Pretty Exceptional

"Benjamin Franklin extolled agriculture as "the only honest way" for "a nation to acquire wealth," in stark contrast with the alternatives of war ("plunder[ing]) and commerce ("generally cheating")."15 (Jim Chen, The American Ideology)

Reading this, I have to wonder if the estimable Mr. Franklin was speaking to some proto typical gathering of 18th century yeomen in their cleanest coats and boots.  It has the same ring as many a buttering up delivered in stirring tones by many a presumptive friend of agriculture.  To hear tell, the one percent upon which the nation stands are those folks raising commodity crops, meat, and fiber, not fabulously wealthy investors and entrepreneurs and others of their monied ilk.  We in the crowd take all this laud with a block of salt; firm in the conviction of the general usefulness of our toil and the virtue of our profession without reaping the laurels of Olympian heroics.

This is partly why it has taken so long for farmers to rise to the need to tell what is true and what is untrue about the vocation of creating food from the rawest of materials. Man is no alchemist and can neither turn sunshine to bodily fuel nor grass to protein like plants and cattle do.  But he can tend his crops and livestock; it is a high calling to be a good shepherd.

We Americans get ourselves all atwitter whenever the term 'American exceptionalism' is resuscitated.  The belief that our country is something unique among nations or  has been and hopes to be a source of inspiration and goal of aspiration has not only proponents and opponents, but a cycle as definite as sun spots. 

On the other hand, if you look up ''agricultural exceptionalism", you get a lot of academic papers dealing with labor issues and other "exceptions" that agriculture is granted as opposed to the rules other industries have to follow.  Not so uplifting, huh.  

The back and forth, the accusations, the ads, and, let's face it, the out and out lies of the Keep Missouri Farming amendment campaign have been educational and sometimes, stomach churning. As a proponent, I have heard and read plenty of what the rest of the world believes, whether behind the anonymous veil of comments on some website or the lofty pedestal of a big city editorial column. I am proud of the able and articulate defenders of farmers' use of technology, our husbandry of animals, the wholesomeness and tastiness of what we send to food processors, groceries, and even farmers'markets. Anyone with an open mind CAN get an earful of real life and has no excuse to lean on easy stereotypes or half baked theories about agriculture.

I don't know what theme is most persuasive to someone from outside of the agricultural community.  The common ground, the bedrock, the refrain of every farmer or rancher I see posting on Facebook or writing a blog or plastered on campaign materials?  The theme that sends me to my computer to look up that term 'agricultural exceptionalism', that lofty term for our daily bread?

It is a wish for continuity in agriculture...that agriculture will survive for the next generation to follow parents, grandparents, and even ancestors into the profession of farming if they so desire. I know of no other calling, (excluding military service perhaps) that expresses itself and prides itself and extends itself from generation to generation.  Why do families hope their children become farmers too?  In this day and age, it certainly isn't the need to "grow your own help", as marvelous as working side by side can be.  It isn't a  speedy or worry free trip to the "top", wherever that is.  And I don't believe that a family farm is a golden prison, trapping unsuspecting youngsters in the amber of repetition and stagnation. 

No.  These successful people want their children to follow them into farming because it has been a good life doing good work for them and they want the same happiness and fulfillment for their children. It is so much more than just a little kid's wish to ride a combine with Grandpa or honk the air horn. It is more than wanting future grandchildren close at hand.   They have found satisfaction and reward in the incalculable bounty of nature and family ties.  They have taken the measure of the pluses and minuses of staying put and voted with their boots for their home towns.  Whether or not the children become engineers, bankers, executives or novelists instead isn't important and isn't the point. The desire to carry on family farms and family farming, anachronistic as it may seem, is a crowning glory of agriculture. It is the vote of confidence in both a way of life and an honorable profession. It gives us the trump card in any discussion.  Agriculture walks the walk, honoring the past, growing the present, and hoping for the future. 

May not be "exceptional", but it's close enough.

The Once and Future Fair

How can I not wax nostalgic at Fair time? Years ago, before we had kids, Blake and I would get up before sunrise and head over to the Atchison County Fair to help wash 4H calves, check out the competition, and lend moral support.  The Fair took place late in August back then, and the mornings were cool and heavy with dew.  Blake's brother Brooks was the same age Aaron is now, so I imagine he didn't mind having some extra help calf wrangling in the wash pen.

  I was no expert on cattle judging, but I relished the neighborliness, the burnt coffee in styrofoam cups, and the fresh glazed doughnuts laid out for those willing to be early risers. Back then the Hurst family showed Simmental cattle, big long bodied steers that were eating machines and could tip the scales at  three quarters of a ton of beef. And there were kids less than 5 foot high controlling those beasts with a jerk on their halters and a stern look....and there were kids whose calves were completely in charge, dragging the rope from their erstwhile master's hand, trotting around the ring dragging the rope through the muck,...or ...worse yet, raising their tails high and heading for hole 5 or 6 of the Rock Port Country Club just beyond the cattle panels.

Flash forward.  Years pass; styles change and the Simmental behemoths that could leap like a stag have been replaced by smaller sleeker black steers with noses that could sip from a teacup. The kids of the '90s had  lovely Chianina steers to show, shiny, but as skittish as colts.  They felt just fine to the judges, but hang em on a rail and they might, but probably wouldn't, grade choice.

 Our family had a routine by then....have a rodeo right after July 4th, a very tense occasion during which  Blake would try not to scream at the womenfolk for not stopping the hurdling terrified 1200 pound bovines and the womenfolk would pretend anyone else in the family couldn't do better at lassoing said animals.

   After the steers were tied and haltered, the girls spent a week bringing feed and water to them before they attempted to lead them to the water tank and back again. If these milestones were accomplished without injury to either girl or beast, the steers were turned loose again, still haltered, to eat and drink freely, with the underlying assumption being the cattle were used to the girls and, once caught, we could catch ém again. Finally, the kids practiced with their show sticks, leading the calves around the feedlot, setting them up, and praying every single time that one of the steers would not take a notion to balk.    By that time, Blake would leave home every morning and come home every night asking 'Did you brush your calves?'  The curry combs, clogged with dust and hair, hung on the barbed wire as evidence of daily grooming.

All those years of showing did yield a couple of trophies, but we figured they were more like winning a door prize than evidence that we were calf jockeys.

  No, our real accomplishments were the three tough accomplished unflappable showmen we raised, capable of coaxing, combing, calming, all the while keeping a weather eye on the judge.  The steers were never much of a money making proposition, but there is no way to put a value on good habits, perseverance, and dedication, not to speak of stoicism when a critter breaks a leg two weeks before the show and has to become hamburger.

The kids of the kids are raising animals now.  Aaron's hogs will be bacon and chops and roasts in the freezer in a week or so.  He will have money in his account to start the process all over again.  Matt and Ann are already discussing how to make Aaron's project, not just good eating, but good looking as well.  Aaron's grandparents (that's us!) are justly proud of how he has improved in the ring from last year and we know how attentive his folks are to his work ethic when it comes to doing chores!

Just a year or two ago, the US Department of Labor proposed some new regulations for children on farms that would have limited the kinds of work kids can do, even on their family's farms.  The uproar was so great that the rules were withdrawn and kids like Aaron can still work and chore like our children did and boys and girls have for generations.  The proposed rules landed on the agriculture industry like a bolt from the blue: stunningly arbitrary and ignorant of the inherent family nature of US agriculture.  Even though this was a proposal from the Federal level, it is a perfect example of what  Amendment 1 is trying to protect Missouri farmers from: a misguided even if well meaning impulse that would fundamentally harm Missouri agriculture.

Amendment 1 is not the result of paranoia. Farmers know that "they"are really out to get us; we need only marginally keep up with current affairs from coast to coast to understand that what we consider productive ways of growing grains, animals, fruits and vegetables are suspect.

We look for affirmation from our neighbors and fellow citizens that places like Atchison county will continue to grow kids from town and country who learn to do their chores every day, be responsible for another creature's well being, and finally, take those lessons to heart and pass them on to another generation. Look at the youngsters at any county fair; read the bloggers on social media; count the number of blue jackets at your local school.

 Farmers not only grow our food; they grow our future.  

Crazy Quilt

Every picture in this album tells a story: of generations past and to come, of simple past times and working together, of farm and rural life lived on something less than a global scale. These vignettes are part and parcel of the crazy quilt of Missouri agriculture and represent the values that will be supported by passage of#Amendment1

(individual photos can be seen up close in the slide slow)

Keep Missouri Farming Crazy Quilt

Through thick and through thin,

all out or all in.

And whether it's win, place or show.

With you for me and me for you,

we'll muddle through whatever we do.

Together, wherever we go...

Momma Rose in Gypsy

The Century Mark: From Wrigley to Carroll County

"There's just no better place to be on a summer afternoon than in Wrigley Field watching the Cards and the Cubs.... " a paraphrase of John Rooney's call on July 26, 2014

Just knowing the kids were visiting Chicago and taking in a game at Wrigley made my heart glad. Listening to the Cards/Cubs game on this Saturday afternoon as the wheels hugged the two lane was a good thing...not as good as being there, but way over on the plus side of the spectrum of summer traditions.   

Cards/Cubs rivalry, road game, road trip, wind rippling the tasseled fields, tractors gathering the shiny new round bales; these are just a few of the good things gathered this weekend for reflection.  Friday evening I drove the rolling curves of Highway 65 through verdant swaths of countryside, past the Blue Mound, the farm stands and businesses of plain folk, and the architectural blast from the past that is the Tina-Avalon school, to the 100th Carroll County Farm Bureau Annual Meeting in Carrollton.  Every seat was occupied; every plate piled with brisket, cheesy potatoes, slaw and green beans. It was a full house of more than 200 Farm Bureau members joined to celebrate and commemorate the longevity and tradition of their organization.  

I am a sucker for old photographs and other paper ephemera of our ties to the past.  Carroll county historians laid out a table of annual reports preserved from the 1940s and 1950s, from the county, the state, and even the American Farm Bureau Federation.  I wished I had a copy of the black and white panorama shot in the banquet hall of a Chicago hotel of the entire delegation of the American Farm Bureau Federation gathered for a meal during the 20th anniversary of the organization's existence.  The farmers and farmers' wives face the camera...the men clean shaven in white shirts and black suits and many of the women wearing hats.  Its a big group...and a serious group.....except for one errant uppity Nebraska delegate plugging his state sign....and all of them are volunteers. (Some of them might even be Cubs fans.)

I haven't seen inside the policy books from those annual meetings, but I know what consumes the time and energy of dedicated Farm Bureau volunteers today.  Farmers are torn between the day to day concerns folks in that photo would recognize but also threats to their businesses their ancestors would consider ludicrous or silly.  Farmers in the '40s were still 18 percent of the labor force and 23 percent of the population.  No doubt the delegate body in 1939 found plenty to worry about without considering the possibility that agriculture itself would be on trial.

Off to Palmyra in Marion county, where I bet there was a great crowd in 1940 for the Fair parade, just like there was this weekend. 

 The scene under the picnic shelter is straight out of a Thomas Hart Benton painting: farmers and families perched on picnic benches, standing under the shade tree, summery red bronze and baked by the sun, at rest, and the children endlessly busy, flitting from water tank to toy tractor to nowhere in particular, making their own breeze.  And under that tree, the local politicians speechifying, exhorting the crowd for the rights of farmers to farm, and subtly as they can plugging for their own campaigns.

Blake Hurst updates the folks in Palmyra

Baseball may be called America's past time, but to my mind politics has at least a three game lead in the standings, maybe five in even years.  Its a game we all play and sometimes the stakes are very high.  Unlike baseball with its blessedly long 162 games, the folks playing politics this August are facing a sudden death playoff, winner take all.  Farmers are all in, pulling out all the stops, in their efforts to convince the crowd that their goals haven't changed in all the years since 1939.  Volunteers place signs, talk to civic groups, write letters to editors and opponents, send checks to the organizations representing them, but most importantly, tell the world about their farms, their families, their concerns and their wish to continue doing exactly what they do best: feed people by growing food on the lands they love.  

“I just overheard a woman giving her opinion on the abilities of the batsman. You can’t even vote, doll, what gave you the cockamamie idea anyone pays any heed to the musings on sport of your inferior brain?” quotes about Wrigley Field...

OK, call me over the top.  But after the 19th amendment passed in 1920, I can go to the polls just like a man.  As a matter of fact, I already have, casting my absentee ballot this afternoon at my local courthouse.  So, do it.  Go vote.  Support your cause.  Support your local farmers.  Take part in the great American past time...