The Agricultural Origins of Writing and Arithmetic
Anyone who has compared kernels of wheat with barley or oats knows that the latter are tightly wrapped in a thin and indigestible “husk” layer that is generally removed before processing into flour, Wheaties, Cheerios, or most anything else. The world’s first farmers came to prefer “free-threshing” stands of grain that better enabled separation of […]
And While the Men were Away Hunting….
Years ago when I joined many of my farm-kid peers in long, hot days driving wheat truck in the harvest field, I was introduced to the historical fiction of authors like James Michener and Taylor Caldwell. Reading Michener’s The Source was not only highly informative and entertaining, I found it also made the time pass […]
Ancient Crops and Harvests
Soon after World War II the tale circulated among American soldiers returning from action in North Africa that grain found deep inside in the Egyptian Pyramids was found to be vital. Some kernels were planted and the variety known commercially in some places as Kamut was born. This had all the makings of a great […]
Defining Harvest, Explaining Print-Making
<h2>The meaning behind the words</h2> Although the words “reap,” “thresh,” and “harvest” are often used synonymously today, important distinctions define their use in period literature and among many farmers today. To reap is to cut grain either manually by sickle or scythe, or with a mechanical cutting bar, while threshing, or thrashing, refers to the […]
The “Good Old Days”—Sweet and Sweat
Golden age of threshing Once in a while I’ll spot something on Ebay that has special relevance to my musings on agrarian art, and when it falls into my price range that makes it doubly rewarding. So it was recently when I found an exceedingly dog-eared copy of James Wilson’s Art Designs in Harvest Machinery […]
Gleaning’s Early Modern Revival
Through arrangements with the US Department of Agriculture made possible by my friend and fellow historian Alex McGregor of Colfax’s The McGregor Company, I was recently able to visit Washington, D. C. and document works of agrarian art in our national collections. Among many highlights was seeing the gritty paintings of 1930’s New Deal artists […]
Shakespeare, Sickles, and Scythes
Gleaning in Medieval Art A few years ago my longtime Tri-City photographer friend, John Clement, and I found ourselves in the pleasant Hessian village of Schotten, Germany, about forty miles north of Frankfurt, a. M. We were helping to lead a tour of that scenic region and I had special interest in learning about farming […]
Ruth and Boaz, Past and Present
Early Depictions of Gleaners There is much interest these days in “back to the land” efforts to reconnect folks with country life. It is encouraging to see examples here some rural communities in our area of sufficient revival evident in thriving local schools and main streets. Art historians remind us that life back in “the […]
Rural Art Exemplars Through Time and Place
The pantheon of eminent national artists and authors There is risk in discussing times and trends in art since masters in any age may not conform to prevailing approaches, and certainly change styles subject matter interests over their lifetimes. Moreover, the multicultural experiences of many great artists defy their association with a single country or […]
The Farm Novel
Literature of The Land In the wake of industrialization and associated currents of social change, the farm novel appeared in the eighteenth century as a distinct genre beginning with works like Patrice Lacomb’s story of French-Canadian country life La Terre Paternelle (1846, later translated into English as The Ancestral Farm). A concurrent European phenomenon led […]