Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Fixing the Farmall

Photo by Salt Water New England

 

11 comments:

  1. Introducing the new Mercer and JD Home and Engine Repair lines Pairs beautifully with Bosie or Arthur Beale for cool weather repairs!

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  2. The endless task of working the land! Thank you so very much!

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  3. Just how I imagine E.B. White fixing his tractor on a saltwater farm in Maine a-la "One Man's Meat".

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  4. This must be an emergency fix to wear those clothes and work on a tractor. We all know the pain of dirtied and wet knees!

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  5. Look closely please. Those pants are “work clothes.”

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  6. Farmers do it all. They are welders, mechanics, carpenters, and painters. To say nothing about their crop cultivation and animal husbandry skills.

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    Replies
    1. My fiancée's brother came to visit last week. He's a New England (MA) farmer. He had some interesting ideas to share with me.

      1. He makes very, very little in terms of profit. The most profitable thing he grows is hay, and that income is very seasonal.

      2. His primary income is as a mechanic. He fixes others' farm equipment at a discount rate (as compared to OEM rate) and he's able to earn a good income because of this.

      I fear that farmers who were once all of those things are now a relic of the past. Farmers are now considered mindless drones who operate machinery that does all of the work for them. With the advent of technology, and in an era where they are no longer permitted to repair their own tools, they are reduced to mindless machines that man even more mindless machines, they become beholden to corporate interests.

      The gentleman pictured is an exception to the rule -- farmers are members of the most impoverished groups in American history. There is little money to be made in farming, but they keep doing it. To my mind, this holds more closely to the form of American idealism I find in this comment section that anything else.

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