Midday; Blessings of the Field

It looks like it's mid-morning on a day in late May. A farmer is planning a field of corn this day doing it in a time honored fashion behind a team of draft horses. The horses move slowly rhythmically back and forth across this field too slowly probably for most primers. But then this is a small field of 10 or 12 acres for the farmer doesn't seem to mind the horses slow speed. In fact the horses get very little of the farmers attention. Just an occasional word of encouragement to rebuke the farmers mostly actually tried with trying to keep his corn rows straight and the horses seem to know their job well enough that this farmer and others like him are pretty much oddities these days farming with horses. That's the old fashioned way. Horses After all went out with McCormick reapers the single bottom plow in the model. There are a few old timers still holding on to the old ways and a few younger folks picking them up but otherwise farming in America today is a highly mechanized diesel fuel the

high tech business. Not five miles from the old farmer with his team of horses another farmer is rushing to get the last of his corn in the field he's working as at least 60 acres maybe more. He rides inside the heated cab atop a 190 horsepower tractor. One of the newer models cabbies in the field all sorts of electronic gear has a radio and CB and a monitor that keeps track of the platter ensure it drops to the right number of C with proper spacing in the proper depth in each of the 12 rows that platter covers each pass across the field to visit these two farms is to sense the history of farming in America. The farmer with the horses is running a farm not a museum. His place is a reminder of how we used to farm in this country not all that long ago. The second farmer is a

reminder of just how much farming has changed in not too many years. Just 50 years ago a quarter of all Americans still lived and worked on farms farms in this part of the country back then averaged about 130 acres and each farmer was producing enough food to feed about 10 people. Today farmers represent little more than 2 percent of the population. The average Midwest farm is about 300 acres and each farmer grows enough food for 76 other people and nearly half the total American agricultural production comes from just one hundred twelve thousand farms about 5 percent of all the farms in this country. What these statistics describe is a revolution in the way food is grown in this country. A revolution which is given America the most productive agriculture the world has ever known. Nowhere else is food cheaper or more plentiful. Nowhere else is the harvest so abundant that this revolution has done more than simply change food production. It's transformed rural society itself. Of course many forces came together in the

past half century to produce this revolution hybrid seeds commercial fertilizer crop and livestock specialisation. The list is a long one but probably nothing did more to transform American agriculture than the tractor. Louis Ritz Eagle started farming just south of St. Paul in 1926. I bought my first pack here in ninth and that was the new national. Well for. Six hundred twenty dollars worth because of the. Ernest Johnson was another farmer who adopted tractor power early on his reasons like most farmers at the time was simple. He wanted to get bigger far more land make more money.

First rather have a tractor and a whole community. Well Alex Chalmers on the first one to come into town. So I enjoyed it very much. Why did you buy the tractor. Well. I had a little more like I do with horses it's a lot of work with a bunch of horses. If you're going to plow and harness and current six horses and take care of a night and you got together a lot of feed water and stuff a lot of work tractor you can jump on them totally gasoline go already. But those first ones they were pretty small and I didn't have all that power to go out and do about a deal. Oh yeah. But they were there. Yeah maybe you know Ernest Johnson's story reflects the experiences of many farmers who took up the tractor early. They thought of themselves as forward looking progressive farmers commercial farmers looking for ways to make their operations more productive more efficient more profitable. Lewis

writes a girl and his wife began farming just south of St. Paul in the mid 20s. They ran a diversified operation back then. We started out with horses for calls. Miner gave us 10 hands or so would have to eat. And we started with a truck. And at that time there was the store was bought every T from a truck just a dozen years later as agriculture was beginning to pull out of the Great Depression. Rich bought his first tractor he remembers it as a major turning point for his operation. We figured that it only ate as much as one horse and I did as much it is. Six horses once more

and you could cultivate it if you had all of eternity acres five acres with a team of horses. There was no turning back after that first tractor expansion came quickly for a red signal. Just two years later he built a new barn. Twenty five hundred dollars for it expanded his dairy herd. Other developments followed fast and furious. We had the first in our county that was in 1940 that was the first bite. People came for a hundred miles to see that. And we. TIME good once one day it took nine minutes to clean out 50 Koz. Now a barn cleaner may not seem like such a major development but it just like the tractor and the other implements had fried Lewis Ritz Siegel from the drudgery of many time consuming tasks allowing more time for his ever increasing dairy herd wasn't too

many years later that red signal added another farm to his land holdings bought another tractor more machinery more land and began as he says making progress when he retired in the mid 50s. Lewis red single owned one hundred seventy six head of cattle a milk 70 head twice a day and owned outright 270 acres of rich Minnesota farmland. More than anything else it was the coming of the tractor that allowed Lewis red signal and others like him to expand and develop their farms to specialize to capitalize on the economics of scale. Before the tractor farms were small the long work day was filled with back breaking manual labor. The cash value will farm output each year was by today's standards meager at best. John Strait is a professor of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He grew up on a typical pre tractor Corn Belt farm in Indiana. The farm very much like those in southern Minnesota about 230 acres. We called it general livestock farm we

grew. Corn soybeans wheat oats and hay and cars and livestock is concerned we had milked a few cows we had hogs that credit he hogs and that are laying flowers through prowlers fires and just generally farmed in every respect a. Farmer. In the 1920s 1930s 1940s so say spread his efforts over a wide range of activities and enterprises. Now on the farm the I go back there it's still in the family. All the buildings are gone. No more chickens they don't grow any

hogs on the floor. NO livestock of any kind. Cept a couple dogs of course. The transition from a general diversified farm to specialized cash crop operations didn't come overnight nor did the switch from horses to tractors on the straight farm buying that for his tractor was a rather traumatic event it was a very tough decision for my father because he was Mormon 70. For I think we got our first tractor put out the 1935 crop with it. He would have been approaching 60 years old and we had when we were farming with horses we had seven were the draft horses and he was quite attached to the wolves just in a matter of

fact we traded in four of them tractors the first tractor and he felt so bad about it that if I hadn't bought two of them back of course many farmers kept a team or two around the farm well after they started using tractors. The early tractors were after all quite limited and many farmers simply didn't want to part with their horses. Everett main quest to farm near Buffalo used horses exclusively well into the 1940s. He remembers each and every one of his teams. I added that I had a team and I raised. I'd like to be the best you madam I called him Cap'n Kani there were Belgians there were big horses quite a bit about Master for brother and sister. I did a lot of Rick where they were very good team that a team before that I caught him buckin belly where I bought them but they were a good group there were plenty. Main Quest kept his horses a lot longer than most farmers though he's pretty much retired from

farming today. He still keeps a team around the farm. He's had but one tractor on the place at any one time. Never a very big one. Yeah I had a loan the government gave me and I bought right 1945. Remember the time they were resting machine and I had it up to over getting it but I know I bought it because other people had him I guess. And I kept it for about five years and bought a bigger tractor at the time the Nabi hadn't come around it to have a bigger tacked up on the banner. Everett Maine Quist and his older brother Roy who also farmed in the Buffalo area were slow to adopt tractor power for several reasons. For one thing their farms were small they were dairy farmers. The extra pulling power and larger machinery that tractors afforded just weren't as important to their operations as they were for cash grain farmers with several hundred acres of land. Then too unlike most farmers over the years the main costs simply refused to go heavily into debt to expand their operations.

Well my dad always said don't let him just get it. That's what it was give me was Mo and. Maybe outgunned and come home stuck with us. So I was I was a bit. A large amount of debt I should say. It's been a good thing or a good thing everybody has let me though I suppose it'd be kind of a dull country. But perhaps most important of all the main quest. Just plain liked working with horses. It's redirecting him. I always say you were right behind a horse you're in your business satisfied with a gate and we get on track and you know that no use and running of the majority are you I'd want to go to fast and what you're doing. But as I just I see it's redacting to work with him there. You can talk to him. You can always hang up the line a bit cool to hang it up on the levers and let the horses go or you walk going to get warm you didn't have to drive more of the time.

Oh. Well. Yeah. I don't know that this couple who lived for some years driving I don't know. There's something about it that I would like. One thing is the winter time the tractors have problems and snow ice and starting very very team is always going to do it Dick but darn it on Day Money Time up they're always there. If they do the work let me raise a few coats too short because race really raised a placement but you got raised to be placed as protectors of course the care and feeding of these massive draft horses was a matter not to be taken lightly.

The health and welfare of the farm was often a direct result of the health and welfare of the horses. John straight. My dad took real good care of the horses. They didn't go a day in their life without getting some grain. So when spring came they were a good good place to settle down to real good hard work. Then you contrast that to some of our neighbors to pick up a horse at an auction and they would be a lie. They would be down inflation. Then they would bring him in a couple days before they were start spring work and expect him to do it and were pitted the horses all the time I said it is just a shame to make slaves of em which we did you know. Ernest Johnson grew up on a horse farm in south central Minnesota. We had a horse lover to go with the horses had a veteran of people going there. People were mean horses. Oh it was terrible. Star

and you know I was just glad on the tractors coming out just for that reason. But not all horse farmers cared for their horses properly says John strain was easily evident simply by comparing the crops on different farms the tractor he says became something of an equalizer among farmers regardless of their horse skills. They could grow decent crops I think. Having those forces in and there were adequate number of them to get their work on time and prepare the best farmers in the community as far as crop you was when of course there was another side to working with horses. For one thing say the main quests they wouldn't always do which told them to they wouldn't stand still doing OK today you had run away is sometimes the team leaves then and they get scared or for some reason or other they take off and run. How did it go with the wagon and

I know one guy who had that rode a cord around his wagon and done more over the past year. I bet on ways to end my one time I had let the team stand outside Dallas you have been in the house for something and they come out they were gone and when I'm jump the fence you know within the other side and you got it. Well what about defense for me. Then too there were limits to what a horse or team could do they could work only so many hours in a day they had only so much power but a well cared for well-trained team says John Strait was something to work with and the streets took particular pride in the training of their horses right down to training them to work on their own. And I can remember seeing my. Older brother plowing a 40 acre field north of the house where he had the three horses hitched to the sulky plow and they were going ahead of him and he was right behind the guy walking. But those horses recall Up until that front further you know hit the cross

for they would make. Right angle turn sharp turn and they would take off and they would make those turns themselves. As it turned out plowing was one of the very first jobs the tractors took over from horses and it's not surprising for plowing and cultivating alone. A tractor was worth its price for a farmer like Lewis red sable. You had to be young to walk and especially when you was here. Oh yeah I had to rock him back to that plow through all day long. You could only plant two and a half acres and you really had to go some to plow two and a half years. But plowing could be harder yet on the horses. Some farmers called it horse killing work. Breaking new ground was the worst haul doubles farm near Ascot in the 1930s that was are on fire.

Somebody's got it. Hundred six it was a fence around it or to Wyatt when dude just been pastured what do gooders oily with butter still and just dumps that we've borrowed to get him to hit him in the head of brick in prowl plywood every year of that. Faced with such a farm Paul doubles adopted tractor power early on in the mid twenties not much more than a decade later he sold the last of his horses relying solely on tractor power. But for most farms in those years tractors simply augmented the horsepower doing only the heaviest work horses worked just fine. Planting hauling manure and milk and other light jobs. But there was one job were a horse never was much help picking corn.

Then they wouldn't leave old wagon and they had a team of horses and just simply with us you know threw in the wagon. The horses were pretty well trained they would could tell by. The sound of how far they were so they would pull up a headwind is required or the man could really kind of probably get out about 100 push with the day which would translate into maybe. Something around the corner. Well maybe not comfortable laid a hand picking corn. Today is remembered by many farmers as one of the worst jobs on an n mechanized farm. It meant walking up and down the corn rows all day long and often in freezing weather. Each

era of corn had to be pulled off the stock with a small hook. Hoskins then tossed into a nearby wagon during the corn harvest. A farmer went through gloves by the boxful shredding a parrot a. The hands fared little better. All depends on the crop you have record you know. Yeah that's why I bought a month rule. We get done about Thanksgiving is what we did. So you aren't there too often in December. No not me everybody go down or that time made a point. You know we had one man that didn't have a voice in you the big farmer and what all the boys never got done picking the home they took their wagons stuff went down and picked with him that was the big deal of the year. Nine and Ten wagons out there see if they can use a good old guy like kids and helped a lot. Of celebration every year for several years we had two hundred bushel profession that. They had to take on a separate patch but first it turned out for us every time we come along at all.

Now it has a miserable. Miserable job. They still pick going that way today. But now it's just for show. It corn picking contests like this one. The really good pickers can clear 60 years or more a minute for a full half hour straight. Well that's impressive. Corn picking lost a lot of its attraction when it had to be done all day long for days on end in the waning days of autumn. Few farmers missed the drudgery of such work. Honest Johnson well. You know early in the morning we don't eat yours or some stuff we get ready you know. Be sure you get out of the process still and it hard to get that way. Oh. My. You know the out there for Bob Dylan. Do you think we know some animal.

Rescue code out there are going to go out and get a little supper when we're toward the bottom line a plot to go up to scoop votes that will be ready if we want to. Have a real punishment if they do all the work on the farm the current legal thrillers. You know there had been continual attempts over the years to develop a mechanical corn picker. But it wasn't until the late 1920s that a truly useful tractor drawn picker first appeared. By the mid 30s cornbelt farmers were buying them in impressive numbers. Actually my two brothers my younger brother and older brother they were on the farm at that time. I actually bought the first bought that car and there it is. They said we're going to have a corridor to connect that way. It was a single road not a victory. John Deere picking and but once dad saw it working the way you could have gotten away from the from him but the one row corn picker by no means ended all the strenuous and often distasteful hand

labor on an on mechanized farm making hay filling silos cleaning a barn full of cows. There was lots of tough work to be done for Everett main quest it was milking cows by hand. I used that double bed with my hands I get I get sore hands sometimes like gutless up one that others will think oh this is just some regular job. Not too surprisingly Maine CList remembers his first milking machine with great fondness. The first were gas powered electric milkers came later when the power company finally wired up his farm. I got my first marker about 44 45 I never read that I had to meet with the committee. We're going to get priority that don't have an issue either don't look good doesn't go to heaven for that didn't let a lot of work that nothing to do with your death. It was in effect the movie that I saw on

the first night here was oh I thought that was rather something that I got I'm looking down about at the time and half the effort I thought I'd be there that's something that I was so happy with that really that was the best thing to get rid of good players. Save your concern for many Derriman that first Melkor was indeed something special. After all there was a definite limit to the number of cows a person could melt by hand. The advent of the milking machine did for dairy farmers with a tractor and corn picker a done for corn growers to reduce the hours of manual labor allowed for expansion and specialisation. Lewis red signal made the most of that opportunity by the advent of World War 2. He'd gotten out of truck farming altogether to concentrate on his dairy operation. Within a matter of years he was running one of the biggest operations in the area all thanks to that mechanical milking machine.

I told my wife I said I'm going to build are going to have to borrow every cent. And that I because I remembered World War 1. But what that place is one of so so in 1940 had bought all the lumber. The barn coasters to a few hundred dollars complete with labor and everything. So I borrowed twenty five hundred dollars. I had 65 calls at that time so it only took us four months and we had everything paid for by the mid-1950s Brit's a girl was milking 70 cows twice a day in that barn. It was a far cry from the operation he ran back in the 1030 and it was very profitable. The milking machine the tractor all the new ever bigger machinery remade rural America. A moderate sized diversified horse powered farm of the 900 twenties and thirties was more than enough work for most farm families

but by the 1950s a single farmer with all the right equipment could easily handle such a farm and more by himself. Not surprisingly the size of the average American farm increased farm population fell. It's been falling ever since. Actually this was the second great transformation in American agriculture. The first great change came just as Minnesota was gaining statehood back in the mid 19th century and again it was technology behind it all. Tom Woods runs the Minnesota Historical Society's Oliver Kelley farm just outside Elk River. It's a living museum recreating a Minnesota farm stead of the 100 50s and 60s. Back then says Woods. It was oxen more than horses. That provided the power on America's farms. They persisted from settlement to the country and when they started using animal power again up until the horses started displacing them really not until the mechanized equipment like reapers and horse drawn more isn't

threshing machines were introduced in the in the 60s 50s and 60s. How do you see some toward the end of the 40s but really most of the switch occurs in the 50s and 60s. That seems related. Want to guess that. Yeah it is pretty late but of course you have to look at your implements to be for the reaper in the mower all your equipment was all hand held. You know it was all manual labor flail for green Speed the Plow basically had been heroes but things that could easily be drawn by oxen slow plodding animals. Real strong animals you don't need that speed into the ass of a horse until later on you know when you prove machinery was introduced. Before the coming of the reaper farming was a much smaller scale operation and implements

greatly limited the amount of land that one family could handle before the horse drawn equipment seeds were broadcast mostly by hand weeding was done with a hoe grain and hay was cut one of the sides. Separating the wheat from the chaffe was no small matter either back in the 19th century. The tool of choice back then was something called a flail. Just two rather short rods of hard wood connected by a piece of rope. The farmer simply beat the grain on the barn floor and scooped up the kernels not from the stocks. The trick to this operation of course was to keep from hitting oneself in the head with the business end of a flying flail. The. Of course this flail did a less than perfect job producing a dirty mix of

grain chaff and dust. So still another step was needed before 19th century farmer finally head is grain that required something called a fanning mill and a hand crank machine that separated the impurities from the grain. As draft horses began to replace oxen on Midwest farms this sort of rudimentary farm tool was quickly replaced by more sophisticated and costly machinery. First came the reaper replacing the side. Soon after our horse powered stationary threshing machine replaced the flail and fanning mill this Thrasher was a truly ingenious machine. Farmers simply had to feed the grain in the front and it

did all the separating the grain fell off the chute on one side the straw spewed out the back. Power was provided by a team of horses walking on a treadmill. A farmer with such a machine could separate bushels of grain in the time it used to take to do hands full agricultural productivity soared. Of course sophisticated farm machinery has never come cheap and there was little ready cash on a typical Midwest farm. Most big machinery purchases were made on credit and it terms that would make today's rates pale in comparison. In the 1880s for example the reaper cost something in the neighborhood of two hundred twenty five dollars with one third down and the balance plus six percent interest due the following December. If a farmer couldn't pay off in time the interest rate went to temper sent and was secured by a

mortgage on the farm annual interest rates up to 60 percent were said to be common. The system of farming on credit had begun actually. Many of these big machinery purchases were made cooperatively early on several neighboring farmers would pool their resources to buy a thresher more they'd hire a traveling threshing crew to do the work. That's a tradition that lasted for years in the heartland right up until the second great revolution and farming in the 1900s and 30s and the coming of the tractor. It's a tradition remembered today as the threshing ring Everitt and rhyming question may be separate or more farmers who were together Government days and they would come in the morning and do it all. And I got to feel the shocks. And under the machine used to have steam engines I would be steam engines to

run the machines. We would go one direction one side of the machine and one rack on the other to pick turned throwing bundles into the end of the feeder and they would go back and they're loaded directly next. Next we're going to be loaded come in take is turned one road. The farmer for whom they were passing would take care of the grain the machine pull it away. They go from one farm the other the threshing rigs of the 1000 twenties and thirties were enormous beasts factory built steel monsters the dwarf the earlier horse power models they were powered by an equally massive steam engines that look something like a cross between an old train engine and an early steel wheeled farm tractor threshing engine coming down the road at harvest time whistle blowing smoke billowing was an impressive sight indeed.

If you. Would do a cold question only played with wonder if anyone available. At least an hour to get the water out. The footage of him protesting. That it was a loner and maybe. A good thing. You can go in and. It will go in and let it go on. Thanks. I used like the Watts governor on top of the governor of. Illinois and he'd get a little bit of good old kid you're going to open up

your little more a little more to compete. Took it out of him. But it isn't really the technology of the old thrashing rig which sparks such fun memories from these retired farmers. Rather it was the social setting in which the threshing was done. These guys are growing up now it is never shocked as you missed something. You know the horses that the equipment nor. Food preparation to be did the Thrashers the lighting between the large group of people working together and it was a meeting neighborhood people get together it's a community

event. I think you got that because all the farmers got together and helped each other for clients Nordstrom farm near Pine City the old thrashing rigs carry a special meaning thrashing was part and parcel of the old fashioned horse farming that American agriculture has left behind. But a way of farming that Nordstrom continues to practice to this day. Bendish farm for since 1946. Thirty nine years. Last spring. You farm this place with horses. We farm it with harsh Susu is forest a field work is going sour and I mean plowing and disk ing and. Hay and all that sort of thing. I have a tractor on a place which I use for common binding and. It and corn pick can and anything it had needs about power our power take off and but the tractor never goes in a field as far as dew and regular field work.

Clarence Nordstrom is something of an oddity in American agriculture. Continuing to farm as he does with horses staying with the horses was a conscious decision. In the first place I suppose I farmed that way because I. Like to. Work with horses and besides that. I think it's a smart way to farm and if rested up. People in this country would sit up and take notice. They'd see that horse farmers are the ones that are able to stay with it. And use big. Heavy equipment operators are losing out and going broke. So all you have to do is. Use a little common sense. And be quick magician dancer to. Profitable farming. Nordstrom explains his old fashioned approach to farming in

part on economic grounds. His small interest payments and chemical bills he says more than make up for the lower productivity and smaller harvest on his farm. He also says he's a lot less vulnerable to the ups and downs of the farm economy to date a problem in agriculture isn't. I mean it's one of. A surplus which has come about by one man being able to do. More down and what any one family should have to have should need and putting other people out of work and creating a surplus and all you get when you get a surplus is you depress prices so I can't see that anybody has done anything really smart. But you never felt limited by the amount of work that you as one man and your horses could do knowing that you could do more work

faster with more tractor power but faster and efficiency doesn't. Isn't necessarily aid to same thing. At all. And so what if it can be done faster all that has done is create problems. And misfires me be unlimited in what I could do by myself with my horses. No I didn't feel limited at all because my horses supplied all the power I needed for what we did in order to. Supply our needs for our. 0. 0. 0. 0 0.

0. Right I think that a person learns from our Vyvian around animals and horses. Down with it done any other. Thing in his life. You learn to keep your toes out of the way and you learn to watch the horse you've got to change faster than our stinks or you're going to be in trouble and so on Earth for you always have that. In your mind. What is the other person or the horse already other thing. Right is it going to do and you're thinking about. Things before they happen. And if you don't think about things before they happen white things happen before you're thinking then you're in trouble. Nordstrom is pretty much retired today. He's getting up there in years but he still keeps a dozen Belgian horses on his place. Still works about 100 of his 240

acres. Even on a cold windy November afternoon he still hitches up a team to his old manure spreader to get the barn cleaned out. Oh yeah. You're right. Oh yeah. Come on you don't know whether I. Was. Like an. American. Yeah. Now get it done it's a different matter. Well for. Sure. You don't learn snorts and has quite a collection of horse drawn equipment on his

farm. Couple good sized wagons one of them is freshly painted. He uses that one in town parades and for giving rides but he seems most proud of his collection of horse drawn plows all the way from a couple of walking plows to several three bottom gang plows. He still uses them when the tractor came down and plow was about the first thing first piece of equipment was attached to the tractor and and so they thought this was great now they could go out and blow with the tractor. But as far as I'm concerned I think that plowing is one of the. Oh it isn't an easy job but it's a job that horses can do. Real well and I'd like to go out what doors they can do a good job upon just as good as any tractors ever was made. Tell me about working that close to the land without the noise of a tractor I suspect that's part of it that's important to you you don't have that

smelly loud tractor. To me I suppose I'm so used to it that I don't probably notice the quietness as much as some people who aren't used to it but. A lot of people at a plowing contest or demonstration day walk along behind Aaron and they are amazed at the sounds that they can hear when they're following the horses that they would never hear. If they're near a tractor and that is you can just hear a plow are going to destroy Lanier if there are some routes in or you can hear the prop. Cut and those routes and. And you can just hear the ground turning over. And of course with the horses you hear about all you hear is two

jingling of trace chains and everything else is pretty much quiet and you sit there and you can hear the birds and you doing. Clarence Nordstrom doesn't have much time for the way most people farm today. He's convinced working with horses is the way to go. He doesn't like many of the developments that followed the coming of the tractor developments caused by the changes the new kind of Agriculture made possible particularly the specialization in crop farming. Back when farmers had horses it was just natural to raise a variety of crops and livestock. Horse farms by their very nature are diversified operations that require little if any of the farm chemicals used so extensively today. I have used some chemical but. I think I get along with very little and well I

always have rotated crops and by having corn and or corn and oats and then two years of hay right I reads are really not any big problem. You have problem with weeds when you plant the same crop year after year in a field. Corn corn corn corn corn corn and and maybe small grain and so you have problem with weeds. There is hardly any hay raised at all and I know it just to be a fact and there's hardly any oats raised and so they raise corn and beans and corn and beans and corn and beans year after year. There's a intent on that cash crop and keeping that machinery Roland out. That field and furthermore they don't have a lot of them don't have any cattle and they don't have any harshness and so they don't have much need for the hay. Already you know what he did want corn and beans is more profitable and so

that's the crop to aim for. And that for Clarence Nordstrom is a lot of what's wrong with a culture today. Tractors and all the equipment have allowed farmers to dispense with the hay crops the old it's more Once a half dozen or more different crops were raised and rotated. Today there's what the experts call monocultures vast expanses of nearly uninterrupted corn and soybeans cies of and ending wheat with these monocultures have come the need for the herbicides the pesticides the chemical fertilizers rye main quest blames it all on the tractor. I don't think they can handle that big equipment like that can you step back and wonder what color you're going to get the weeds there you want to inform you. You're watching you're going to stay on the road and you don't know what to want to know you know what the rest of the night Kember's got that you can only step on that you can take it you know.

But I wonder where I would get every service I got to go back to that someday. We're talking come to emanation and perhaps the way this country become mechanized that I'm ready to be prepared to go back to something else. Back when Everett and rhyming Quest were farming it was the diversity that protected the crops from past the fertilizer was handy and free. Coming as it did out of the barn there was an ecological cycle and agriculture on the horse farm crops Drew nutrients from the ground. The horses and livestock returned it. There was little if any need for chemical additions again. Everett and rhyming Quest. We don't read fertilizer years ago we had enough of the barn. We've had a good crop. I think we had this hybrid seed in them to go to court. Ball of corn ground with it. You know right from the barn to us with it that keeps a gun to my door.

Then there were these herbicides to kill during the Rams I would think dangler and help to keep the Don't loose. Of course it should be noted here that horse farmers in the past have not always been great conservationists. The Great Dust Bowl after all was created at a time when most farmers were still working with horses and much agriculture back in the one thousandth century it was terribly hard on the land. Still much of what these farmers say about taking care of the land rings true. Paul doubles spent nearly a half century working the land. He began in 1907 near Little Falls. Later he broke the thick prairie grasslands to carve out a farm near Ascot. Nothing concerns him more than what he's seen happen to the land. Most of it he blames on the very farm chemicals that have played such an important role in making American agriculture so productive. Come around to something here and talk to people and do it. Well look we're at war.

But it ruined ruined distiller to ask you you know what you just got to have. Something besides just you know that it's got to you greedy insane you don't write no Krupp but you're doing you don't have unit lend left. Just as troubling to these retired horse farmers is what modern agriculture has done to rural society to farm families and communities again. Everett and Roy main quest around here all the small farms they all supported the family and today they're the farmers around five and six farms where they're used to be five or six people living on these farm just like the rest of phrasing.

They all work together. It was different not not on the climate where they don't work they don't work together anymore. There is much less of a social get together among rural people. Clarence Nordstrom the Pine City where everybody is so occupied with his own a need and he has finally become self-sufficient. And that I mean where years ago where maybe one person or one thrashing machine somebody else had a side of the pillar but everybody didn't have a silent killer everybody didn't have a trashing machine and several there were more or less at that time forced to do it on a cooperating basis where and then later on each Ron got his own equipment he had his own combine and he had his own everything you know he had his own stuff. There wasn't a joint

venture between the two neighbors in the community. And so now. You hardly know what's going on over at your neighbor's operation. You hardly see him and you don't hardly know how they're operating. People aren't as close to each other as the used to be here in Norway. Of course some of this can probably be understood as the romanticized memories of men no longer operating farms. Retired farmers remembering back to the good old days still farm population is falling and there is great concern about the future of rural communities. There are many places here where there are tear for what used to be two year four or five farms are now under one operation. I know that and I agree and that's very sad to see that. And like I said

before if anybody was benefiting by it if they had a better life by doing it I'd say you know there was some purpose in doing it but I know of people who have done this and have two or three or four farms under one operation that are either working themselves to death or else going broke. And we never never never used to work around the clock and no time when farming was done where the horses work from. Maybe put in a good long day but there never were. Nights where now in many areas day then night and whenever you have to go day and night to. Go.

Make a sting. Operation. It's a drudgery and. Not just a living. It's difficult to say exactly why people like Lawrence Nordstrom have stuck with horses over the years. But that's not the only thing that sets them apart from most modern agriculture. Few of these horse farmers have gone heavily in debt over the years. Most of run small diversified operations. They've used little in the way of farm chemicals and relied mainly on old refurbished equipment. It may be that they just plain wanted to work with horses and running that type of farm was the only practical way to do it. Or it may be that they consciously wanted to run an old fashioned sort of farm. In doing so was only possible with horses. Either way most like Clarence Nordstrom are convinced that modern mechanized agriculture is not the way to go. Well I have to say is. They're doing it wrong. And it and the reason I say to do in Iran is because they're failing in their in their

financial situation. Now I'm not belittling rut tractors can do. They're they can do wonders but they haven't done any wonders as far as our economy is concerned. That's what I'm getting at. And as far as a person having an easy life. These people that have all of their big equipment. And lots of land they are not enjoying life one bit. Mara Dunn I am in fact I think they're under a lot more stress and strain and putting in a lot longer hours. Done. Any horse farmer ever did. And that to me is a measure of you know success about doing it. If life music made easier and better for you roll then. What's the point of doing or having

what you have. But if Clarence Nordstrom is unshakable in his belief in a horse farming most farmers today are probably just as convinced that he's at the very least old fashion and unrealistic and perhaps a bit crazy. After all farming today often goes under the name agribusiness and not without reason for the most part. It's a sophisticated capital intensive high tech business more akin to manufacturing than early 20th century horse farming. A shift to horse farming today would seem a gigantic step backwards a reversal of a half century of progress development and productivity. Yet at a time when heavy debt loads environmental pollution foreclosure and overproduction plague American agriculture it's difficult to discount what these old horse farmers have to say. One can't help but wonder if the farmer riding atop a horse drawn platter moving slowly rhythmically back and forth across the field might just have a point. This is Mark I stood.

Thank you thank you.