Icon not understand it...

One of agriculture's most enduring cultural icons has been the windmill.


I mean, what would we print on our checks and business cards without gambrel barns, windmills, and domed silos?

More importantly what does it say that we have no images from agriculture as we now practice it that we embrace as evocative of our way of life? We clothe ourselves in a past that has not just faded in reality but nearly from memory. I've never had any of the three (or even a narrow-front tractor) on my farm in my life, for example.

Indeed, to keep the memory of windmills going there is a Windmill Museum in Lubbock, TX. (If you are going by, stop in a post a note about your experience.)

Farmers wonder and occasionally fume that others consider them stuck in the 1950's. Consider this current quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Nearly every well-equipped farm has at least one silo—a tall cylindrical structure in which slightly fermented fodder is stored in a controlled environment for use as animal feed. This stored fodder, called silage, or ensilage, rivals fresh feed in providing the nutrients necessary for livestock.

Maybe we are - in our minds.