My parents would send me to work on the farm for disciplinary reasons as a teenager. Getting up at 3:00 AM was bad enough, but Grandpa's way of waking me up was just awful - the house was heated by a coal furnace and he'd just bang on the pipes with a wrench.
It did have it's small perks, though. My Grandma used to skim cream off the top of the tank for our oatmeal in the morning. Tasty.