This Place, These People by Warner Nancy Stark David

Author:Warner, Nancy,Stark, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036090, History/United States/State & Local/Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI), PHO010000, Photography/History
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2013-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

SYLVESTER RAWDING FAMILY

PHOTOGRAPHED BY SOLOMON BUTCHER, 1886, COURTESY OF THE NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

This does not mean that farm people are not proud. It is a quiet pride. Some communities are proud of their high school football team. Others will point to the fact that one or more of their high school debate teams regularly moves on to national competitions. Cuming County residents are proud that their small community repeatedly produces finalists in state and national championships in 4H and FFA (Future Farmers of America), or that they recently sent a team of high school students to the National Land Judging Competition.

There is a strong sense of accomplishment in being small and doing something world class. Not necessarily to have the largest feedlots, but nonetheless to produce beef with a national reputation. Not necessarily to have the largest fields, but nonetheless to rank with the very best in bushels per acre. To produce for the world market while knowing that many of your cousins are still nearby doing the same.

To maintain a way of living, the farming way of living. This is the challenge. “Farming is a way of living, a way of living that I love,” said one of my cousins, “but I can’t keep that way of living and pass it on to my children if I run a losing business. Farming is a family business, but it won’t be there for my family if I don’t operate it like a business.”

Herein lies a dilemma. What is the farming way of living? We might assume that the man plowing behind a mule has an intimate relationship to the land. But to say that he is “knowledgeable about agriculture” might be to ignore so much about which he is ignorant. Now consider a man in the air-conditioned cabin of a tractor pulling a 24-row planter. He is out on a field alone with his thoughts. But to say that he is “alone with nature” would also be a misunderstanding—for his relationship to the land and his crops is mediated by a host of technological systems. So says James, equally expressive in voicing the joys of coming to an understanding with his fields as about the joy of running the chemical sprayer. As he makes another pass with his tractor across one of his 80-acre fields, he comments:

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