Thursday, June 14, 2007

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.

9 comments:

Bobby said...

Drive around Kossuth county and you will see some of the original (from the 1800's) windmills.

Anonymous said...

Back when there were barns and windmills it was a simpler time. Its always nice to remember how it was back then. We maybe didn't have all the conviences we have now. But todays world is a throw away world. Nothing lasts and it wasn't such a secular world we had time to live a relaxed life. Today everyone is in a hurry to make more money so they can have a lot of things they don't need anyway.

Anonymous said...

Back when there were barns and windmills it was a simpler time. Its always nice to remember how it was back then. We maybe didn't have all the conviences we have now. But todays world is a throw away world. Nothing lasts and it wasn't such a secular world we had time to live a relaxed life. Today everyone is in a hurry to make more money so they can have a lot of things they don't need anyway.

Brian said...

In the NW many gambrell barns have been remodeled into taverns, winerys, private homes, flea markets, cheese factory's, bed&bkfst, nearly every kind of business. The Columbus Day Storm of 1964 demolished many and left a new style of interior wall decor, it has that rustic old world charm apeal to it. Some interior designers have even found rusty steel roofing to be a neat look inside. The windmills loom in front yards of many upper middle class for decor, but you aint nobody unless you've got your liquid tank!

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