Reader Letter: ‘You Should Write About The American Family Farm’

Lynn writes: 

I was thinking about you today because a way of American life is dying and thought you would be the perfect author to write about it, especially with your business background and insight.

I believe the American family farm is becoming a thing of the past. I walk with a lady who is a fourth-generation farmer (she is 85 and her husband is 86) who just fascinates me with the stories of the past and how things are so different now. Their son presently is the farmer and might be the last of the family to farm. The story should be told while we still have families that are working together going to fairs to show their livestock and produce.

In our area, families used to get together to do their own butchering, canning and harvesting. They were also tied to God because of their reliance on His provision for growing their crops. These aspects are also becoming rare.

In Illinois much of our land is being bought up by people from other countries or is becoming “corporate” farms. We have mega feed lots and pig farms (one has 2500 pigs in it).

I have read many stories about the pioneer families, but few that capture the past, and present of the American farmer and thought this might be a very neat project for you to tackle.

Dear Lynn,

 My own family were tobacco farmers on land that they have tilled longer than America has been a country. My cousins still farm this land, in eastern NC, just outside a town called Zebulon.

The town has been swallowed by the growing bedroom community that supplies workers to the Research Triangle, and by the Siemens semiconductor plant.

A lot of the farming families, my own included, find almost any work easier than farming, which makes them incredibly valuable workers for incoming industry. It is why Siemens built where they did, to hire people like my cousins, who can basically do anything they put their hand to. Farmers are like that. It’s an intriguing concept, and I will think on this.