Nothing Runs Like a Deere

A wood crate with a John Deere logo has a prominent place on my front porch.  Before I took Dr. Funda's class, I never thought about the crate or its' logo.  However, when I passed it the other day I couldn't help but notice that the logo was different than the logo that appears on the side of my riding lawn mower.  I decided to do a little research and discovered that the John Deere logo on this crate is the company logo from 1936 and was only used for one year.

In fact, the John Deere logo has its own history and timeline which became of particular interest to me when I thought about it as a representation of visual rhetoric in American farming culture.  I discovered that the first logo or trademark of a leaping deer was registered by the company in 1876 and the last change to the trademark occurred in 2000.  The company website identifies the leaping deer trademark as "one of the world’s most recognized corporate logos" and tells the story of its evolution.

The logo has changed eight times in the last 135 years.  The logos, along with the date they were first introduced, are as follows:

2000

 While the company website notes the reasoning for each change in its trademark over the years, the information about the most recent logo was particularly interesting and reads as follows:

The style and shape is reflective of today's technology world: bolder, stronger, high technology oriented. In the symbol itself, the deer's feet are rooted firmly into the ground for a strong leap into the new millennium. The body, head and antlers have a purposeful attitude, a sense of direction and a clear commitment to taking charge by running smart.

 

Breakfast at Gibbons Green Gate Farm

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to join some of my fellow graduate instructors for breakfast at the Gibbons Green Gate Farm in Smithfield, Utah.  A perfect autumn morning in Cache Valley was made all the more charming by the atmosphere at the farm. Our breakfast was prepared from fresh  ingredients in the kitchen located off of the dining area and our friendly hosts served  breakfast family style. I had a lovely morning talking with my colleagues about the joys of graduate school.  

 

The farm breakfast was delicious.

The Carriage House Kitchen at Gibbons Green Gate Farm.

Apple Picking

My son picking apples.

In my family, fall wouldn’t be fall without apple picking. It just happens that the property I live on has a tiny old-growth apple orchard and this year the women in my family gathered to celebrate our favorite fall fruit. We picked one bushel of Golden Delicious apples and two bushels of Macintosh.  Watching my nieces and son pick apples with my mother reminded me of my childhood and I was overcome with nostalgia for my own grandmother who used to send me to the top of the ladder to get the apples she couldn’t reach.  As long as I can remember, picking apples and making deserts with them has been part of my harvest tradition.

My grandmother also passed down her recipe for apple pie filling which follows: 

 







A batch of apple pie filling done.

Apple Pie Filling

4 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
10 cups water
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 drops yellow food coloring
6 pounds apples

Directions:

In a large pan, mix sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add salt and water and mix well. Bring to a boil and cook until thick and bubbly. Remove from heat and add lemon juice and food coloring. Sterilize canning jars, lids and rings by boiling them in a large pot of water. Peel, core, and slice apples. Pack the sliced apples into hot canning jars, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Fill jars with hot syrup, and gently remove air bubbles with a knife. Put lids on and process in a water bath canner for 20 minutes.





A bushel of Macintosh apples picked from my orchard.

Carmel apples for dessert.

Women’s Work

During the early 20^th century, society clearly defined a woman’s role inside of the domestic sphere.  Despite this, Willa Cather and Elinore Pruitt Stewart wrote about the personal empowerment women achieved through physical labor on a farm which was a sphere traditionally occupied by men. Many academics have written about Willa Cather’s reversal of gender roles in My Ántonia and noted that Cather creates one of the first feminist heroines in modern American literature.  Recently, I had the opportunity to revisit the novel and was struck by the images of Antonia working alongside men on the farm and being proud of her strength.

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. I knew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not to do, and that the farm-hands around the country joked in a nasty way about it. (Cather 100)

I was particularly interested in how closely Antonia’s experiences echoed the real life narration of Elinore Pruitt Stewart in Letters from a Woman Homesteader.

Well, we had no money to hire men to do our work, so had to learn to do it ourselves. Consequently I learned to do many things which girls more fortunately situated don't even know have to be done. Among the things I learned to do was the way to run a mowing-machine. . . But one morning, when he was chasing a last hope of help, I went down to the barn, took out the horses, and went to mowing. I had enough cut before he got back to show him I knew how, and as he came back manless he was delighted as well as surprised. I was glad because I really like to mow, and besides that, I am adding feathers to my cap in a surprising way. (Pruitt Stewart 227-237)

Both Cather, through Antonia, and Pruitt Stewart find personal fulfillment by working in the field and open for women the possibility of independence through farming.  For centuries, men have dictated woman’s roles in society. Despite great strides by women towards equality, gender bias in rural communities is still prevalent in the American West.  I grew up in a farming community that embraced the roles of men as bread winners and women as bread makers as an essential aspect of American family values.  In spite of this, there are still women today, like Cather’s heroine and Pruitt Stewart, who refuse to be defined by these roles.  My mother is one such woman and I am proud of the working legacy she passed along to me and my sisters.

Works Cited

Willa, Cather. My Antonia. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print.

Pruitt Stewart, Elinore  (2012-01-16). LETTERS OF A WOMAN HOMESTEADER (Illustrated) (Kindle Locations 227-229 & 235-237).  . Kindle Edition.

Found Poetry in The Grapes of Wrath

In Chapter Six of Farm: A Multimodal Reader the authors discuss found poetry in the inter-chapters of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.  Found poetry is writing a passage of prose out in poetry form.  I chose prose from Chapter 7 for my poem.

 

A Hundred Jalopies

Hot sun on rusted metal,
Oil on the ground.
Tires, used, bruised tires,
Stacked in tall cylinders.
Got a Lincoln ’24.
There’s a car.
Radiator cleaner?
Spark intensifier?
Wipers, fan belts, gaskets?
Spattering roar of ancient engines.
Row on row, headlights
glinting in the afternoon sun.
Good Used Cars.

 

 

 

 

Elinor Pruitt Stewart

 as Jefferson's Farmer-Citizen

Except for the occasional paragraph devoted to Sacajawea’s role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, women and their contribution to the settlement of the American frontier are largely absent from the history books I grew up studying.  Elinore Pruitt Stewart’s excerpts from Letters of a Woman Homesteader are a reminder that women did play a critical role in the development of farming culture in the West.  Stewart’s letters, in particular, provide us with a glimpse into the life of a woman who embodied the virtues endorsed by Thomas Jefferson and entwined in farming mythology. 

Elinore Pruitt Stewart operates a hay maker at her ranch in Burntfork, located in Sweetwater County, in 1925. It was not uncommon for ranch women of the time to help with field work in addition to keeping house and rearing children. (Courtesy of Sweetwater County Historical Museum) http://trib.com/elinore-pruitt-stewart

In her letter dated January 23, 1913, Stewart writes Mrs. Coney “At the same time, any woman who can stand her own company, can see the beauty of the sunset, loves growing things, and is willing to put in as much time at careful labor as she does over the washtub, will certainly succeed; will have independence, plenty to eat all the time, and a home of her own in the end” (Kinkead, Funda, and McNeill 132).  This passage reveals the similarities Stewart had with the men who came west before her including a desire for land ownership and the security provided through self-reliance.  Stewart’s writing reinforces the idea that the quest for the American Dream isn’t gender specific.  Both men and women possessed the pioneering spirit that helped define our farming culture.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, women willingly left the domestic sphere to improve their economic and social circumstances by homesteading the West.  Stewart’s desire to own her land independently of her husband supports the idea that women were capable of owning and operating their own farms.  Stewart goes further by expressing joy in this activity and writing about her pride in a successful harvest.

Thomas Jefferson writes "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds” (Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785. ME 5:94, Papers 8:426).  Stewarts tie to the land she homesteaded in southwestern Wyoming is obvious and deep.  She loves the land and she loves farming.  Her maternal pride in her daughter’s ability to grow her own potato crop at the age of six represents a female agriculture legacy that should be more fully celebrated in American Studies.

As our text points out, the correspondence between Stewart and Coney occurred during a period in history that focused on the working conditions of women and children in industrial factories and was published as a book “within context of a national dialogue” (Kinkead, Funda and McNeill 130).  The work also contributes to a larger discussion about women succeeding and thriving independently on American farms. Literature about women in the American studies often represents them in stereotypical gender roles and farming today still remains a largely male dominated profession.  It is important to open the discussion to include the successes of female farmers as independent business owners and agricultural stewards. 

Works Cited

Kinkead, Joyce, Evelyn Funda, and Lynne S. McNeill. Farm: A Multimodal Reader. Southlake:Fountainhead, 2014. Print.

Women in Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns for PBS 2012.

In his documentary The Dust Bowl, Ken Burns focuses on female homesteader, Caroline Henderson, as an example of a farmer who endures the largest environmental disaster in modern American farming history.  Burns’ portrayal of Henderson as a person who dreamed of owning her own piece of land and the hardships she overcame in the process brings feminine insight to the view that homesteaders were predominately male.  Burns uses Henderson’s writing about life as a homesteader and wheat farmer to narrate much of the film.  His decision to choose the words of a female writer as representative of farmers’ experiences in the dust bowl implies a certain gender bias. However, the viewer comes away from the film with the perception that the hardships, in addition to being an experience defined by male and female roles, were also part of a larger human experience. The narration serves, in a sense, to bring together both males and females as equal players in ecological tragedy.

Burns devotes a portion of the documentary to the female dominated domestic sphere when he examines the futility of keeping the inside of the home clean over a decade of dust storms. The images of women sweeping dust out of the interior of their homes, hanging wet sheets around windows and setting dishes upside down on the table remind the viewer that the consequences of the great plow up effected professional and domestic, male and female spheres equally. We also see the equal treatment of gender in the stories of men and women who, whether because of financial difficulties or domestic struggles, committed suicide to find relief from the madness the dust bowl created in their lives.

The film concludes with a look at Henderson’s life after the dust bowl. Burns’ points out that she never sold out or left her land despite the trials she faced.  She stood as a symbol of character in a male dominated occupation. He also discusses how her experiences in the 1930’s affected the rest of her and her husband’s lives as farmers.  She refused to irrigate her land after the Ogallala aquifer was accessed and lived a simple life within her means. Henderson seemed grasp the lesson that other men struggled to learn; that nature was ultimately in control of no man’s land on the prairie and man was not.

Living the Dust Bowl

My grandmother, Naomi Fisher Davis and
 her brother Frank Fisher, Oklahoma circa 1931.
 

I remember clearly the first time I heard about dust storms.  I was sitting on a red step stool watching my Grandmother Davis standing against the kitchen sink peeling potatoes. I was always fascinated by how she could peel a potato so thin that you could see the knife blade beneath the skin.  I remember asking her where she learned to do that, and she told me about the Great Depression and the dust storms that forced her family to migrate to Idaho in the 1930’s.  She told me she learned to peel potatoes so thinly because there was no food, and you didn’t waste anything.  “If you ate potatoes and carrots for supper, you soaked the peels in water overnight so you could fry them in bacon grease if you had it, for the morning.”  My question about why she didn’t have any food prompted her to tell me about how the dust had taken over the farm land Kansas.

Her stories about blowing dust always frightened me but, as most curious children do, I would pelt her with questions about what it was like.   She told me the dust would blow in and block out the sun so it was so black that she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.  She also told about how she and her mother would stuff wet rags underneath the doors to keep the dust out of the house and how she and my uncle would wear bandanas over their nose and mouth so they could breathe.  Nothing captured my imagination or crept into my dreams like the stories about dust storms.  I remember asking her what the dust was like, and she compared it to flour.  “Imagine if someone just came in the house and dumped flour all over the floor, 4 inches thick.  That’s what the dust was like, flour.”

None of her stories could prepare me for the impact that Ken Burns’ “The Dust Bowl”, a PBS documentary, had on my understanding of my grandmother’s childhood.  The images of dust clouds roiling miles in the air and descending to engulf everything in their wake into darkness made her childhood real to me in a way that nothing else had.  I understood that I could never make sense of how frightened she must have been or how desperate the situation was to make her grandmother and mother, both single women, pack up everything they owned to travel to somewhere, anywhere else. 

In my teenage years, I used to wonder what would possess someone to settle in the Bear Lake Valley because I was positive it was 50 miles past the middle of nowhere.  How could a valley forsaken by modern times and lagging 20 years behind the rest of the world be the place you would want to settle for the rest of your life? I realize now that it must have appeared to be a paradise with a blue glacier lake at its center; promising these women a life free from the drought that caused the dust to blow.

One Woman's Farming Legacy 

 

To say that farming is part of my genetic make-up is to give credit to the generations of my family who cultivated the West before me.  I am a fifth generation agricultural daughter and the farming legacy handed down from my ancestors makes up a large portion of my identity.   This blog examines thoughts and reflections about American farming.  I chose to format the blog after a scrapbook in order to incorporate photos and stories from my family history along with reflections and musing from Dr. Evelyn Funda’s graduate class titled “Literature and Culture of the American Farm” which I am currently enrolled in at Utah State University (USU).

I am particularly interested in farming’s relationship to woman’s studies.  The last four generations of women in my family have lived and worked on farms in Idaho and Utah.  A woman’s perspective about farming and surviving off the land is a unique and important, though sometimes overlooked, part of farm discourse.  While not every post can be written in relationship to women and farming, I hope the majority of posts here bring a female perspective to the topics we discuss in Dr. Funda’s class.  I also feel an obligation to continue the legacy of the women who have gone before me and hope to do that by telling part of their stories here.