50 years and counting – Graham has been to every FSR

By Kevin Dye

Madison-press.com

This year, Madi­son County wel­comes Ohio State University’s Farm Sci­ence Review for its 50th over­all agri­cul­tural exhi­bi­tion, the 30th at the university’s Molly Caren Agri­cul­tural Cen­ter site. One Madi­son County res­i­dent joined the cel­e­bra­tion Wednes­day, keep­ing his perfect-attendance record alive.

Madi­son County farmer Bill Gra­ham (cen­ter, right) attended his 50th Farm Sci­ence Review with his wife, Kay, grand­sons, Ryan Gra­ham (far right) and Nick Gra­ham, and daugh­ter, Kat­rina, (far left) on Wednes­day. Gra­ham has attended every Farm Sci­ence Review since its incep­tion in 1953.

Madi­son County farmer Bill Gra­ham vis­ited the Farm Sci­ence Review on Wednes­day for his 50th con­sec­u­tive year of attend­ing the yearly agri­cul­tural exhi­bi­tion. Gra­ham trav­eled around the Molly Caren grounds with his wife, Kay, daugh­ter, Kat­rina, and grand­sons, Nick and Ryan. His son, Bill, could not escape work­ing Wednes­day, and thus missed the excite­ment. Gra­ham said he always has been inter­ested in farming.

The Farm Sci­ence Review was a place to check on any indus­try changes and see the lat­est farm equipment.

“I’ve been going since the very first one,” Gra­ham said. “The early ones were at Don Scott Air­port and they had a lot of exhibitors, but every­thing was very close together there. There weren’t many other places to go and see such large farm exhibits. Back then the Ohio State Fair had some large farm­ing equip­ment exhibits, but that didn’t last. So the Farm Sci­ence Review is the place to go to see the new equipment.”

Graham’s fam­ily have been farm­ing the John Bricker farm in Pleas­ant Town­ship for over 70 years as well as other farms for pri­vate own­ers. Gra­ham said it is still con­sid­ered a fam­ily farm and really does not need the expen­sive equip­ment on dis­play at this year’s Farm Sci­ence Review, but enjoys see­ing the new equip­ment and change in technology.

“I like to see the big equip­ment,” Gra­ham said. “You really need to farm thou­sands of acres now to afford this size equip­ment. I’m still an old gen­er­a­tion farmer and I don’t have com­put­ers or any such things on my equip­ment. It’s really some­thing for old folks to see the Farm Sci­ence Review today with all of this high tech machinery.”

Bill said that his fam­ily all stepped in and pitched in to help with the farm­ing when Bill had to have open heart surgery last year. He is quite proud that his son Bill and grand­sons Ryan and Nick are all inter­ested in farm­ing and hopes his fam­ily farm tra­di­tion continues.

“It is great that they are tak­ing over with the farm,” Bill said.

“The farm will stay in the fam­ily as long as we are all alive,” Kat­rina Gra­ham said.

As for Bill’s pref­er­ence for farm equip­ment, he says he gets a lot of rib­bing from his John Deere friends for his use of Massey-Ferguson farm equip­ment. He said that back when he was younger, J.B. Ander­son was very close to his farm and they sold Massey-Harris prod­ucts (illus­trates how long Bill’s loy­alty is), which was very con­ve­nient to get parts and ser­vice. He has seen no rea­son to switch brands now.

“Oh, my friends get on me about Massey-Ferguson ver­sus their John Deere, but I give it right back to them,” Bill said. “I’ve bought their equip­ment for sev­eral years now and I’m not changing.”

Bill laughed and said that he usu­ally calls him­self an agri­cul­tural engi­neer at an event like the Farm Sci­ence Review.

“That didn’t work at a con­fer­ence in Las Vegas,” his wife Kay said. “The woman lis­tened to Bill say agri­cul­tural engi­neer and the woman looked at him and asked if she could just write down farmer.”

Posted by Acres Admin on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.