Farming with Tractors

Rodney Ingalls, Interviewed by Elizabeth Goldstein, October 13, 1977

9 Ingalls_Tractor
The Ingalls family has been farming in Hartwick Seminary, New York, for almost a century. Mr. Ingalls was born in 1919 and died in 2013. After graduating from college and serving in the Navy during World War II, he took over the family dairy business. In this clip, Mr. Ingalls talks about the changes in farm equipment he saw growing up.
RI: When I first started farming it was just about the end of the horse age. After a couple of them ran away with you, you were happy to go back and drive a tractor all day. So the tractor came in with me, you might say. But my father always talked about how they always had quite a few horses on the farm. His pride was to have the best looking, fastest team around and to have a nice-looking carriage and so on and cording and all that stuff. So that was of his generation, yet the automobile and tractor and so on was of my generation.
Click here to listen to a later interview with Rodney Ingalls.