I ended up on a small family farm after I graduated from 8th grade(1966). My oldest sis & her hubby landed the 5 acre farmstead with an option to purchase the other 40 acres that was on the other side of the road, which they did a couple months later. The forty acres were all old growth pine with a few spruce trees mingled among the pine. The few firs that were left from a previous logging operation were too tiny to salvage for lumber so they ended up in one of many slash piles.
On top of falling those pines(endless nightmare) & dynamiting the stumps along with my brother in law, I landed a job milking(by hand) a family's Jersey's, sharp looking cows but ornery or maybe more correct 'temperamental'. Buckin bales up through the last cutting for our neighbors brother. At this point it was roughly 4/5 months since I had arrived out there. About this time I was introduced to an old Ford tractor & a spring tooth harrow where I learned to level out the mole hills etc. in the fields. This would put my first 'mechanized' field work about the end of September/middle of October. I was attending Oregon City high school @ that time so yeah, I 'technically' started as a sodbuster since the late summer/early fall of 66'.