American Farmer (1954)

just a few minutes and you're out in the country farm after farm makes you think maybe the city's not as important as you thought when you get to the station take a yellow bus they said just ask the driver to let you off a 10-play well there it was didn't look much different from what I'd expected nobody seemed to be home wondered if I had the wrong place finally had sense enough to go around back and there on the line she seemed nice and funny but I could tell she was looking me over pretty carefully I guess she didn't know what to expect either behind your manners now Ahmad talked a couple of pieces on the way of course all hands and feet he took me up to the room I was going to share with her son Eddie said he was 16 - and we ought to get along fine I sure hope so you'll probably find mr. Blasi out in the back 40 she said whatever that meant didn't one look dumb so I said yes ma'am I asked how big the farm was and she said about 800 acres and off I went then a big field of wheat stopped me didn't dare walk through it afraid I'd trampled some down and ruin it might take it out of my pay you can say 800 acres quick but when you start walking around in it you never saw anything so big by now I was really lost climbed a fence and what do you think I saw a graveyard there in the middle of nowhere I prowled around looked at the tombstones you know some of them dated way back to 1867 where these people must have been farming here before the Civil War Herta tractor coming and thought maybe that said he and so it was we hollered at each other for a while then I made out that his father was down by the lower barn I remember when I first saw mr. Blasi I got the feeling he could work all day and never get tired there was a feeling of power back of everything he did even the way he shook hands I felt pretty self-conscious in my new work clothes but he said I looked more like a farmer than a city boy already and how about giving him a hand with those bales I liked him right away just pulling bales of hay onto a conveyor looks easy you know how it is on a new job you want to show the boss how good you are the first couple of bales went fine nothing to it then I began to think they must have let in awful lot of bails on that truck I didn't know whether I'd be able to get through that first afternoon or not if mr. Blasi was wondering how his kids would hit it off with a city boy he didn't have to worry Alberta and I got along fine and everybody found plenty to talk about by the time mrs. Blasi brought on the food I didn't feel like a stranger anymore the food was terrific after dinner Eddie asked me what my favorite TV show was and he turned it on for me felt strange sitting there so far from home and seeing the same show I'd have been looking at back in the city the only trouble was I couldn't stay awake I finally gave up and went upstairs to bed so then a crazy thing happened I couldn't get to sleep who says it's quiet in the country they've got the weirdest noises out here I ever listened to how can that guy sleep through all this I should have stayed in the city where I belong it didn't take me as long as I thought it would to get used to farm routine after a few days I was out there with Eddie at the crack of dawn chasing cows or whatever else needed doing I had a lot to learn a lot of farm you have to be able to do almost everything yourself mr. Blais he had a machine shop where he could repair equipment if it broke down he could weld a broken part or even make a new one if it wasn't too complicated Eddie was such a good mechanic he made me feel dumb he could take apart almost every machine his father owned and put it together again without any pieces left over I didn't even know how to sharpen the cutter bar but I made up my mind to learn sometimes the farmer has to turn carpenter know how to build himself a shared or a house even if he needs extra help maybe a neighbor comes over and lends a hand next time you go over and help him people on farms don't ask for anything unless they really need it so when a man does ask you never say no mister Blasi kept telling me the only way you learn a thing is by doing it but i guess i didn't really believe him till one afternoon when he took time out to show me how a tractor works after he got through explaining he said okay now get on and drive it I was scared to try but he said go ahead can't hurt anything he got the whole field all to yourself well I figured it was all right with him it was all right with me so I got set put her in gear I guess even the cows left mr. Blasi shouted you're doing fine mr. blaze he was always learning new things himself he said a farmer had to to stay in business why he knew as much about biology and botany and chemistry as most school teachers about fertilizers insecticides soil conservation area interfere there with sudden everything from boars to bacteriology was an education all by itself sometimes I just sat down and looked trying to soak up the feeling of things living and growing it was all there spread out in front of me if I could only understand it everything in nature has a purpose said mr. whether it's the Sun or the way grain grows on the stalk or insects carrying pollen from plant to plant it's all necessary all part of the scheme of things I thought that over for a while but something bothered me what purpose do weeds serve I asked him and what about pests and diseases that attack the plants what about drought and storms well Tony he said there's evil in the world just the way there's good and in the way being a farmer means being on the side of what's good in nature and helping it to live and grow and protecting it against all the things that try to hurt it or kill it I remember seeing him walk to the top of a rise one afternoon and stand there looking out across the fields and the way he walked through the wheat and felt it it gave you the feeling he was personally concerned that every stalk and in a way he was he planted it he'd helped it grow he'd fought off whatever had tried to hurt it and now there it stood almost ready I knew he was holding his breath hoping his luck old till he could harvest it his luck did hold the blades of the swathers chopped down the wheat and laid it out on the field in long rows to dry now every day for four days the hot Sun beat down and dried the wheat until mr. Blasi could tell by the feel of it that it was ready for the combines mr. Blasi says nobody under 50 is old enough to appreciate a modern combine he can remember harvesting the wheat with horses an old-fashioned equipment made of wood and iron that broke down and left you stranded in the middle of the field 15 years ago he had to hire 18 men to do the same job only five of us were handling here the combine alone is cut down labor by 85% and with just one combine he can harvest more than 30 acres a day the bailiff followed the combine and finished off the whole job in one operation all day long we work together like clockwork each time the combine got full we'd run up the truck and siphon it off you know said mr. B in colonial days it took 85 percent of the nation's manpower to produce the food we needed now 15 percent can do the job think of all the extra manpower that gives us in doing away with horses and mules means we don't have to grow the food to feed them that gives us millions more acres than we had to grow food for people instead of animals I took away more new ideas than I did wheat that day we didn't get back to the house from breakfast on kept shuttling back and forth between the field and the bond here again we had a machine to help us a conveyor that mr. Blasi had figured out and built himself carried the wheat to the bins in a steady flow and saved us a lot of time mr. B kept the pressure on is just a little uneasy about the weather he had asked Alberta to bring us out a snack around 4:00 in the afternoon so we could keep working straight through till dark there wasn't a cloud in the sky but he'd heard a weather report that said there was a cold front moving east and he didn't like the sound of it we broke for a while but we didn't really relax we ate fast the way you do when you're a little worried chewing and swallowing but not really tasting any of it but it made us feel better anyway and there was the feeling between us that people get when they work together all doing the same job it was a good feeling then we went at it again and now the wind began blowing in gusts and he could smell the change coming in the air down with the Sun but we kept right on working we didn't quit till it got to dr. C that night after dinner mr. B sat close to the radio keeping one ear cocked for weather reports the parlor was full of girls having a meeting of the 4-h mrs. Blasi is the volunteer leader of Alberta's 4-h club all the kids out here belong either to 4-h or the Future Farmers of America and they learn a lot and have fun doing it Alberta was smart at designing clothes she was going to try for a prize at the County Fair I sure wished her luck 9 o'clock we got a weather report of wind and hail de marrón at least right now direction better of storm is prepared for tomorrow sunrise told us nothing but the weather reports were still bad a neighbor brought his combine over to help and we started working against time for a while it looked as if we might make it then it hit us really did get rained out down it came and every now and then we could hear a clatter of hailstones bouncing against the roof I figured the wheat must be ruined and I sure felt sorry for poor mr. Blasi after all the work he had done but Eddie didn't think there had been much damage maybe we lost a little he said but it could have been a lot worse one Saturday we decided to do a little shopping and take in the County Fair we all piled in the car and drove to town the roads were good and it wasn't much of a drive only about 25 minutes and I didn't think about it one way or the other until mrs. Blasi started telling me how much the town had changed in 20 years with all the cars and different kinds of stores it was almost like a little city I liked it better than a city there was a friendly feeling to it you don't get in big cities everybody taking his time and doing what he wanted like us Eddie and I were going to buy a haircut Alberta wanted to catch up on the latest fashions mr. Blasi went down to the dealers lot to look over the new line of trucks and farm equipment we were all going to meet back at the car in an hour eat dinner in town then go see the fair that evening after the last crop had been harvested mister Blasi had a long session with his account books I can remember how he sat there going over the entries page by page I guess it had been a pretty good year for him but from the expression on his face I had a feeling he wasn't really looking at the figures half the time he was seeing the farm itself and thinking about it figures in a book don't show how a farm looks at sunrise or how the shadow of a cloud moves across a field or the way wheat whispers in the wind figures don't show all the work of man's hands have done all the thought and the planning and the skill or the worry in the disappointment the way mr. Blasi feels about his farm goes deeper than profit and loss his farm is as much a part of him as his head or his heart you couldn't take it away from him without killing him summer was over before I knew it we stood on the station platform saying goodbye come again next summer we'll make a real farmer out of you said mister Blasi which made me feel pretty good that there's no better I was glad they seemed to like me all the way back I watched the fonts pass and thought about them I kept feeling I'd had a first-hand look at something exciting and important that was going on all over this country machines clattering up and down the fields farmers working hand-in-hand with scientists mr. Blasi says the farm by 1975 and that if anybody thinks big changes have been made in agriculture he hasn't seen anything yet I wonder what it'll be like by the time I have a farm of my own

Channel: A/V Geeks

Views: 392,664

Rating: 4.8868723 out of 5

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Id: mn8ySyvv6Ko

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 07 2016