WORTH TWP — At 74, Glenn Studebaker has had but one real vacation with his wife Pearl: A bus trip to Yellowstone National Park about two years ago.

As a life-long, sixth-generation farmer, there just hasn’t been much time for Studebaker to travel except maybe overnighters to the state farm show or a favored machinery convention in Kentucky.

But for Studebaker there’s a love in working his own 335 acres that superseded a need to visit other places.

He enjoys being outdoors, he said. He couldn’t live without the change of duties that coincides with the seasons.

“And if you get dirt under your fingernails?” he said. “Well, that is a plus.”

But Pearl has her eyes on a second vacation, a trip to Mackinac Island, Mich.

While the couple has cut back the intensity of their chores by leasing out the family-owned fertilizer, seed and chemical business about two years ago and by switching from milking cows to beef cattle, Studebaker said he has no interest in retirement. On the contrary, he just bought an additional 30 acres a couple years back.

“I will retire when I cash my last check,” he said. “I’m not done yet.”

Born and raised right there on a road named for his family, Studebaker’s parents raised milking cows. He also raises acres of oats, soybeans, corn, wheat, hay and the like.

In 1979, Studebaker started the fertilizer business because his preferred company of 38 years quit doing business. Basically, he was just looking for a way to supply himself and his neighbors.

But Studebaker’s business grew to a heyday of 2,025 tons of fertilizer sales a year.

At the same time, the family had about 40 milking cows. In addition to feed and care, cows need must be milked every 12 hours. No matter what.

Those demands kept the family from vacationing and sometimes even from making it to events locally.

“I would have liked to have gone to more of my daughters’ sporting events,” Pearl said of the cow milking days.

The lifestyle also didn’t leave room for hobbies. Pearl enjoys reading. But Studebaker?

“My wife says my hobby is talking,” he said.

And so there came a day when Studebaker was doing some corn planting and a customer wanted a large fertilizer order after hours and the cows needed milked and the day stretched into the evening one too many times.

“Mother was mad,” Studebaker said of his wife of more than three decades.

Pearl drew the line, and the dairy cows were sold in 1992.

The family bought some beef cattle, which also are hard work, but their schedule can be altered just enough to let the couple leave for an afternoon if they’d like.

And while the pair still manage the fertilizer business which is on the farm, it was leased to Western Reserve, a co-op, a few years back after the company hired a friend of Studebaker’s.

There are some things that will never change. For example, Studebaker’s hat choice.

“The first thing I do before I leave the house is put on a ball cap and the only time I don’t wear one is when I go to church on Sunday,” he said. The Studebakers attend the Plaingrove Presbyterian Church.

But over the course of Studebaker’s life other aspects have changed. A good share of his equipment is upgraded from those that even his father would have known.

Most tractors now don’t even allow your neck to turn red in the sun. They’re often equipped with cabs and air conditioning and heaters “in case you have to haul some manure in the winter,” he said.

His favored tractor is “red,” a Case International red.

“I always said there was two things I wanted before I died: a 4-wheel drive tractor and a Mac truck,” he said noting that the Case International is one of two 4-wheel drive tractors he owns, and he bought a MAC triaxle in 1999.

Still, he said, most of his neighbors have even bigger and better equipment.

“You have to nowadays. My grandad, when he was here, was set for the winter with 500 bushel of ear corn. Now I raise 10,000 bushel of ear corn.”

Looking to the future, he said its possible his daughter and son-in-law, Karie and William Seebacher, might be interested in farming the homestead. Karie is a physical therapist, but she and her husband are raising about 50 black Angus on their own, smaller farm.

Studebaker’s other daughter, Susan Fisher, and her husband, Steve, live on a dairy farm in Chambersburg.

In the mid-1980s, the Studebaker farm was designated as a Century Farm by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. By then, it was long past 100 years old.

“And that’s the reason she married me,” Studebaker said of his wife, and they both chuckle like high school sweethearts. “She wanted to live on a farm. She didn’t want to live in the city. And we’ve been together ever since.”