Oral History Interview with Edgar Puckett

1983OH02.6

1983OH02.6

Family Farm Oral History Project

Interview with Edgar Puckett

July 6, 1983

Conducted by Ginny Scott

© 1983 Kentucky Oral History Commission

Kentucky Historical Society

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Kentucky Oral History Commission

100 W. Broadway ( Frankfort, KY 40601

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

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The following is an unrehearsed taped interview with Edgar Puckett, a farmer in Estill County, Kentucky. The interview was conducted by Ginny Scott, for the Kentucky Oral History Commission for the Family Farm Project. The interview was conducted at Mr. Puckett’s farm on July 6, 1983, at 1:00 A.M.

An Interview with Edgar Puckett:

Scott: First of all, I’d like to thank you for talking to me, especially on a day like today, when you could be out working. That’s a bad time to talk….

Puckett: Perfectly all right, had to come to that some time or another, anyway.

Scott: [Laughs].

Puckett: I don’t need to be out working no way.

Scott: Well, I’d like to start out, you tell me your name, when and where you were born, your parent’s names, just your family background, kind of….

Puckett: Well, I was born in Estill County about three miles from where I’m at right now, on White Oak, and my dad’s name was Joe Puckett.

Scott: Joe Puckett?

Puckett: Joe Puckett, and my mother’s name was Bertha Puckett, but she was Bertha Puckett Winburn. And they’ve all lived on a farm all their life.

Scott: Do they have a farm about three miles from here?

Puckett: About three, between two and half and three miles from here.

Scott: When were you born, Mr. Puckett?

Puckett: I was borned in 1922, the 24th day of July.

Scott: Hmm…1922…you sure have aged well. You don’t look that old.

Puckett: I don’t—I didn’t until I had this stroke, I didn’t feel that old. I didn’t feel no older than what I did at 25 or 30.

Scott: You were born in ’22, you said. Where were your grandparents from? Were they from Estill County?

Puckett: My grandparents lived about a mile and a half right straight over on the river, there, and my dad lived on my mother’s side, he was Phillip Winburn and my grandfather on my mother’s side—my dad’s side was Nelson Puckett, and he was part of the old farm over there. ( ) one-sixth of all the old farm over there, where we got raised.

Scott: So the farm’s been in the family a long time, then?

Puckett: It’s been since 1902 or 03. There was 700 acres at one time before it was divided up.

Scott: Well, is this part of the original?

Puckett: No, this is my wife’s daddy’s old farm here. And it’s been in ( ) since slavery.

Scott: Since slavery.

Puckett: This farm where you are right now has been in the family ever since slavery.

Scott: Now when did you marry, Mr. Puckett?

Puckett: I married in 1940, 16th day of August.

Scott: And who was your wife, what was her maiden name?

Puckett: She was ( ) Masters.

Scott: Masters? And her family owned this farm?

Puckett: Oh yeah, her dad owned it and then her granddad, and her uncle and things owned it, every since slavery, they ( ) a colored man to this farm.

Scott: Is that right?

Puckett: Since the Civil War, it’s been here that long.

Scott: Oh my goodness. Now did you all live on the farm when you married, on this farm?

Puckett: Well, right here, ( ) and her went to when we got married, and have been here ever since, forty-three years. We’ll be forty-three years, 16th day of August.

Scott: That’s a long time, isn’t it?

Puckett: Don’t seem like it’s been that long.

Scott: [Laughs]. Was the house—this is the house you moved to?

Puckett: This house, right here, we moved into. It was built in 1898.

Scott: And her family built it?

Puckett: Her uncle built it.

Scott: And how big is this farm?

Puckett: Oh, it’s a hundred (Rae, how big is this farm?), a hundred and about sixty/seventy acres, something like that, ain’t it? (Rae: More or less). You know the deed was made so long ago, I guess there’s two hundred acres or it, here, more or less. It’s been there, this deed was in 1800 and something, early 1800’s.

Scott: Goodness, well now you own another farm, in addition to this one?

Puckett: On Miller’s Creek.

Scott: Miller’s Creek.

Puckett: There’s 218 acres of it.

Scott: Now what section of the county is this in? What section are we in now?

Puckett: I’d say this is, right down to Irvine, it’s just right out two miles from Irvine. And the other one is four miles from Irvine, the other way. Go towards Beattyville.

Scott: And how big is that farm now?

Puckett: It’s 218 acres, river bottomland, creek land.

Scott: Now did you inherit it from your family?

Puckett: No ma’am, we bought it. We just bought it straight out. We bought it ten years ago. We had another little farm over there; we sold to Southeast Coal Company, and then bought that big farm.

Scott: What did Southeast Coal Company want with it? Is there coal under it?

Puckett: They made a big ( ) I pulled out of it. So I just got about a three times bigger farm up there for that farm over there.

Scott: So you just traded up?

Puckett: They needed it, and I didn’t, you know, they had rail loading ( ). I had thirty-five acre of river land, and they had four tracks across it, and they couldn’t get back and forwards across the tracks.

Scott: So it was better for you to sell it.

Puckett: Well, it was just aggravating me to death. You take seven or eight men over there working or cutting tobacco, or something and train hold you up for thirty minutes or an hour, why there’s a whole lot to that.

Scott: Yeah, it just wasn’t worth it, hardly, when you get into something like that.

Puckett: You could run into a whole of money in a year’s time.

Scott: Well now you’ve been farming all of your life, I take it.

Puckett: Yes ma’am ever since I was eleven years old.

Scott: What’d you grow when you were living on your father’s farm?

Puckett: We had tobacco and corn, and hay, and we have a few cows, we milked the cows and separated the milk, and sold cream. Had some eggs.

Scott: Didn’t have any dairy cattle, as such? Big dairy cattle?

Puckett: We just sold the calves and sold the milk off these diary cows, and I believe we had twenty-five or thirty head of sheep.

Scott: Oh, sheep?

Puckett: Had sheep back then, when we was at home, and we took care of them. That was a cash crop in the summer time, tobacco crop in the fall, and we had a few calves, and cream to sell every week.

Scott: And eggs.

Puckett: And eggs. And we took them to the store and exchanged them for groceries.

Scott: Oh, you did.

Puckett: That’s the way we went, in a buggy, horse and buggy took the cream down to the ( ) station in ( ), which is about five miles from here to about two miles and half from where I live, and we’d take that down there, and then we’d buy groceries and come back. They bought the cream, and we’d buy the groceries we needed. We had, you know, it was a good living.

Scott: Well, what could you buy for, say a dozen eggs? What could you trade for a dozen eggs at the store? How much were they worth?

Puckett: At that time, we’d get sugar and coffee, and beans, and flour, meal, stuff like that there. Wasn’t a lot of stuff to buy then, like there is now.

Scott: You didn’t grind your own meal?

Puckett: Well, yeah, we took, and we used it ( ) in the wintertime, after we gathered corn up for the spring, we always ground our own meal, then after about the first of May, we never did grind no more meal, on count of weevils getting into it. Oh, we bought a little meal, didn’t take a whole lot. They’d have to buy 100 pounds of meal a year.

Scott: And that wasn’t very much was it?

Puckett: Wasn’t very much, and maybe we’d buy 100 pound of flour at the time.

Scott: Well, did you grind your own wheat, did you grow wheat? Did you grow any wheat on your father’s farm?

Puckett: No ma’am, wasn’t, there’s not nobody got a wheat base here in Estill County now yet.

Scott: Hmm. I didn’t know. Some of the places did have; some of the places in Kentucky did grow wheat.

Puckett: I don’t know of any of them. Well, after you get out of Estill County and Clark County, why they might grow plenty of it. But I’ve heard your dad and them talking about they used to cut it and thrash it and take it and have it ground when he was a boy.

Scott: But none since you can remember.

Puckett: Not that I can remember, and I can remember him showing us the cradles they cut it with and then thrashed it out their selves.

Scott: Hmm. Well how much did tobacco bring then, Mr. Puckett, do you remember?

Puckett: Oh, five to seven cents a pound.

Scott: Five and seven cents?

Puckett: I think some of them got twenty-one cents, that’s the most I ever knowed about tobacco to bring before I was married in 1940.

Scott: How much does it bring now?

Puckett: About a dollar eighty.

Scott: Quite a bit of difference, isn’t it?

Puckett: Lot of difference, but lot of difference in everything else. It don’t go no farther, either way you take it.

Scott: So you don’t feel like you make anymore now than you were then?

Puckett: Well, if you made five dollars then, you could buy what you wanted. Now then, you buy a hundred and five dollars worth of stuff, and you ain’t got no more than you had for five then.

Scott: Well, by the time you count your fertilizer and everything, especially you don’t….

Puckett: Well, see back then, you could buy all the very best fertilizer you could was about 35 dollars a ton.

Scott: And now, that’s….

Puckett: A hundred and sixty-five to two hundred dollars a ton.

Scott: So it’s raised a lot more than the price you get for your tobacco.

Puckett: Well, there’s a lot of difference in it. There’s so much more stuff you have to use. Back then, you didn’t have to use this ready meal, and you didn’t have to use this stuff to keep all these bugs and things off of it now.

Scott: Why is that?

Puckett: Well, I just say, it’s disease and things that’s got into tobacco, that you never heard of, like the wilt, black root, and black shank, and all that. If they had any of that when I was a kid, before I married, nobody knew nothing about it.

Scott: Didn’t have any trouble with it?

Puckett: No ma’am we didn’t have no trouble.

Scott: Hmm. Wonder why that is. Well, did you father—your father didn’t grow corn to sell?

Puckett: No, we growed stuff to live on. We’d have corn, we’d have a cane patch, made our own molasses, and we grew enough corn to feed our team, feed our cows, and feed our hogs. We always kept one sow, and we’d always take the pigs and fatten them up, and then when we’d fatten about five or six or seven hogs, and sell half of them to get our money back out of them, and eat the other half.

Scott: So you grew everything you—you raised everything you ate, just about, didn’t you?

Puckett: That’s right. And see, we’d separate that milk and give the milk to the hogs. There ain’t much difference in it. Now then you’ve got light bills, and telephone bills, and water bills, and gas bills, and things like that. All we had was a coal oil bill, maybe a dollar’s worth of coal oil a month would do to burn the lamps and the lanterns, and things like that.

Scott: And you cut your own wood, had your own heat?

Puckett: Cut our own wood, had a crosscut saw, and maybe about two files a year to sharpen them with. Had a great big old grinding stone, you’d grind an axe on, and there’s not a whole lot of difference. I don’t see—it just takes so much more to live now, like mules. We never had to buy anything for them horses. Now then, you’ve got a tractor, some of them tractors we’ve got use 25-30 dollars worth of fuel a day.

Scott: Whew, you’ve got to make a big profit.

Puckett: You’ve got to make the more now, just to even live just like you lived then. You make a little more now, but, if you have bad luck you lose a lot more.

Scott: Lose a lot more, don’t you?

Puckett: That’s right.

Scott: Well, what do you raise on these farms now?

Puckett: I got, we got nine acres of wheat up there, and we’ve got five acres of tobacco. We got about forty acres of corn, and I’ve got sixty acres in the Soil Bank, and we’ve got hay, we’ve cattle, we’ve got hogs, and horses, and just about anything you want….chickens.

Scott: What do you sell off now? What’s your cash crops now?

Puckett: Well, our eggs. We have eggs that are counted all the time, and we’ve got cattle we sell different times of the year.

Scott: This is beef cattle?

Puckett: Beef cattle.

Scott: What kind?

Puckett: We got registered poll Hereford and we got the Black Angus.

Scott: Which one do you like better?

Puckett: Well, I believe the Black Angus hustle better. They eat, you know they move around better, and you don’t have as much veterinary bill with them. Veterinary bills anymore, they hurt. Them Poll Herefords, when you have a little trouble on the calving, veterinary bills eat you up.

Scott: What about Charolais? Have you ever tried Charolais?

Puckett: We tried them, but they don’t, they weigh good, but the loss of them is so high that you just can’t stand the pressure of them.

Scott: You mean losing calves?

Puckett: They lose their calves. The calves come so big that they lose a calf. And your loss is too big in them.

Scott: So you’d prefer Angus out of all of them.

Puckett: Yes, you can take, well, easy, you take three big Black Angus and put them where you put two Charolais, and then three calves will outweigh the two cows on the Charolais, if you don’t have bad luck with them.

Scott: So the Angus is better then.

Puckett: A lot better for this part of the county.

Scott: And how many do you sell a year, how many average? An average, a good year, how many do you sell?

Puckett: About forty, maybe fifty.

Scott: That’s a lot of calves.

Puckett: That’s a whole lot.

Scott: Do you sell them at feeder sales?

Puckett: No ma’am, I don’t like the feeder sale. I’d rather sell mine, I usually have good stock and they’ll bring just as much or more than they will on the feeder sale, because you take the best you got, and you put them in with somebody else, they’s always a racket…do you know what I mean? Somebody’s got some bad ones hid, they’ll put a few bad ones in with your good ones, and their bad ones bring just as much as your good ones. So if you’ve got good cattle, you can sell them anytime you want to sell them, they’ll bring just as much at once place as they will at another.

Scott: Do you sell them here?

Puckett: I go to Winchester, Richmond, Lexington—whichever one I think is the best market.

Scott: At the time, at the time.

Puckett: My hogs, I sell hogs every year. I got ten sows; we sell the pigs. I may have to top out some I got now. They’ve gone down to nothing. Now corn prices—it’s got high, they ain’t nobody that wants them.

Scott: Well, tell me, is this Soil Bank, is that going to make a difference in the pigs, is that going to hurt the pork market?

Puckett: I think it has; people didn’t raise no corn. Now they’ll just raise it and sell it. Me, I just cut mine, the Soil Bank ( ) was sick.

Scott: Well, what about the Soil Bank, what about the corn they—they give you corn back, is that right?

Puckett: Yeah, I took corn of mine to all come in corn. I got, I get 2,332 bushel of corn. Now I have to sow that down, and cut it off, and let the land rest a little too.

Scott: But you have to keep it cleaned off, don’t you?

Puckett: Yeah.

Scott: You can’t let it grow back up.

Puckett: That’s right. You can’t take nothing off of it; you just have to set it aside, and then after October 14 or 15, I can turn my cattle in there and graze it, see.

Scott: But for this length of time, you have to leave it.

Puckett: You can’t do nothing, but I can’t the hay or nothing off of it. We cutting it off up there right now [tape interruption].

Scott: Okay, we were talking about what you sold off this farm now in the Soil Bank.

Puckett: I don’t sell any of it; I just feed it.

Scott: Just feed the corn.

Puckett: I wouldn’t even put it in the Soil Bank, but I had to, I was sick, and I just put it in there in the Soil Bank, because I didn’t whether I had anybody to take care of it or not.

Scott: Yeah. Well, the corn you got, was it good?

Puckett: I don’t know, I’ve never gotten none of it before. We’ll know after October 15.

Scott: As to whether or not it’s any good.

Puckett: It’s supposed to be number two corn, and number two corn is good corn. It’s number two caused it’s got cracked grains everywhere, but now what we get, I don’t know.

Scott: I talked to some people who were unhappy with what they were getting.

Puckett: Well, ma’am, I don’t guess there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t know about that. It ain’t going to cost me nothing, anyhow, so it’s just….

Scott: It’s just there.

Puckett: It’s just there, and that’s it.

Scott: Use it to feed the hogs.

Puckett: Feed the hogs, feed the cattle, and chickens.

Scott: You don’t sell hay or corn, either one.

Puckett: Well, I don’t, but my grandson, he always helps me, and then he will maybe get out and cut a little hay for somebody, and sell the hay, or bale hay, or something like that. He’s got to make a living too, on it, see.

Scott: Well, now, how many children do you have?

Puckett: Two.

Scott: Two girls, right?

Puckett: Two girls, and they one, one grandson’s all I’ve got.

Scott: And that grandson’s a big help?

Puckett: I’ve give him a third of everything on my farm. I give him a third, take a third, and put a third back on the farm.

Scott: And it works out well for all three of you?

Puckett: Half of the tobacco, yeah. See he gets the hay, he gets a third of this corn on what we getting, he gets thirds of corn, he gets half of the tobacco, and the hay we feed to cattle. But then if he gets out and bales hay for people, or ( ) he sells it and does whatever he wants to.

Scott: …wants to with that.

Puckett: Yes.

Scott: And you’ve already deeded him the…?

Puckett: No ma’am, but….

Scott: But you will?

Puckett: We fixing to go up and fix it. We said we were going to do it, just as soon as I got able, when I could get around pretty good. We going on to make a will, that way. So, you know what I mean, something could happen, and it would cost her a whole lot, and I’m going to fix it where he gets, as long as she lives or I live, I get a third, him a third, and then it would go to him that place up there, and the two girls get this place.

Scott: Well, now, will he stay on the farm, Mr. Puckett?

Puckett: He’s going to have to, if he gets it. That’s the way it’s going to be.

Scott: But you think he will though, don’t you?

Puckett: I’m pretty sure he will. He makes something good on it.

Scott: And like farming?

Puckett: He likes it, he likes to go when he wants to, and he likes to these bow shoots, and things like that, and he can’t do that, and work everywhere.

Scott: That’s right.

Puckett: See, he won first place at Hazard, Sunday. He won, I’d say in the last…in the last six weeks, he’s won two or three first places.

Scott: Oh, is that right?

Puckett: Bow shooting.

Scott: Hmm. So farm life, you do have, you can take the free time.

Puckett: You’ve got more free time than you have anything else, but there’s never a time you out of a job. I’ve heard people say on the farm all my life, well I’ve got my work all done; I ain’t got nothing to do, I get out and work a day somewhere. I can find a job for ten men on this farm, every day, seven days a week.

Scott: There’s always something to do, isn’t there, if you want to do it?

Puckett: Yes. Well, it wouldn’t be so bad…this government is hurting us worse than anything else, this welfare. People that you used to get to work to help you, they won’t work now. And if they work, if you hire anybody, you can’t hire them and pay like you can, unless you’ve got them straight time. If you want to hire a man, you just can’t hire him unless you pay him straight cash, he won’t work no other way. That hurts.

Scott: That, that takes away from his welfare…if they find out.

Puckett: Yeah, that’s what I say.

Scott: Well, how much does it cost to hire someone to work on the farm? How much do you pay a day?

Puckett: It costs anywhere from fifteen to thirty dollars a day.

Scott: And that’s just for everyday labor.

Puckett: Everyday, just common labor. And some of them don’t even know how to even do that; you’ve got to show them what to do. You just have to get whoever you can get whenever you can get, and they say, well, if I help you, they’ll cut my check out. They don’t want to work; they won’t work.

Scott: They want something from the government.

Puckett: That’s right. They just won’t work on account of the government. I don’t blame them in a way, they got a pension made, don’t have to worry, fret or nothing, which is wrong. The government ought to set it up you have to work, do it or they’ll cut your check that way.

Scott: Yes. Well, if you’re drawing unemployment from a place….

Puckett: You still can’t work and get nobody.

Scott: But if you refuse a job, you can’t draw that unemployment, that welfare.

Puckett: Well, who can pay that kind of price on the farm?

Scott: No one, no one can pay.

Puckett: That’s what I’m saying, you can’t pay…they can’t turn it down, because you can’t pay that kind of price on the farm and make it. And you can’t afford for them to do it.

Scott: Well, with the politicians, is local politicians any help to farmers in Estill County? The elected officials here?

Puckett: Well, some they could, or they couldn’t. You know, either way. Sometimes we get them in that does pretty good, and some that don’t. We got the county agent is awful good to help us up here. Anything you want to know about the farm, and you don’t know about it, he’s good to help you. If he don’t know it, he’ll find it out for you.

Scott: So he’s a big help, isn’t he?

Puckett: He’s a big help and an awful good man with it, Fred Watson.

Scott: Fred Watson, yes, I’ve heard of him.

Puckett: He’s an awful good man. In fact, I’d say he’s the best county agent we’ve ever had.

Scott: Hmm. What about the state government?

Puckett: I don’t, ma’am, I don’t fool with too much because see…

Scott: You’re not a politician.

Puckett: I never did have to…I’m not much of a politician, I’m the worst in the world, I reckon. I like to vote for whoever I want to regardless of what his politics; if he’s a Democrat, if I think he’s the best man, I vote for him. I don’t forget about his politics.

Scott: Well, has there been anything done in state government in the last, say, ten to fifteen years to really help you all, to help the farmers?

Puckett: Yeah, this here tobacco base, holding this tobacco price up in a way, it helps us. But labor is so high, if it didn’t, if it don’t hold that price up there, they just can’t do it, because the labor just eat you up. You just can’t hire a man to work in tobacco, that’s five to seven dollars an hour now. I mean, you know what I mean, people try to say you get rich off that tobacco, but when you get it in there, you ain’t made a whole lot off of it, because labored eat you up.

Scott: Yeah, the labor kills you, doesn’t it?

Puckett: It sure does.

Scott: What about that national government, the federal government. Do they do anything, has there been any laws passed?

Puckett: You know what I mean, I’ve always had a good job, never had to worry about something like that, never did fool with it, I just run this just like I wanted to, and had a good job, and hope to get to go back to it, when this hand gets better.

Scott: Oh, you will. Looks like to me you’re doing fine [laughs]. You’re still running it. Well, what’s going to happen, Mr. Puckett, to all the small farms, are they finally going to have to go out of business, a lot of them?

Puckett: Oh, I’d say eventually they will, because only thing that will be going will be just somebody that’s got a little tractor, and a little farm. A young boy’s not got a chance getting back in, because interest rates would…if he bought a forty or fifty thousand dollar farm, we just put it that way, and he take another forty or fifty thousand dollars to put his cattle and his tractor stuff to take care of it, and this high interest rate, why there’s just no way they can do it.

Scott: No way a young person can buy a farm, is there?

Puckett: A young person can borrow that much money and go ahead and make the interest on it. That’s where I think our government should step in, on this interest rate. Because, it’s just like this—if I sell this farm, and I put it in the bank, on the interest rate, you know what I mean, you don’t…it ain’t no tax on it. This $50,000 farm you got to pay $50,000 ( ). I think there should be a tax on money; I think they’re loosened up anything worse than anything else. Because people selling this land are putting their money back up, and they don’t have to pay no taxes on it. I think that’s…and the high interest rate.

Scott: So a young person just couldn’t go out and do it?

Puckett: You just can’t do it. If they put interest, if they would put a tax on this here money like they do property, which is all the same difference…

Scott: That’s right.

Puckett: …there’s no difference in a hundred dollars worth—a hundred thousand dollars worth of property, and a hundred thousand dollars in money, and actually making more money than the farms are making, still yet, he don’t have to pay no taxes on it. Well, if we make $20,000 on the farm, we got to pay on $20,000, and we have to pay that taxes on $100,000 farm, which a man that’s got a $100,000 in bank, he’s not got no taxes to pay on that, only what he makes at the end of the year. The same thing, there’s got to be something equally ( ) up there; if they’re going to get all the money in the bank, and it’s not going to do nobody no good.

Scott: And all these little farmers who’d be out of business. Young people, children can’t afford to stay on the farm, unless it’s, well, it’s already set up and working, like yours is. Young people are going to have to leave to make a living, aren’t they?

Puckett: They’re going to have to leave it. There ain’t no way possible they can get started. Just take your kid, you’ve got kids. He couldn’t go up there to that little farm and borrow $40,000 or $50,000 and start out on a little farm; there’s no way you can do it.

Scott: They couldn’t pay the interest on it, could they?

Puckett: That’s right, not at this high interest rate, you couldn’t. You take now, you take one good tractor outfit, and you take a tractor, plows, harrow, mowing machine, corn planter and a hay baler and a rake, and you’re talking about $40,000 right there.

Scott: Oh my goodness.

Puckett: And if it’s a big enough tractor, one outfit could cost you $60,000 or $70,000.

Scott: Well, now how many tractors do you own?

Puckett: I believe there’s seven here.

Scott: How many vehicles? Farm trucks?

Puckett: Let’s see, there’s seven flat bed trucks and two four-wheel drive trucks, and two jeeps.

Scott: There’s no way a young person could come up with all that.

Puckett: Ma’am, I worked a lifetime for that, and I don’t throw my money away for nothing, only, I’d say that’s my foolishness, buying stuff like that. I got dump trucks, dozers, backhoes, and trucks.

Scott: But you need all those on the farm.

Puckett: Well we have to; we use the backhoe on the farm, we use the dozer on the farm, and then it works out a little bit, and pays a little bit. So, that’s what I’ve done with all my money, and then see, I’ve got that van down there, haul riders to work, that pays a little in. All of it helps, but you’ve got to have it all to keep it going.

Scott: Every bit of it, don’t you? I think that’s about all of the questions I have to ask you. Is there anything that you’d like to touch on that I haven’t asked you?

Puckett: No ma’am, I’d just like to see that…I think the government ought to set in a price on the farmers, would help them more than anything that I know of, is put a price on cattle, just like they do tobacco. Now, your meat prices never go down. All right, hogs if they bring, if hogs bring 30 cents a pound, they sell the meat for the same price they do if it brings 60 cents a pound. I think that hogs should be graded and bring us a fair price. If a feller’s got 50 head of hogs now, do it just like they do tobacco. If they don’t do something like that the first thing you know, the whole world’s going to wake up hungry. Right now, you can’t sell hogs and go to the market, there ain’t no hogs on the market, but still yet, the people ain’t buying more.

Scott: Well you can’t go to the grocery and afford to buy the meat.

Puckett: That’s why I say, it’s so high, if you take a hog right now—meat will average a dollar and a half a pound, won’t it?

Scott: At least. At least.

Puckett: At least a dollar and half a pound for hog meat. It’s only bringing about 40 cents a pound on hogs.

Scott: Well, who’s making the money? I mean, I know the farmer isn’t.

Puckett: It takes a man, top a hog out at six months, well if you raise it’s pigs and all, you might say that’s nine months to get pigs ready to go to market. And he gets 40 cents a pound for it, the feller there in the store selling it anywhere from a dollar and half to two dollars and a half a pound, and now you can figure it out for yourself. But high labor may be eating him up; I don’t know.

Scott: Well, someone, somewhere is making some money.

Puckett: Somewhere or another, it’s skinning the farmer.

Scott: Well, is beef about the same way?

Puckett: It’s the same way. I’d say people’s lost money on cattle, they don’t pay for the fences and stuff to keep it going. My cattle—the reason why I kept my ( ) is because I got old rough land and they got to keep it eat off, for you can cut it off. And if everybody sold their cattle, which they’re doing, their land’s growing up, and if they don’t get the farmer where he can make some money, it’s going to grow up, and there ain’t going to be nothing for somebody to live there. It’s too late to holler after it’s….

Scott: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s going quickly, isn’t it?

Puckett: Very quickly. Now right over there’s a hillside to show you, in front that, when cattle used to be forty or fifty head of dairy cattle. Now then there’s pine on it…six inches through.

Scott: Complete woodlands.

Puckett: Complete woodlands.

Scott: Well, then, cattle serves another purpose other than just bringing in money.

Puckett: The way it serves is they help keep the farm cleaned up, and you couldn’t farm without them, because they’d just growing up without them. The fences have got wire and stuff, it’s got so high a feller can’t afford to fence it. If you don’t—once you stop you can’t get back in. That’s just sort of like you can always jump off a train, at eighty mile an hour, but you can’t jump on one going eighty mile an hour.

Scott: And that’s what’s going to happen with us, isn’t it?

Puckett: That’s what’s going to happen to us. It’s too late—it’s a shame that our smart men can’t see, can’t look ahead and see, because you take kids, five or six years old right now, they ain’t going to have no chance getting into nothing. That’s the sad part of it.

Scott: Not farming, are they?

Puckett: Now how could my grandson get out here and just started at that, if I didn’t just turn him loose in it right now, how could he do it? [tape interruption].

Scott: Talking about young people on a farm.

Puckett: That’s what I think—I think our smart people it’s—they just don’t look ahead, or they don’t know enough about the farming to see about that our young people are the farmers of tomorrow, the next year. Well, if they can’t get started, there ain’t nothing they can do about it.

Scott: Well, the only way that a young person can get in is to inherit it, isn’t it?

Puckett: That’s the only way.

Scott: And it has to be big enough to pay for itself, to keep it running then.

Puckett: It has to be going, or he can’t keep it going.

Scott: Keep it going.

Puckett: It’s impossible to do that. And if our government don’t step in and do something or other like that, I think the government’s…that’s my grandson, the one that took over my farm right now.

Scott: The one we were just talking about [laughing].

Puckett: That’s ( ).

Scott: I can see why you would be. Looks like he’s going to be a good farmer, too.

Puckett: I think so.

Scott: Well, like I said, I can’t think of anything else that I want to ask you. I’m sure there’s hundreds of things I’ve forgotten, but…

Puckett: A lot of us have. Well, you know what I mean, you can think of something tomorrow that we ought to have done.

Scott: Right, after I get away, I can think of…

Puckett: You know what I mean, after it’s done happening, we can see where we made a mistake. But somebody’s got to sit down and start thinking before this happens.

Scott: And look at these small farms, aren’t they, and not concentrate on the large, large farms.

Puckett: There’s two or three people in Estill County farms heavier than I do, you know, their own farm, but I doubt, not over three or four at the most. A lot of them rent a lot more land, and messes with it, but we try to take pretty care of ours.

Scott: Looks like it’s in good shape now. Oh, something else I did want to ask you. Do you have much timber on the land, back?

Puckett: The only time I ever cut any timber off is when I am going to use it here on the land, or if there’s trees dies or two, why I’ll let him cut a load or two, you know that’s ruining, or something or other like that. Other than that, we don’t take none off this farm. So this farm here’s got all the timber we got on it. And he’s got to take care of both places.

Scott: But how much percent, what percentage is timber? And what would be pastureland, cultivatable?

Puckett: Well, I don’t know, but this one right here, it just takes care of this farm, and that farm up there, and it’s pretty high ( ). We’ll sell seven or eight loads, maybe a year, when trees blowed down, or some that we want cleared up out of place, or something other like that.

Scott: Just cleaned up.

Puckett: He’ll sell seven or eight truck loads a year.

Scott: So you had….

Puckett: And I’ll just give it to him; let it, whatever it brings.

Scott: So you do have a lot of timber.

Puckett: Oh, yes ma’am, I’d say we couldn’t cut it down in a year, if I wanted to cut it out.

Scott: But it’s just standing there, it’s just money in the bank.

Puckett: It’s growing, but if a tree goes to damaging or something like that, we try to get it out of the woods, and get….

Scott: Protect the other trees, too.

Puckett: Yes, it protects the other trees, and gives the younger timbers in it, and a lot of people’s wanting to buy it, but it’s like this…what if I want to build a house or two, and we need it in a little while.

Scott: Or your grandson wants to build a house.

Puckett: That’s right, he’s going to build one here, somewhere, I don’t know where.

Scott: What is most of your timber?

Puckett: It’s white oak. We got white oak, pine, poplar, red oak, and we got chestnut oak, just about any kind of timber you’ll find here on the place. All except posts, we have to buy our posts. We ain’t got no posts at all on the place.

Scott: No cedar?

Puckett: We ain’t got no cedar. I don’t grow it if I can keep from it. One cedar cedars the whole….

Scott: Yes, it would, real quick like, wouldn’t it?

Puckett: It grows up in them little old cedar trees, and you can’t get rid of them.

Scott: Yeah, scrub, scrub cedars.

Puckett: There’s locusts around here close, we’ll usually buy some, lot of times, I get out and cut them on the halves, or two-thirds of them. You know what I mean—you got to, I try to look ahead. Now maybe this winter, we ain’t got nothing much to do. I ( ) to have a big bunch of posts. I get out and cut enough posts to keep me in posts for that year.

Scott: And keeps you busy too during the winter, because you’re not going to sit around during the winter, are you?

Puckett: Ma’am, farming is just like anything else, public job. If you go to a public job, and you just work three days a week, that’s all you’re going to get paid for. The same way by a farm—you’ve got to work five and six days a week, and some days, like right now, like through April, May, and June, why you’ve got to work about 16 hours a day on the farm.

Scott: Eight days a week, instead of six.

Puckett: Yeah, you’ve got to put them in there.

Scott: Yes, you sure have. Well, if you have your time to go over, would you become a farmer?

Puckett: I wouldn’t do nothing else.

Scott: You like it that well?

Puckett: It’s a rough life, but, you know we just ain’t got enough protection. Otherwise, our meat packing companies can steal us blind, without government graders there with them, that’s what we need. If we had something that would hold us up there, because our corn and our cattle is no higher than it was thirty, twenty-five, thirty years ago. And still get everything on the farm, ( ) our taxes, and our fertilize, and everything we have to buy, has just climbed tremendously.

Scott: About what is your fuel bill, do you know?

Puckett: Fuel bill, two hundred dollars worth of fuel will last about …about a week.

Scott: Gosh.

Puckett: I can show you one right now, just in a minute. Now there’s two bills, I got this morning, is there just one bill?

Scott: Yeah, $64.55.

Puckett: Now that was two bundles of twine, and three little plow points and a pittman rod for a mowing machine we broke.

Scott: Just little replacement parts.

Puckett: Yeah. Now there’s a fuel bill, that won’t do two weeks.

Scott: It’s $189.80.

Puckett: Actually, we can burn that much in a week.

Scott: Now how many months, how many weeks out of the year is this…is it year round?

Puckett: Well, on us, with first one thing then another, I’d say that we’ll average $300 worth of fuel a month.

Scott: Average year around.

Puckett: Yes, average that.

Scott: And then your cattle, you don’t get anything out of them when you sell them…not enough to pay for that.

Puckett: Not enough, our cattle and stuff has not gone up according to what everything else has gone up, you see what I mean?

Scott: Oh yeah, it’s killing them. It’s killing the farmers.

Puckett: It’s killing everybody. Of course, the people you go to the store to buy stuff, you say that’s too high, but now I guess time they add that high price labor and everything to it, it may seem high, but if they had to live a farm life—that’s what I told you awhile ago—if the government don’t work out something to keep the price…if meat sells for an average of $2.00 a pound the farmer ought to have at least 70 or 80 cents a pound for his. Meat that sold for 40 cents a pound ought not be allowed to bring over a dollar and half.

Scott: Well, also, I have a choice if I go to the grocery, and I say, well, I can’t afford that…it’s too high. The farmer don’t have that choice. He has to have the fuel—he can’t say I can’t afford.

Puckett: It’s like this, if I’ve got to pay my taxes, and I’ve got cattle to sell, and I ain’t got the money, I’ve got to sell them cattle, even if they don’t bring 20 cents a pound.

Scott: You don’t have a choice.

Puckett: I don’t have a choice.

Scott: And you can’t shop around for fuel, and say, we’ll I’m not going to buy it because it’s too expensive.

Puckett: You can’t do it. That tractor won’t run without it.

Scott: …without it. So it is destroying….

Puckett: So somebody’s got to be elected, be smart in there, and see that’s the future. Don’t, we going to wake up some of these days, just like they did over in Japan, and Germany, and all them places, with nothing to eat. It’s going to come to that. But one farmer right now has to take care of about, one farmer I’d say, is about 5% of the people in the world in farming now. But what if it gets any lower than that, and this fuel gets shorter ( ), and we have a bad crop year or two. Will 5% feed the other 95%? You need to be took care of. Anytime 5 people out of 100 is feeding 95 people, he should have some protection.

Scott: Absolutely. It’s a scary situation, isn’t it?

Puckett: If, if you get that down on the farm, and study about it, and look at it and see how’s it’s going, you’d see how it is. Look at your papers—one farm right after another is selling; they’re going bankrupted. That goes to show you there ain’t nobody making no money when they going to go bankrupt.

Scott: That’s right. That’s right. And when they sit for sale for months on end, too, people can’t buy them….

Puckett: And they’re going to sell them for months, and months and months ahead. I’d say that…50% of the farmers of the 5% of the farmers are in bad trouble.

Scott: I’d say you’re probably right. And if they owe anything on those farms, they’re really in bad trouble, aren’t they?

Puckett: That’s what I say; they’re in trouble, they just can’t make it.

Scott: They just can’t make it.

Puckett: With this high interest rate, and everything. Now that little farm up there, I’ve got approximately between eight and nine thousand dollars in the crop already, and I ain’t got nothing; I’ve got no assurance that I’m going to get anything out of it.

Scott: One bad weather, a bad spurt of weather could ruin you, couldn’t it?

Puckett: Well, high water could take ever bit I’ve got, everything I’ve got. A hailstorm could tear you all to pieces, and just anything, blight, or anything. You see what I mean? It cost a man so much to take of ( ) crop. Of course now, if I do good, why I’ve got enough stuff to feed four or five hundred people.

Scott: But there’s always that possibility.

Puckett: Yes, there’s always possibility you won’t get nothing.

Scott: Yeah, and no insurance against that.

Puckett: And you can’t buy insurance. The government forces us to have insurance on our automobiles and things, but they don’t force their insurance company, they say you can’t sue the insurance company; you can’t get nothing out of them, or nothing else. And if you do sue them, the lawyer gets it all and you don’t get nothing.

Scott: You don’t get anything, that’s right.

Puckett: So, it’s a good policy to have insurance, but you can’t do no good. Just like your tobacco, you got to pay a high price for the insurance on tobacco. Well, in three years, one year out of every three will eat it up. And then if a hailstorm comes up and don’t take about 80%-90% of it, you don’t get nothing no way.

Scott: That’s right, so it’s just not worth it.

Puckett: I mean, the government means well, by a lot of laws they pass, but they’re not carried out right.

Scott: Well, do you think it’s because those people in government aren’t farmers? Those in government don’t know enough about farming?

Puckett: They’re just about like our children…they just want to play around; they don’t know what they’re doing.

Scott: That’s right. They don’t know what it’s like…

Puckett: That’s just like me. What kind of a schoolteacher would I make without an education, to do that? And if a feller ain’t growed up on a farm, and know what his situation is, he absolutely can’t help the farmer.

Scott: Looking at facts and figures in a book doesn’t help a bit, does it?

Puckett: It don’t help a bit in the world. If you had the best book knowledge in the world, and didn’t know something else about it, you just might as well not know it.

Scott: And that’s what these people make all the laws are doing.

Puckett: That’s what they’re doing.

Scott: They’re just using it.

Puckett: There’s nothing we can do about it, and you take the biggest majority of the votes, you were talking about politics awhile ago, the majority of the votes, I’d say the swing of the vote is our welfare. The one that’ll promise the most in the welfare, or something another like that, that carries…that carries a big block of the vote.

Scott: They make the decisions.

Puckett: Now you take a vote…to show you how dumb people are, you know if you have five houses to rent, you say we’re going to raise the tax and let people vote on the tax. Well, the vote passes. Them people that voted for it ain’t got sense enough to know that if I got five houses rented, and they raised my taxes $500, they’re going to have to pay it.

Scott: That’s right, that’s right.

Puckett: So I ain’t smart, but I know a lot of people, a lot that smart men don’t know.

Scott: Book sense doesn’t get you everywhere.

Puckett: I got a pretty good education; I can get enough education that I know I can get along pretty good.

Scott: Where’d you go to school?

Puckett: Went to Irvine High School and Estill County High School.

Scott: Where’d you go to, in the county schools?

Puckett: I went to county schools awhile, I went to Irvine Grade School awhile.

Scott: Did you go to any one-room schools?

Puckett: Yeah, went three years to a one-room school.

Scott: Do you think they’re better than the big consolidated?

Puckett: Well, you ain’t got as many kids to fool with, and the teacher fooled with you then. She had to fool with you about 2-3 hours a day, and she put so much time in each class. Well now, a teacher, where you go to a class right now, and these here, where you just…each room for eighth grade or whatever it might be, she assigns up on the board, assigns do so and so, and then if you don’t do it, that’s it. You just tough out of luck if you don’t learn it, it’s your own bad luck.

Scott: We sure got a lot more personal attention from a teacher, didn’t we?

Puckett: Then, I think the teachers give a lot more. Of course, a lot of teacher gives it now, but altogether, they don’t do it. It’s just a job; they go do their job, just like, and that’s it.

Scott: Everybody else does, yeah. Yeah, I think we’ve lost a lot. Well, I think I’m going to have to let you get back to work now. I’ve enjoyed it.

Puckett: I’ve enjoyed talking to you, and hope this works out all right for you.

Scott: Maybe it’ll be some help; maybe we will get some help.

Puckett: I hope so.

END OF INTERVIEW

©Kentucky Oral History Commission Kentucky Historical Society

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