Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Almost all the pragmatic agricultural wisdom that my grandparents taught me has long ago been superseded by technology. I don’t anymore calibrate, as I once did when farming in the 1980s, the trajectory of an incoming late summer storm by watching the patterns of nesting birds, or the shifting directions and feel of the wind, or the calendar date or the phases of the moon. Instead, I go online and consult radar photos of storms far out at sea. Meteorology is mostly an exact science now.
Even the agrarian’s socio-scientific arts of observation that I learned from my family are seldom employed in my farming anymore. Back in the day, when a local farmer’s wife died, I was told things like, “Elmer will go pretty soon, too. His color isn’t good and he’s not used to living without her”—and tragically the neighbor usually died within months. Now I guess I would ask Elmer whether his blood tests came back OK, and the sort of blood pressure medicine he takes. I don’t think we believe that superficial facial color supersedes lab work. Farmers did because in an age of limited technology they saw people as plants, and knew that the look and color of a tree or vine—in comparison to others in the orchard or vineyard—was a sign of their viability.
I grew up with an entire local network of clubs and get-togethers, and ferried my grandparents to periodic meetings of the Walnut Improvement Club, Eastern Star, the Odd Fellows, Masons, the Grange, and Sun-Maid growers. They exchanged gossip, of course, but also vital folk and empirical information on irrigation, fertilizers, and machines.
Discussion (8)
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Circle the bases, you hit this one out of the park! Thank you for beautifully expressing what I have witnessed and experienced, also coming from a Central Valley farming family.
Victor, Part of my life was spent on a big family farm in southern Illinois. Cattle, chickens and pigs. The big old barns and tool sheds. John Deere tractors and equipment. Bales of hay and ears of corn. Canning. Neighbors you could only see in the distance. Small white churches. My uncles and Aunts who worked from dawn to dusk knowing if they did not do the task it would not be done. And kids who knew they had to work to and be responsible. Government and Banks were always suspect. Mother nature was to be lived with and respected with a touch of fear. And you were slow to judge others for you knew they had a burden you did not see. Those men quietly helped to make me. I wanted to say, thank you for all of your writings. Very much.
Hi, Victor, This article is near to my heart as a 5th generation farmer. There's so much to appreciate now in technology. I prefer riding in the air conditioned cab of a combine than the open, hot and dusty ones of yore. I love that we can tile fields now to protect the land better and keep it more productive. I'm grateful for the variety of kinds of selling tools we now have for our crops. I could go on and on with this list. But I will just close by saying I consider it a privilege to be able to continue participating in the provision of food for our world that my business provides. I am continually educated and challenged by your excellent articles....keep them coming! Ann
Mr. Hanson, All I can say is thank you. We need all you can give us.
I can go on and on with similar stories about my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. We have lost generations that quietly built a great country that we often-times take for granted today. Will leave with this poem: Illinois Farmer By Carl Sandburg Bury this old Illinois farmer with respect. He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois corn-fields. Now he goes on a long sleep. The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay white on the yellow ears in the bushel basket at the corncrib, The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands must dream of Illinois corn.
A very true picture of where we seem to be going in farm life, even up here in northern New England. Not the corporate types as you relate but ever larger, though fewer ones that are trying to survive. Am talking mostly dairy farms in my area. The small family, generational dairy becoming rare. Have often commented on the farmer-genes that were/are what it took. How fragile these farms have become as children go away is becoming increasingly apparent. Worked for and with them for close to 40 years, mostly as the also nearly extinct in-the-field Extension Agent. Sad to see this way of life passing, Nice article, Thanks, Steve
What are the chances the republicans will regain the house in 2020 and vote to reverse the impeachment of president Trump? Do they have the authority to do this based on the constitution?
A timely essay, quietly inspiring.