Category: Book Review

The Grapes of Wrath Is Mostly Farming Gripes–Hardly Any Grapes

~ sanebishop ~ 15 Comments

The Grapes of Wrath is not the viticulture guide you’d expect. It certainly has nothing to do with grape culture in Cape Wrath, Scotland. Furthermore, the few mentions of grapes leave the reader wondering whether Mr. Steinbeck means bunch grapes, wine grapes, muscadines, scuppernongs, or some other minor Vitis species. This is a somewhat baffling oversight considering that, in all other respects, the author describes scenes and dialog in marvelous detail, producing a tome of over 550 pages. 

Though the title is a misnomer, the book itself isn’t without agricultural merit and  provides a practical method to make farmland profitable. The steps are as follow: 1) work as a higher-up in a big bank 2) provide loans to farmers for basic farming supplies and equipment, with farms put up as collateral 3) wait for a farm crisis, like the Dust Bowl, to cause farmers to default on loans 4) foreclose on farms, forcing small farmers off the land 5) sell bank-owned farmland to bigger farmers 6) reap the profit and wait for the next farm crisis to repeat. 

Succeed at separating enough families from the land, and you can cause a mass migration of desperate, displaced people who can be further exploited for cheap labor in other locales (at least if they don’t starve to death first). Though this book was first published in 1939, the scheme is pretty much still doable, hence the large population of migrant workers used to harvest fruit crops today, most of whom are exempt from minimum wage laws because they’re paid piecewise for the backbreaking opportunity to pick America’s fruit.

Admittedly, to get to the juicy parts about farming philosophy, you’ll have to wade through a lot of fluff about the Joad family, many of whom–spoiler alert!– die pitiful deaths. In fact, the book paints a pretty dismal picture for your average displaced farm laborer and small family farmer. Thus, for a more upbeat and optimistic farming read, I suggest Snail Farming for Profit by Anton Smithers. 

Animal Farm, more like Make-Believe Farm.

~ sanebishop ~ 15 Comments

The following book review first appeared on Goodreads, a social media platform for voracious–and novice–readers alike.

Animal Farm by George Orwell.

TheMisfitFarmer rated this book three out of five stars.

Shelves: agriculture

After an slightly embarrassing incident of misidentifying a sheered sheep for a goat, I took my neighboring farmer’s advice to heart and began a thorough study of animal husbandry, starting with old and forgotten books (#freeonKindle) to gain a solid foundation of practical farm know-how. That’s how I ran across this slim volume with such a direct and promising title.

I had high hopes for this work, but recommend it only for the most novice of farmers as it imparts merely basic farming advice–and relies on a distracting (and silly if you ask me) depiction of talking farm animals to do so. For instance, in the first few pages, the pigs get together and decree, “No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade.” As you can see, that’s pretty much stating the obvious when it comes to farming advice, though I imagine some oddballs might be tempted to dress chickens in baby clothes when no one’s around. 

The major flaw in Mr. Orwell’s farming guide is obvious, namely that it lacks any instruction on fence building, which is a strange oversight for a book focused entirely on raising livestock.

Still, a few gems of animal husbandry are found scattered in this work, which I might as well tell you so you don’t waste time reading all the extraneous bits: 1) Never let animals hold secret meetings in the barn 2) Never let pigs attain positions of leadership 3) Names of farm animals can be self-fulling, so it’s best to stick to names like Bacon and Porkchop and avoid those of dictators like Napoleon. 

For a more in-depth and nuanced look at livestock management, I highly recommend E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.

(If you’re on Goodreads, friend me to follow my agricultural reading progress.)

Book Review: Rust: The Longest War.

~ sanebishop ~ 1 Comment

At the library, I saw this book on an endcap, calling to me like a rusty tractor implement in the weeds. I couldn’t believe it: someone actually wrote a book, a whole full-length book, about rust–and a legit publisher, like Simon and Schuster, actually published it. I’m glad they did because Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman was an interesting read, though, full disclosure, I’ve invested a lot in rusty farm equipment over the years so I might be a little biased.

Apparently, rust is considered bad by most people who don’t enjoy working on broke-down farm machinery or getting tetanus shots. Also, from reading this book, I learned that most people don’t like rust-flavored drinks, which is why the formulas for aluminum can coatings are guarded like state secrets–that, and most can coatings contain BPA (a factoid that can companies want to keep under wraps). BPA is that pesky chemical that is probably doing bad things to my body right now because I drink entirely too many Diet Cokes straight from the can.

Anyway, this book has lots of rust-related stories. The author actually infiltrated Ball’s Can School (the company that makes Ball canning jars also makes most of the aluminum cans for drink companies, who woulda thunk?) in which drink industry people, most of whom are mustachioed, get together and learn about the complexities of aluminum cans.

The author also tells the story of the eccentric guy who created stainless steel and details a group of brave Department of Defense employees who saved taxpayers a lot of money by promoting rust prevention over rust repair. The author calls this group the “Rusketeers.” Kudos to Jonathan Waldman for thinking of rusketeers and writing a good read on rust.

“On a quiet night, you can hear a Ford rust.”

From Rust: the Longest War

My rusty Ford 4610.

Book Review: Flat Broke with Two Goats

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At the library, I stumbled upon Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer Mcgaha. I thought the title indicated something in the agrarian humor genre. I thought wrong. This book is a bluntly honest memoir, recipes included–think Ron Rash’s Appalachian grittiness sprinkled into Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The setting is rural western North Carolina. At times, the subject matter, which includes a vivid description of domestic abuse, is intense and heart-rending. But once chickens and goats arrive on the premises, the story takes an uplifting turn. The writing is top-notch, with a poetic rhythm; here’s a passage:  

“My grandmother grew up on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina, and in her recollections, farm life was never idyllic. The work was backbreaking and constant, food hard to come by. On frigid winter mornings, she woke covered with snow that had drifted through the slats  in the bedroom walls. Still, her stories made me dream of the three-room log cabin in which she was raised, of her nine brothers and sisters, of the mother who cooked dinner for twelve on a woodstove, of the father who spent his days plowing fields and hoeing potatoes, tending cows and hogs and chickens.”