If the folks who run the National Museum of American History, in Washington, DC, want young urban visitors to understand how things have changed in agriculture in the last 150 years they could do worse than the barbed wire exhibit. Yes, they have such a collection, which archives early attempts at developing a fence wire to help pioneers enclose land for livestock. Barbed wire was crucial to ending the era of free-roaming herds of cattle and beginning farming in a form we would recognize.
Sadly, the wire collection was in storage when I visited DC recently. It had been, along with the Lincoln Memorial, on my bucket list. But there was plenty more to engage a holidaying farmer.
If you are like me, you don’t really take a holiday from farming; you may holiday from the farm itself, but the farmer brain is with you all the time, field spotting from the airliner window as you fly over the Great Plains, studying the offerings of local food on restaurant menus, checking out the barns in the background of a painting in the National Gallery of Art.
I returned from my trip to the US capital not so much cultured (way too late for that anyway) as reflective on the role of farming in American life, past and present.
— Yes, the Smithsonian may have archived samples of barbed wire, and yes, they may put those samples on display from time to time, but in the nearby countryside of Virginia and Maryland, where my wife and I meandered for a day in a rental car, I was taken aback by the lack of fencing. We passed field after field in the rolling country adjacent to the Blue Ridge Mountains that was wide open. You need fencing if you have livestock, so the only possible explanation is that the livestock has gone inside. Pigs and sheep in barns, cattle in feedlots.
‚— When America elected a Jefferson, Adams or a Lincoln, they elected a president with firsthand farming knowledge. Jefferson was an early advocate of succession cropping, Lincoln hired out as a farm hand especially adept with an axe, and Adams was an avid experimenter with compost, according to one account “using ashes, marsh mud, seaweed and ‘whatever dung he could get’ from Boston.”
The last American president keenly involved in farming was Jimmy Carter. He grew peanuts. Maybe I’m reading too much into presidential backgrounds, but does this not explain why we hear more about agricultural subsidies from the White House than we do about healthy soil?
— A presentation at Antietam National Battlefield, site of one of the largest and most definitive battles in the American Civil War, included a lengthy description of how a field of corn played a crucial role in the battle, and was the setting for some of the worst fighting between Union and Confederate soldiers.
* * *
Any farmer who has traveled will have wrestled with the dilemma of how much to simply walk away from the day-to-day goings on, and how much, especially given the easy access of smart phones, to remain involved. Personally, I like to remain involved for these twin reasons: dealing with an issue will be simpler if I do it right away—even at distance—than when I get back; and getting an ill-timed, farm-related call can be refreshing. I was in the National Portrait Gallery, doing my best to be reflective and thoughtful in front of Obama’s distinctive “green” portrait, when my phone buzzed.
“Tom Henry here.”
“Where’s my ruffle fat?”
“Huh?”
“Ruffle fat. It was supposed to be delivered today.”
“What is ruffle fat?”
“Never mind. I’ll buy elsewhere.”
“Wait, who is this?”
It was too late. Call was over. I looked at the painting of Barack Obama, then at the paintings of others in the room—of Kennedy, and Johnson, of Reagan—and for one brief moment I felt united by our problems, some enormous and consequential to history, and others infinitesimally small and consequential only to a cranky chef somewhere on Vancouver Island, but still problems, problems, problems.
* * *
Congratulations to two SFC writers for their recent achievements. Columnist Dan Needles received a Silver in the Press Column category of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation (CFWF), for his column “The disappointment phase of technology” (S/O, 2018), and freelance writer Alice Guthrie received a Bronze in the Press Feature category, CFWF, for her feature, “From a voice, buffalo” (M/A, 2019).
— Tom Henry