{"id":12138,"date":"2020-01-14T12:24:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12138"},"modified":"2020-01-14T12:24:41","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:24:41","slug":"remembering-the-farming-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-the-farming-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Farming Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost all the pragmatic agricultural wisdom that my grandparents taught me has long ago been superseded by technology. I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the agrarian\u2019s 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\u2019s wife died, I was told things like, \u201cElmer will go pretty soon, too. His color isn\u2019t good and he\u2019s not used to living without her\u201d\u2014and 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\u2019t 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\u2014in comparison to others in the orchard or vineyard\u2014was a sign of their viability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2020\/01\/12\/remembering-the-farming-way\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019t 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-39M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12203,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-farming-wit-and-wisdom-of-mike-bloomberg\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":0},"title":"The Farming Wit and Wisdom of Mike Bloomberg","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Here is what Democratic candidate for president Michael Bloomberg said in 2016 at Oxford, in what he apparently offered up as an ad hoc history of labor, agriculture, and industry, leading up to his own sophisticated era,\u00a0as reported in the\u00a0New York Post: \u201cI could\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13065,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/thought-of-the-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":1},"title":"Thought of the Day","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 30, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Water, Water and Not a Drop?Behind the national headlines are lots of other stories. Here in California, the Department of Water Resources and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation announced that they may not (be able to?) honor the meager 5% of the contracted water\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 18 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 18 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/thought-of-the-day\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3599,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-impending-food-fight\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":2},"title":"The Impending Food Fight","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services While we worry about gas prices, the costs of milk, meat and fresh produce silently skyrockets. So like the end of cheap energy, is the era of cheap food also finally over? Since the farm depression of the early 1980s \u2014 remember the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;July 2007&quot;","block_context":{"text":"July 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/july-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6987,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-droughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":3},"title":"A Tale Of Two Droughts","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Content Agency\u00a0 Despite recent sporadic rain,\u00a0California\u00a0is still in the worst extended drought in its brief recorded history. If more storms do not arrive, the old canard that California\u00a0could withstand two droughts -- but never three -- will be tested for the first time in memory.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo Credit: NASA\/NOAA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/california-snow-drought-extreme-critical-fire-risk-los-angeles-san-francisco-oakland-january-2014.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10386,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10386-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":4},"title":"From an Angry Reader: Hello\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Hello Dr. Hanson, While it's hard to argue with \"be happy day by day\", our current form of capitalism - which Hoover seems to endorse - makes that near impossible. Over the last 30 years, Friedman's nutty idea of maximizing shareholder value as the only responsibility\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Angry Reader&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1077,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-coin-toss-on-eu-crisis-for-germany-heads-we-lose-tails-you-win\/","url_meta":{"origin":12138,"position":5},"title":"The Coin Toss on EU Crisis For Germany: Heads We Lose, Tails You Win","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's \u00a0The Corner Watching the current EU dramatics over southern Mediterranean debt reminds me of the farm crisis of 1982\u20134 when lots of big farming concerns around here defaulted on what they owed banks. At first, the banks with tough talk demanded sharp cut-backs, immediate overdue\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The EU&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The EU","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/the-eu\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12141,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12138\/revisions\/12141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}