TOWN OF DOVER - On a crisp, gray November morning, 83-year-old Bill Noble waited for the frost to thaw. In the fields, the combines waited, too.

Once the frost had disappeared, Noble would be back out picking up another load of newly harvested corn that would end up in the dryers at Noble Grain Farms, 1211 English Settlment Ave., the farm three of his children now run.

He no longer greets the dawn, and the list of chores that waits for farmers who do.

However, if there's work to be done, Noble is ready to help, even if it means pitching in long after the sun has set.

Noble has earned the right to get up a little later than everybody else.

He could go somewhere warmer, at least once southeast Wisconsin gets its first hint of winter's chill. But he knows he wouldn't stay there long.

Noble has never strayed far from his family farm.

There's a lifetime of lessons in Noble's weathered face and hands. It's a life that has taught him many things.

"It's a good life. I don't think there's a better life than farming," said Noble, who raised his six children with his wife, Donna, on their farm on English Settlement Avenue.

In many ways, Noble's life has spanned the history of modern agriculture in this country. He grew up in the 1930s, at a time when most farmers had a small herd of dairy cows and they made their living that way.

Noble once drove a milk route in the mid-1940s, picking up cans of milk for the Hawthorn-Melody Dairy in Genesee Depot.

Farms that dotted the landscape in Racine County, like the rest of the country, were far more diversified.

In his golden years, Noble, who has never really retired, has seen the growth of large farms like the grain operation run by his children. Most of the corn they raise is sold as feed.

His life has coincided with the increased industrialization of farming, where farms grew bigger and the machines did, too.

The wisdom of changes

This country has seen a tremendous change in agriculture in the last 70 to 80 years, said Rose Skora, an agriculture educator for Racine and Kenosha counties' UW-Cooperative Extension.

"These individuals who have been through so much they've just seen all these changes and experienced them for better or worse," Skora said. "I think what we're going to lose (when they're gone) is that experience … that wisdom. I think what that older generation brings is just the wisdom of all of the different changes."

Noble moved with his parents to the farm on English Settlement Road in 1926 when he was a year old.

The family rented the farm at first.

One of his earliest memories of life on the farm was the owner pulling thistles with his bare hands out of his mother's vegetable garden.

Noble also remembers walking to the old English Settlement School, which once stood at the northeast corner of English Settlement and Plank roads.

Noble married when he was 21 and started farming with his father, a dairy farmer. They milked cows until 1962.

Milk wasn't worth much and they weren't making much money so they sold the 30 cows they had.

After he sold the cows, Noble went to work for the Racine County Highway Department, where he worked plowing snow and building roads for 13 years. He continued to raise some cash crops and beef cattle.

As his two sons grew older, they wanted to go into farming, Noble said. So he left his job with the county and returned to the farm.

In 80 years, Noble has watched farming change immensely.

He doesn't know how much more it can change now. One of the biggest pressures now comes from development, Noble said.

His family rents some land and they seem to lose some to houses nearly every year, but maybe that will slow up now, Noble said.

There's one important lesson Noble wishes more people would learn about farming and agriculture.

"More of the young people now they think their food comes from the grocery store, of course it does to them," Noble said. "I wish they knew more about really where it comes from, how it all works."

Lessons from a life on the farm

How to live

"It's a good life, a good place to raise kids."

Humility

"Sometimes you think you're going to … do well … or gonna have a good crop and it doesn't turn out that well. You just learn to live with nature I guess."

To appreciate nature"Everything comes from the earth. Everything, it just traces right back to the earth, everything that we have and will ever have."

The comfort of roots

"It's kind of comfortable, I guess - security, knowing where your roots are."

Favorite thing about farming

"Seeing crops grow and be out there on the tractor in the field working the ground … See green things come up."

Least favorite thing about farming

"It used to be milking cows. I didn't care for that, never did. Some people do, and that's fine. They enjoy that, and that's fine. But I guess I never did. I wasn't cut out for that, I guess."

Source: Farmer Bill Noble, 83, Town of Dover