work.

Scott: To stay in it. What would happen if you didn’t have that son? Would you sell it off now and just get out completely?

Tussey: Oh yeah, oh I’d have been out two years ago.

Scott: What would you do?

Tussey: I’d just get me a house, with about an acre of land, somewhere.

Scott: Lay around on the couch, and watch TV?

Tussey: And fish, visit my neighbors, if they wanted to work, why I’d help them, and otherwise…[laughing].

Scott: I can’t imagine a farmer doing that.

Tussey: Well, I mean, I’d keep myself occupied, at something. I wouldn’t, I mean I wouldn’t just come in the house and set down.

Scott: But you wouldn’t feel like you were working for nothing, like you do now.

Tussey: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: How many big farms are there in Jackson County? Are there quite a few?

Tussey: Yeah, there’s quite a few…quite a few big farms in Jackson County.

Scott: Where’s the, what section of the county are the bigger farms located in?

Tussey: Well, they’re pretty well distributed all over the county.

Scott: I don’t know that much about Jackson County.

Tussey: Well, there’s some great big farms all over. I mean, now you take back towards Madison County, out on Pine Grove, there’s some big farms, and then Kirby Knob, in there there’s some great big farms.

Scott: Are most of them dairy farms?

Tussey: No, no they ain’t. There ain’t over…ten or twelve dairy farms I don’t think in the whole county.

Scott: What are they…beef?

Tussey: They’re beef.

Scott: Most people are running beef cattle.

Tussey: Lot of these farms is when it’s strictly backward, too. They quit the cattle business.

Scott: Is their farm growing up?

Tussey: Yeah, to a great extent.

Scott: That’s scary.

Tussey: Yeah, it’s growing up. But you see beef cattle hasn’t been no good, or stayed good for, well they’ll have one good year and then….

Scott: Four or five bad ones.

Tussey: Four or five bad ones. That’s like the hog business. You’ll have one good one, and two bad ones. I was talking to Bert Summers here this morning, that’s my neighbor right down here, and he said he had about 600 pigs he figured to sell yet this year. And he said he’s losing twenty dollars to the pig. So you can figure that up, that’s $12,000.

Scott: He can’t stay in business selling them like that, can he?

Tussey: No, that’s what he said. He said he’s just flopping money.

Scott: Well, you can’t expect people to keep doing that year after year after year.

Tussey: I said, well, lets—I said, “Why don’t you do what I’m going to do—just sell out and quit?” He said, “My boy won’t let me.” [laughs].

Scott: My dad has a farm and is holding on to it for exactly the same reason. The children want it.

Tussey: I mean, people, does things that they want to do, which I guess, that’s about as good a way as you can spend life. I’ve enjoyed farming, every minute of it.

Scott: Yeah, you do like farming.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: But these, but the government….

Tussey: I see where that it’s saying it’s almost useless to work hard enough to try to make money. So, for the past two years, about the only thing I’ve tried to do, is work hard enough to keep my farm, my fencing, my buildings, and my machinery all up in good shape, and live pretty good, and have enough to eat.

Scott: Just quit trying to make….

Tussey: That’s right. As far as trying to operate big enough to show a net profit, I’ve quit trying to do that.

Scott: You just want to break even.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: And keep everything up.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Well, you still grow all your own food, I guess, don’t you?

Tussey: Oh yeah, yeah.

Scott: Do you have orchards?

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Have an orchard also.

Tussey: I have about ten or twelve fruit trees.

Scott: And a garden.

Tussey: And a garden. Grow my pork, grow my beef.

Scott: Don’t have to buy very much then, do you?

Tussey: No.

Scott: That’s the good thing about farming.

Tussey: Don’t have to buy too much, but still, there’s maybe some weeks that we don’t go to the grocery, and then maybe, when we go, it’ll run about $40-$50, say for two weeks, something like that, on the grocery bill.

Scott: Knowing what you grow is so much better than what you can buy. That’s the advantages, I think, to farming. And raising children on a farm, I think, is an advantage.

Tussey: Oh yeah. Don’t get me wrong, you can raise kids and school them and everything, but I feel as though country life is the right place to raise a family.

Scott: I’m with you on that.

Tussey: I feel as it’s more right now than ever, on account of so many drugs, and this that and the other, in these cities, and so much idle time on their hands.

Scott: They don’t have that boredom on the farm, do they?

Tussey: No.

Scott: Not like they have if they, well, live in a subdivision…never get out of it.

Tussey: You take these kids that’s raised in a subdivision, this that and the other, if they go fishing, they have to go eight or ten miles or something, where a farm kid, or raised out in the country he can always run to the river and fish, or a farm pond. It gives him a lot other things to do.

Scott: Right. It takes away that boredom.

Tussey: That’s right.

Scott: So many kids get in trouble.

Tussey: Just like, I was talking to a feller the other day, he said he didn’t know what was wrong with the younger generation of people and dating. He said, why they’re crazy. Well, I said, they’ve got nothing to do, nothing to occupy them.

Scott: That’s right. That’s right. You can’t take a twelve, thirteen-year-old child and sit it down and…keep it in the house.

Tussey: No, no. I can see why these young kids is on dope, and this that and the other. I can understand it.

Scott: It gets rid of the boredom.

Tussey: Any person that goes, I say, on dope, I’d say 90% of them’s got an ambition, an instinct to do something, and they’ve not got it to do, or can’t get it do to.

Scott: Right, and nowhere.

Tussey: And nowhere to do it, and that gives them a legal excuse then to start the drug business. One leads on to another.

Scott: Yeah, I think so too. I don’t think you can beat it to raise kids. It’s a hard life.

Tussey: Oh yeah.

Scott: But I still don’t think you can beat it. I think it would be far better to move a lot of these kids out and…put them on farms.

Tussey: That’s right…more content.

Scott: And we’d be better off, for that generation is going to rule us.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: Before it’s over.

Tussey: Well, we’re going to live under them.

Scott: That’s right.

Tussey: Before, if we live to be a normal life, and that’s why that I can see people to go to the country.

Scott: Oh yeah, me too. But….just….

Tussey: But if you can’t live in the country, there’s not actually, you’ll say well, I can’t live in the country. But, if you’re raising a family this day and time, that’s the way I see it. If you live in the country, you can raise your grub, to feed them kids. They can help grow it. They can learn where it comes from.

Scott: And learn responsibility.

Tussey: It would be better to drive twenty-five or thirty miles and raise a kid in the country than it would be to raise them in a subdivision or a complex, or something like that.

Scott: Oh, I agree. Well, we’ve tried…to buy ten to fifteen acres, and there’s no way.

Tussey: No.

Scott: You can’t do it. And if we didn’t have the farm we already have, it might be different, but we can’t afford to get rid of that one, you know, to buy another one. It’s just not worth it. But our kids do have the best of two worlds, because they do have that farm to go back to.

Tussey: Yeah, to go back to.

Scott: But so many of the children don’t have that.

Tussey: Oh, just like that brother-in-law that I was talking about, that I cut his wood. He’s living in Lexington in a subdivision; he’s got a ten-year old boy. And all that kid wants to do is sit and watch TV, and this that, and the other. He’s got no, he ain’t been out where the ( ) went on, and this that and the other, so when he goes to school, and a boy walks up and says here, smoke you a joint, it’ll give you a buzz, he’ll do it.

Scott: He’ll do it, yeah. I think that’s where we’re making a great big mistake.

Tussey: Yeah.

Scott: We’re not giving those children anything to do.

Tussey: I went and got him and kept him three weeks this year. And when I first brought him here, I had a right smart trouble, of getting him to go with me. And, just to go to milk, or something like that. I kept fooling with him, talking to him, and got him a little interested in milking, and helped set tobacco, and this, that and the other, and learned him how to pull tobacco plants. He didn’t know how to pull tobacco plants.

Scott: Or what one was, I don’t guess.

Tussey: No, and I just kept fooling with him, and his daddy come up here in two weeks, and he said, “I come after John.” I said, “Oh, he ain’t ready.” He said, “Oh yeah.” He said “John, are you going home?” He said “No, I’d like to stay another week.” So he stayed that week, and he come back to get him the following weekend, and he had to go home in order to go on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts or something, and my gosh, he’s been gone now three weeks, and he’s called me three weekends running and said “Come and get me Uncle Ben.” Said “these walls is killing me down here.”

Scott: Well, now, see that energy’s got to go someplace.

Tussey: Yeah, so I talked to his mother Sunday—she works, and her daddy works in this store. I said “Why don’t you let John come up here and stay with me and Marcissa? We got nobody here but just us.” And I said “Scotty comes and eats breakfast and supper in the house. But,” I said, “he ain’t no trouble.” I said “the water I wash his clothes, and same electric to cook his food.” I said “Why don’t you let him come up here and catch the bus and go to school up here ( ) and help us of the evening, and on the weekends be around here?” For I said, “You all ain’t got but a day with him, and you’re killed, you’re trying to rest.” And I said, “It’ll be a good thing for him.” And she agreed it would be a good thing, but they won’t give him up.

Scott: Won’t let him go.

Tussey: No, but, boy, he was dead ready, son. He calls me [laughing].

Scott: Well those little kids that age have so much energy, they’re going to put it someplace, good or bad. They’ve got to do something with it.

Tussey: Yeah, yeah, good or bad. You can see why there’s so much crime and stuff going on in these cities.

Scott: That’s right, that’s right. I think we’re making a big mistake. Well, I’ve about taken your whole day, Mr. Tussey.

Tussey: Well, that’s all right.

Scott: I sure want to thank you for letting me come by and talk with you, and we’ll probably come back, if that’s okay and talk with you again sometime.

Tussey: All right.

Scott: Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll give you a call if that’s okay.

Tussey: That’ll be just fine.

END OF INTERVIEW

©Kentucky Oral History Commission Kentucky Historical Society

�PAGE �

©Kentucky Oral History Commission Kentucky Historical Society � PAGE �2�