Connecting horses to horsepower

EUREKA, Ill. — The era of horse-drawn farm equipment seems far removed from computer software, satellite guidance, crop and livestock genetics, planter technology, cab comfort, science-based nutrient management and other aspects of today’s agriculture.

However, the industry’s advancements from basic agriculture production technology to modern advancements really occurred in a relatively short period of time, and Mike Sager has been there for all of it.

Sager, 97, longtime Woodford County agriculture adviser, recently reflected on his life and career that connects horses to horsepower.

He was born Sept. 29, 1926, and raised in a log house built by his great-grandfather in Jefferson County, Illinois. Sager has the $15 check his father wrote to the doctor to pay for his birth.

“There were nine of us living in those two rooms. Of course, there was no central heating, no running water or anything like that,” Sager said.

He compares his childhood to the stories to Tom Sawyer, penned by Mark Twain.

“We rambled in the woods. Went to the creek and did all kinds of things. It was during the Depression, and we didn’t have much. We did have plenty to eat because we had livestock, we had an orchard, and we raised chickens and had eggs to sell,” he noted.

“I went to an ordinary country school in Jefferson County, Climax School. We called it ‘Climax college of elementary knowledge.’ We would go off the school grounds at recess hunting for rabbits and once and a while we’d catch one. Not very often, but once and a while. It was a pretty much a perfect Tom Sawyer atmosphere.

“I was kind of ornery in school through about sixth grade when I had a teacher who steered me in the right way.”

The threat of tuberculosis weighed heavily on the family in those early years. Three of his mother’s sisters died from the disease at a young age, and his father’s brother also died from it.

Before his parents met, each of their families traveled by covered wagon to New Mexico because the climate was said to be more conducive to avoiding tuberculosis. They later returned to Illinois.

“Tuberculosis was very constant and it was on my mother’s mind all of the time,” he added.

Helping with the chores on the family farm was also part of his childhood.

“I’ve plowed behind horses. I’ve harrowed behind horses. I’ve run a little disk with horses,” Sager said.

He attended Mt. Vernon High School in the early 1940s which was no small task logistically as there was no bus service and the Sagers live on a dirt (sometimes mud) road. It was the students’ responsibility to get to high school.

“Most of the people from the country would live in town with their relatives. Others drove cars, even though it was wartime. Every day I went to high school I had to get up before 5 a.m. because I rode with my brother-in-law who worked at the railroad shop and he had to be to work at 7 a.m.,” he said.

“That was pretty early, and do you think the school would open the doors so we could get in? No. To stay warm, we had to depend on the generosity and the kindness of storekeepers and people like that. My brother-in-law liked to get to work early, so we were there at 6:30 a.m., and we had to wait with the generosity of the storekeepers until they opened the school.”

D-Day

He graduated on D-Day, June 6, 1944, at 17 years old. He was eligible for the draft when he turned 18 on Sept. 29, and about 100 days later he was in the Army.

“They moved pretty fast, and we were just kids. We were very naive, unsophisticated, country kids. Some of them couldn’t read or write. Most of them could,” Sager said.

He applied for officer candidate school after some encouragement, but failed because he had acne. “They simply said on my exam, ‘acne vulgaris, unfit for tropical duty.’ So, my officer career ended pretty fast,” he noted.

“We were in a very significant transition and it was based on our age. The group that trained just ahead of us was taken out of their 17-week training at 13 weeks and sent directly to the war, and here we came in the next group. The war in Europe ended when we were returning from our training and that was extremely significant. Our birthdays were very significant in relation to the war events.

“The war was not over in the Pacific and when it came time for everybody to ship out, they had me hang around. They had me doing some carpenter work in the orderly room and they had me work in the hospital for a couple of weeks. It was just a place to store me for a while.”

When the war ended, he was assigned to general headquarters to take care of officers’ records.

“That was very interesting because I met officers of all types. The bulk of them were the ones who had fought in the war in both the European and Pacific theaters. We had a lot of heroes come through, and some of them were kind of sad,” Sager said.

“I won the first Commendation Award, the lowest ranked valor award you can get. It was created by Congress in December and I received mine in March. That was just for doing a good job.”

He was honorably discharged on Oct. 2, 1946.

Career

He spent some time at home after the service and decided he needed to further his education. He wrote a letter to the University of Illinois inquiring about its curriculum.

Sager enrolled in Centralia Junior College and completed the two-year program in 18 months. It was there that he met his future wife, Genevia. They were married in 1951 and would have four children, Brian, Deborah, David and Elizabeth. Genevia passed away on Dec. 21, 2017.

He went on to enrolled a U of I after completing junior college, and would then take a job as Woodford County assistant farm adviser.

“Mr. Brock, the farm adviser, wanted to know if I would take the job for $3,400 a year. I took the job and started working Feb. 1, 1951. I got my first paycheck and bought her wedding rings and I haven’t missed a paycheck since,” Sager said.

He was the Woodford County assistant farm adviser for three years. His predecessor wanted to retire in a few years but before Sager was to take his place, he was moved to Clay County to serve as farm adviser.

“He told me I had to go to southern Illinois and get more experience under my belt. That’s the way the system worked at the time. I went to Clay County and, of course, Clay County taught me a lot more than I taught them. They’re wonderful people and I enjoyed my time there,” Sager said.

He then returned to Woodford County as the farm adviser in 1957.

Promoting Soybeans

Sager served stateside during the closing months of World War II. Later during his agriculture career, he had numerous opportunities to serve overseas in another capacity — promoting a new use for soybeans.

Sager was a part of multiple humanitarian trips to other countries to help people grow soybeans for direct human consumption, traveling to Peru five times, three times to Ecuador, twice to the Dominican Republic, and twice to Costa Rica. The first trip was in 1975 and the initiative continued for 10 years.

The trips were sponsored by various government and nongovernmental organizations, including the U of I, U.S. Agency for International Development, Rotary, among others.

“Soybeans is really a top-notch protein source. All of the trips were to teach about using soybeans as a protein source for people’s consumption, getting the poorest people to raise soybeans for their own consumption,” he said.

He was selected for the trips due, in part, to his ability to speak Spanish after taking a course in high school and learning more of the language on his own later in life.

During his decades as county agricultural adviser, Sager also helped organize the Woodford County Pork Producers Association, the Woodford County Beef Improvement Association, and the Illinois Valley Lamb and Wool Producers Association.

“It was just a matter of getting people of a single interest together and letting them organize. This was mostly done through Extension but the Farm Bureau was also part of the act,” he said.

Techology

Having literally seen it all in terms of agriculture advancements during the 20th century, Sager was asked what technological change he saw that had the biggest impact on the industry.

“Genetics with both livestock and crops. For instance, when I first started working here in Woodford County, Tamworth pigs had a loin about the size of a silver dollar,” he said.

“The genetics is a big one because it is so significant and I think we’re just on the cusp of some more genetic changes that are going to be very significant. We’re going to see what we would consider by today’s standards huge yields.”

He recalled a conversation he had with his father when he was about 12 years old that little did he know at the time would be a glimpse into the future of nutrient management.

“My dad and I were out shocking lespedeza hay. Lespedeza hay was just a crop that would grow on southern Illinois’ poor soil. Those soils are 15,000 years older than these soils are in central Illinois. So, they’ve been pretty well washed out,” Sager noted.

“Back then, you mowed this forage, you raked it and shocked it, you stacked it; there was a lot of hand work. We were sitting there taking a break and we were near a sack bottom where a hay stack had not been utilized and rotted, and so it had an accumulation of nutrients. That lespedeza there was higher than the rest of the field and my dad said to me, ‘Mike, some day we’ll know how to make the entire field produce like this.’

“Nowadays on that same land that was very poor, we have some land in southern Illinois and this year the wheat made 94 bushels an acre. Last year we had about the same, 94 bushels, and the double-crop soybeans were 30 bushels an acre. That’s amazing. That’s poor ground.”

Retirement

Sager retired after 40 years as a farm adviser but wasn’t going to stay idle.

“When I retired, I needed something to do. I got a call from the Crop Improvement Association and they wanted me to inspect certified seed fields. So, I did that for 19 years. Collectively, being in the agriculture loop and the doing something worthwhile I think I have about 57 years of practicing my profession,” he said.

He also continues his longtime passion of working with wood.

Cabinets, chests, tables, rocking horses, toy trucks and trailers, hand-carved link chains, you name it, and Sager has probably made. He gives away most of his work.

“People seem to like them,” Sager added.