Dad's farm was, at it's peak, about 1200 acres, counting that which he owned and that which was rented. It was big enough that he often had one or more hired hands around and Mom would cook lunch for her brood, as well as the hired hands. No small effort to feed so many people each day, but she was really good at it. Dad was a good farmer. A smart farmer. He didn't get over extended like so many did in the 1980's and they went out of business, but Dad made it through. It was that Reagan era of farming that had Dad quote "The worst tax problem you can have is to not owe any taxes" as he was losing money for years during that time. Because he had savings and not too much debt, he was able to make it through until it got better again. That era was the beginning of a big shift from small independent farms to corporate farming. Many farmers didn't make it out of that trap.
I went to school at Crest Unified School District, which was unified between Kincaid and Colony. My big sister Sheryl was in one of the first classes to graduate from Crest, instead of Kincaid High School, which is the HS that our parents had graduated from. Even combined together, Crest was only a 1A school, which is the smallest school size in Kansas. By the time I graduated, there were about 120 kids in the top 4 classes. My graduating class was 31 kids. This is what a REAL small town in farm country looks like. When most city folk think of "small town" they are thinking of towns with several thousand people. Where I'm from, the was the county seat, Garnett, and the next county over, Allen county, who's seat was in Iola. These were where we went when we "went to town", not where we lived.
I was the quarterback of the football team, but I also played basketball and participated in Track and Field. We were pretty crappy at football and basketball. At least until my senior year. We had a pretty good team in the 1980 season. I was also the FFA president my senior year. For those who don't know, FFA is the Future Farmers of America, and they teach farming skills like welding, tools, rural electrification, land judging, livestock judging, bookkeeping, and other skills useful out on the farm. I was also very good at math, and was very competitive at Math Relays. A jock, and leader, and a nerd, all at once. In a small town, you really can be what you want to be, sort of. I've got some stories from all these different roles I played in high school. I hope I can get to them either on this blog or on my Songs and Stories YouTube channel.