Farming/Agriculture

Octavio, Rolando, Lauren, Joey, Anna

Chapter Outline
Crops
Type of labor
Work Hazards/Hardships
Partnerships and Side Projects
Livestock and other animal life

Crops-Joey
Sorghum/milo
Cotton- disease called root rot led to switch to grain
Sesame Seeds
Occasionally (once?) beans (pinto beans?)- Percy Houts interview
Where the crops are exported to? (Potatoes/Plant City, Florida selling potatoes to South Texas
and vice versa)
Onion Story
Grains mostly

The Bounty of the Valley

Grains were mostly grown on the farmland. Occasionally though after a good amount of

rain they would switch to grow corn because all that rain would lead to a better quality of crop

with better yields meaning they would stand to make more money off of em. As it was though

the cost of wheat was five dollars a bushel according to Jeffery Houts with the price of remaining

five dollars when Jeff graduated from high school. The estimated price of wheat in November

22, 2019 was $5.1525 a bushel according to the website, (​Wheat Prices - 40 Year Historical

Chart. (n.d.))​. Some crop prices are relatively stable however prices of corn have fluctuated

dramatically over the years with the highest price per bushel topping at $7.99 in August 27,

2012.

Citations:
 1. Wheat Prices - 40 Year Historical Chart. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.macrotrends.net/2534/wheat-prices-historical-chart-data​.
2. Corn Prices - 59 Year Historical Chart. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.macrotrends.net/2532/corn-prices-historical-chart-data.

Type of labor-Octavio
Mostly mechanized labor
Cotton gin
Watermelon irrigation technology
Bracero program (?)
Care for workers, pay

Work Hardships-Lauren
Farming Accidents:
Combine header falling on back/going through ankle in Premont: Jeff Houts and Gene Houts.
Once finished harvesting crops here, follow the harvest north toward Corpus, never further.
Upwards of 3,000 pounds. The way it was positioned, the weight of the header didn’t fall. Wire
tine went all the way through foot, pull it off the wire tine, “boot was filled with blood”. Far off
the road, in the middle of nowhere. Mentality of “hurry, we’ve got to get this done,” farming
obligations. Need to stay vigilant. “There’s always danger on the farm” Jeff Houts.

Butane tank burn: Mr. Houts used to run butane in his truck, butane tank in the back of his single
cab pickup truck. In McCook and the butane tank exploded. Burned. Walked to the nearest farm
five miles away to ask if they would bring him to the hospital. Didn’t have 911. Burned
everywhere. Mrs. Houts and Shirley Bair blended up aloe vera and it healed Mr. Houts’ wounds.
No scars.

Childhood gasoline burn: First major burn sustained, helping start a pickup truck and they were
pouring gas into the carburetor and it caught fire and backfired, caught the gas can on fire. The
gentleman holding the gas threw it and it landed on Mr. Houts. 15 or 16 years old. Told stories of
how he was burned so badly they have to remove his fingernails. The most painful thing he’s
ever experienced.

Pesticides/herbicides (RoundUp):​ prior to the use of RoundUp was manual hoeing and
weeding. Support for RoundUp. “I know about all this about non-hodgkin’s lymphoma and all
this stuff that you know everybody is getting from RoundUp but...I mean, I don’t know.
RoundUp is a great product. It’s a money saver.” Glyphosate, “the farming industry wouldn’t be
where it is right now if it weren’t for it” Jeff Houts interview. Never wore a mask when spraying
with RoundUp. Aerial applicators (formerly referred to as crop dusting) wore white jumpsuits
and gloves since they were handling it everyday. Called that type of spraying in. “Pros outweigh
the cons.”

(Placed carefully) in comparison with Jerry Kaml’s (Marylin Houts’ brother) father (Edinburg,
3.5 acres, died in 1980) and brother’s (Sharyland, died in 2014 or 2015? ) death from
non-hodgkin's lymphoma, contracted from the use of RoundUp on citrus trees (Texas Ruby
Reds) “they would go out, spray their citrus trees and they would come in and be dripping with
that insecticide or pesticide or herbicide, or whatever the -cide was.”

Judy Houts: Had crop dusters come and spray to kill weeds, “now we have this big giant thing
that looks like a caterpillar out there, so all of the equipment has changed, and it is expensive,
very expensive.” Chemicals: “I hear my dad saying they don’t have the good stuff anymore
because EPA and everything is changing. A lot of the stuff they have now is kind of watered
down but is five times as much.”

Pests: ​Mice, rats, aphids, beetles. Mice and rats main indoor pests, not crop pests?
Farming programs:​ “Used to be called the ASCS office now it’s called the FSA office where
you can buy crop insurance and there’s a program where the government will subsidize your
crop, but you don’t get back what you put in” Gina Houts.
Percy Houts: Attempt to be helpful, “the Farm Bureau and the farm service and any programs
that were initiated in order to try to help them. 640 acres of land put in the Soil Bank, the
government was trying to control the excess production so you could put your land into a soil
bank and the government would pay you X number of dollars per year for as long as you didn’t
kill that land again, let it leave fallow. My dad allowed them to release a Chukar quail, chukars
and Japanese quail on that 640 acres. They were testing to see how they would survive and
produce.” Nothing to be done for extreme drought. Through the Farm Bureau, assistance, “began
to do things like contour farming, S shape, divert the water, spread out more evenly, forming
Lagunas.”
Agricultural associations: Percy Houts’ dad, Denver Houts, “Dad was instrumental in helping
form the McCook Co-op which had the cotton gins there so that farmers could actually not have
to take their cotton all the way into Mission or McAllen or Pharr to get it baled. So they formed
the Co-op, they owned, the farmers owned shares and then they could get their cotton into bales
and shipped to Harlingen a lot cheaper. Then later on they added to the Co-op by putting in grain
elevators.” Came into effect in 1952 or somewhere around there. “Then another private company
came in and opened another cotton gin and started competing with the Co-op. Co-op bought
them out and closed down the old co-op gin and moved into the more modern one.” Dallas
Cowboys organization? Look into further. “The Skloss’s and Sekula's did the right thing out in
McCook and turned their farms into corporate farms.” Family farm vs. corporate farm. Max. 640
acres, usually around 320. “The corporate farm had their 320, then they leased another 450 and
then they’d lease a thousand acres. And what they would do is that of course the government
giving subsidies, the bigger the farm, the bigger the subsidy you got. So they received a lot of
help.” Remove the middleman seller, own corporation buy the produce and ship. Avoid the
packing sheds. Gilbert Skloss broke the watermelon monopoly by creating a small corporate
farm, shipping his own. “Through their corporation they were also able to borrow much larger
quantities and money from banks.”
Hurricane Beulah: ​Hurricane Beulah, “the Houts look forward to hurricanes because it brings
rain to the area down in the Valley where they need rain” Jerry Kaml. “I often heard my
brother-in law Gene say, “what we need is a hurricane”. Percy Houts- McCook: Hurricane
Beulah, “knocked everything down, flooded the fields” still ended up being a good year. “The
eye of it came right over McCook. Led to debate whether it really was a hurricane or just a
tornado. When the hurricane went through and the eye was there, it went from being huge,
horrendous rain and wind to dead calm and sunshine and then boom, it hit again, from another
direction.”

Partnerships and Side Projects-Anna

Sharing equipment with farming families
Taught foreigners locally about agriculture (hosted them)
DeKalb Representative/Associate

A known associate of the Houts family was Mr. Kenneth Wayne Eubanks via Mr. Gene

Houts. Starting around 1980 (when the Eubanks moved to the Rio Grande Valley) the Houts

befriended the Eubanks family, another farming family just down the road. Some of the projects

that they worked on together included what was agricultural education for individuals from

foreign countries. There are conflicting accounts of where these individuals may have been

visiting from and with what purpose, however it is generally agreed that some of them may have

been from somewhere in Africa and that their goal was to learn about American farming and

agriculture. The Houts family would host these individuals as part of an “international
exchange” deal of sorts and, according to Tom Eubanks, the Houts would teach them a bit more

about mechanized farming.1

Tom: “ He also worked with Gene on a couple of international exchange deals where,
they brought in people involved with the agriculture from-- I think they were from Korea,
somewhere from the Middle East. I know there were some guys from Africa there.
There’s a whole bunch-- there’s a group, I think there’s a couple times they brought in
these guys to show them, you know, what American agriculture, and you know,
mechanized farming-- because most of these countries would, you know, get out with a
bunch of guys with sticks and they’d break the-- with these big poles, you know, and
they’d break the ground open and plant everything by hand, and you know. And uh it was
completely different than what we got, you know, or certainly the equipment that Gene
Houts has!”

This would be in alignment with Tom Eubanks’ accounts, too, of the types of crops he

recalls the Houts growing. He mentioned the Houts mostly stuck to mechanized farming, and

that a major reason for this was because a large part of their farming and harvest was grain crops,

like sorghum, sesame, etc. This would have eliminated the necessity for manual labor.

Tom: “ No, he was, never grew citrus. He bought a few for his yard! He has a few trees in
the front in his yard, those navel oranges, I sold them to him. Just as, you know, fruit in
his yard. But to best of my knowledge, no, Houts never grew citrus. He was a corn, and a
vegetable farmer. In the last couple years, I think he’s been growing uh,... What was it?
Uh...what’s that new crop… uh...sesame! …..Yeah he was growing sesame and some
other stuff….​ ​ He grew tomatoes, and watermelons, and this other stuff. But basically he
was a grain and a corn farmer.”

Mr. Gene Houts was also a DeKalb Seed Associate.

Mrs. Marilyn Houts: Gene worked for Dekalb at the time and he took, gave’em all
Dekalb hats

1
Eubanks transcription
 Livestock and other animal life-Rolando
Cattle/buffalo - Jeff and Judy have specifically stated about their ownership of buffalo. They had
bought buffalo from South Dakota and had stated that the animal is extremely sporadic.
Quails
Rattlesnakes. - Jeff has discussed the rattlesnake round up in Freer, and it’s importance to him.
The idea of the round up is for contestants to go out in search for the largest rattlesnake.
Whoever wins the competition has ownership of the snake. Jeff has a very, very large rattlesnake
skin mounted in his office, one that he states would win every year. Jeff used to catch snakes
frequently and would cage them.
Hogs- McCook - In this section of the chapter, I would like to discuss hog livestock and
development. Especially on the farm in McCook.
Ducks (shovel heads to canvasbacks)/Bullfrogs for frog legs, attracted by the water- McCook
Pet rabbits, guineafowls
Geese?