While a combine reaps the wheat does the truck wait on the harvester or keep an eye out? Perhaps you, as I, find the simplicity of all this calming. There are seven parts. On top the sky and then descending, the cloud, the haze, the distant ridge, the combine, the truck and the golden wheat, and all of them given room - a peaceable kingdom. (For all but the gluten intolerant.)
I’m unfond of agribusiness, but this photo makes me realize that it’s the right business to be in if you want a business that sells itself gloriously in culturally charged imagery. I suffer from chronic (maybe even terminal) romantic pastoralism, which makes me look at a picture like this and idealize everything in it. I want that truck, f’rinstance. And that workday. I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors. On the back porch of the farmhouse. I’m a believer. I believe in this image. And yet, stepping back a moment I am struck to think how even so long ago — when was this taken? — it is likely that this was not an 80-acre family farm. The bank was already running this show. Still, what an image!
Matt
I have such trust in your imagination that I went along with “I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors.” Like turning water into wine at the wedding at Canaan I thought you were making a mash of reconstituted wheat (from bread) mixed with wine of your own making (with fermentation and not miraculously) or from Trader Joe’s.
Paul
Matt – correction inside
I have such trust in your imagination that I went along with “I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors.” Like turning water into wine at the wedding at Canaan I thought you were making a mash of reconstituted wheat (from bread – aka flour) mixed with wine of your own making (with fermentation and not miraculously) or from Trader Joe’s.
Paul
I’m unfond of agribusiness, but this photo makes me realize that it’s the right business to be in if you want a business that sells itself gloriously in culturally charged imagery. I suffer from chronic (maybe even terminal) romantic pastoralism, which makes me look at a picture like this and idealize everything in it. I want that truck, f’rinstance. And that workday. I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors. On the back porch of the farmhouse. I’m a believer. I believe in this image. And yet, stepping back a moment I am struck to think how even so long ago — when was this taken? — it is likely that this was not an 80-acre family farm. The bank was already running this show. Still, what an image!
Bread from the flour.
Matt
I have such trust in your imagination that I went along with “I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors.” Like turning water into wine at the wedding at Canaan I thought you were making a mash of reconstituted wheat (from bread) mixed with wine of your own making (with fermentation and not miraculously) or from Trader Joe’s.
Paul
Matt – correction inside
I have such trust in your imagination that I went along with “I want to make flour from that wheat and wheat from the bread and eat it with my neighbors.” Like turning water into wine at the wedding at Canaan I thought you were making a mash of reconstituted wheat (from bread – aka flour) mixed with wine of your own making (with fermentation and not miraculously) or from Trader Joe’s.
Paul