Each 110 lbs sack was bagged, loaded and unloaded by hand.

“I loaded 66 tons and what did I get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” I know it’s an aberration of the 1950’s hit song “Sixteen Tons,” we just stretched the weight a little to meet our fertilizer requirement for this year’s rice crop. Each sack weighs 110 pounds, bad enough on a good day, but when it is 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius) you probably couldn’t even keep the devil from complaining about the heat. All our guys wanted was just a jug of water and a cool shower.

For days, the guys had to bag bulk fertilizer that sat in the hot sun, then load them onto trucks to drive it up to the rice fields where each bag had to be deposited it into our spreader for application on our 400 acres of rice land. After hand loading 66 tons of fertilizer, they had hand load the spreader with 122 tons of ground limestone. Why? Because of Pa Thom’s Chemistry set (see Mad Scientist) and so that this operation can feed the 3000+ kids and widows and maybe make enough money to become less dependent upon your generosity.