Appreciate that regardless we planted back stronger than ever in 2021. We had a great series of Online Events all archived and available for replay at our ab a couple other things about how this is going to work. Marie is going to give to show us photos of her book and will open up to questions. You can ask a question by clicking the ask a question button at the bottom of the screen. Or typing it into the chat window on the righthand side of your screen. We appreciate you asking questions to keep the discussion moving and we want this to be a participatory event as much as we can another thing to note at the bottom of the screen that will take you right to the raven bookstore. Com or we have plenty of these that can ship quickly or if youre in lawrence incan delivered to your house tomorrow afternoon for free. Without further ado lets get to american harvest its a thoughtful and important look at the intersection of faith and landscape and were really excited we cant wait to hear her talk about it. Its a finalist for the panel open book award. Shes written for the New York Times national geographic, glamour, other publications the core faculty member abshe lives in san francisco, she is coming to us from the peninsula in california today, please welcome marie mockett. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Im so glad we get to meet even in this racial space. Is that for me . Thats the clue for me to start my presentation i take it . Yes. I have a few a few photos that i have a little presentation around american harvest to explain what it is to you the opening line was this is a land of primary colors. Here are some of the primary colors are referred to in the book large combines. Most farmers i know referred to combine people outside of farming often referred to combine harvesters. This is kind of the backdrop against which american harvest is set. To give you a little bit more historical background i live in california but my fathers side of the family. My father was american both sets of his grandparents immigrated to nebraska abenglish but born in spain and then came to the United States camden new jersey and then became the Union Pacific Railroad Doctor and moved to western nebraska and here he is driving his horse and buggy no doubt off to go help somebody who is sick somewhere in the prairie. I use do you read these historical notes about how he became famous in that part of nebraska during 1918 flu epidemic. He would drive abhire people to drive him from homestead homestead. I used to think that story was amusing because i thought it would probably be portions of why my family has a tendency to drive for as many hours as they can before stopping to sleep at the side of the road. Now of course i think its amazing because i realized he participated in trying to relieve some of the suffering during a pandemic. It made me reflect on that stickslect on that story much different. Both my grandparents purchased or were bartered tracts of land in nebraska and colorado, which became our family wheat farm. This is a picture of my other greatgrandfather who was the town dentist. Kind of amazing i have this picture. There is my great grandfather melvin and his wife mildred doing what farmers do, inspecting the crops. My father was born in nebraska and in the footnotes version of events went to vienna austria, let my mother who was from japan, they got married in nebraska. Heres my mother and her first ever christmas. They got married and had me. Here we are on one of our pieces of farmland. I actually remember this. We were having a cookout and my mom made both were hats. My mother adjusting the family life in the United States, this is a picture from probably the late 60s early 70s and the point i wanted to make was if you have a lot of farm ground and grow wheat you actually have to cut it. That has been made easier in the 20th century by this machine called the combine. The combine harvester. Its a picture my grandmother looking at an old machine. Heres a picture of the newer version of the machines. This is a photo that was taken maybe three years ago. I think one of biggest differences you might notice is how long ais on the front the header the piece that actually cuts the meat and then sense the cut week heads to be thrashed and later the grain is separated from the head of the wheat and echoes the back of the combine. His front part thats much larger and therefore more efficient at cutting the wheat. Farmers like us higher men like this gentleman eric awho is the main character in american harvest come year after year to cut the wheat rather than having the equipment to do it ourselves there are a number of farmers to do this. We do this for a number of reasons. I go into that into american harvest but combine equipment is very expensive and can make more sense financially for farmers to have abpeople come into proof the week. Eric becomes a major character and american harvest along with his son justin on the left. The bulk of the narrative in the conversation is constructed around the american harvest is constructed around conversations i had with eric and justin. Every year eric gets ready he loads up his equipment on the back of the truck. This is a photo that was taken by a drone i think by the character in the book whose name is samuel and after loading up equipment like this eric and his crew drive about 1700 miles from Lancaster County to texas where the american wheat harvest begins. I have here a map for you which shows you what the journey look like. The blue dotted line is the harvest journey that eric takes every year this is the route i follow the spine of the story of american harvest. In this map included a couple of other historical roots the greenline showed historical cattle trail the red line is the oregon trail route the mormon trail route would be very almost parallel to that organ trail route and you can see the Union Pacific railroad. You can see how the harvester i took in 2017 intersects with a lot of famous roads to Early American History a lot of the details from the stories around those appearing american harvest. Its a movable campsite. The laundry hung up to you i think somebody put up the American Flag etiquette looks nice in the picture. Every sunday we go to church which was a new experience for me. There are a lot of conversations around religion in the book. Cutting wheat in the middle of nowhere means that sometimes things break down and you are miles from town so the guys who eric hires to work for him not only can drive the equipment but are very good at fixing it and it was just a picture we took up three of the guys in the crew who had come across a problem with one of the machines and on the back of the Service Truck building new parts and fixing whatever was broken so the combine could be fixed quickly and go back into service. Its a very different way of life than my friends in the city have where if a car breaks down you take it to a mechanic you take it to a shop wait for someone else to fix it to get the car back and thats not really the way it works on a farm. Generally these guys try to fix themselves faster and cheaper and time is always something everybody worries about with farming you want to get the crop out when its right before its destroyed by natural elements. Our journey meant to we were exposed to many scenes of great beauties. This is a picture i took last year in nebraska one of those amazing great plains sunsets im just going to leave this root here up again so you can imagine in your mind where the story takes place actually i think the first loads of equipment already on the road heading to texas because the wheat harvest will probably start in early may this year too. You can see how the route goes up through oklahoma and up to western kansas and into the colorado nebraska and a long journey thats a little background for american harvest. I will come back to what the virtual conversation is. Those photos are gorgeous. What a great way to have a document not only a book youve written with experience but also the gorgeous photos you glanced at it at the end of your talk. Im certainly wondering about the effect the effect of coronavirus on these harvesters. Have they been declared essential . Business as usual or . I think it is business as usual for them. I saw a photo the other day they loaded up the bricks. They loaded up the equipment that has to move from pennsylvania from the staging area. I think they actually shut everything up first in oklahoma before taking it to texas. The equipment is already on its way. Its business as usual. I hadnt heard the last time i had spoken to eric i dont know what the update is on that but thats a problem its can be affecting also harvest crews use International Workers because so Many Americans go to college in september and open harvest extends through september into october depending on how far people go. I think theyre not able to get into the country this year. It had already become more and more difficult with more and more paperwork. You cant leave the wheat in the field. Harvesters are on their way to cut the grain for us. I wonder with church being such an essential part of their life, that will be different i imagine thomas unless Church Services are gathering. I was wondering about that. Im sure they will continue to go to Church Although i dont know if its going to be Virtual Church which they watch live stream over a computer and a trailer or if they do some version of abin a trailer with purple or personal bible site. I dont know what the orders can be like for social gatherings. Its already burying a little bit in terms of what is and whats not. This crew is going to be starting in texas and going to up to oklahoma. I can imagine a scenario in which churches start to meet again its gonna require more improvisation. Heres another question from the audience. Given the time and research there must be a lot that didnt make it into the book. Whats the favorite detail but didnt make the final edit . There was a second scene in texas. Its a scene where ive never been hunting before as people who live in rural parts of america no. There was introduced to me and i go on a hunt. The second pic was taken out that was to god because i was trying to capture the feeling of incredible and crazy adrenaline you have. But it didnt fit in with the characters front and center. So the first chapter was really long and they had to keep all of that material. So that would be some of that. And so with this process i am always wondering we have written a memoir if it is nonfiction. And with those two different types of projects. And i intended this very much not to be where that was the character the problem that i ran into. I am female come i couldnt fade into the background. And i kept having experiences that it that was interrupting with the narrative i thought would be which is me describing what the harvesters were doing so that people at home could understand how it was how this happened in those interruptions became more intense and then the story were the harvest takes place we were on an indian reservation it was owned by Indian Tribes and farmed by the mormon settlers and thats a complicated piece of American History and even to focus on harvesting because everywhere i went people thought i was native american i couldnt just pretend this was happening and that we were on the indian reservation. So it profoundly affected the shape the story took. So my editor read the first draft and said you initially appear on page 80 and thats when i realized i will have to be a character and then to reinsert my presence at the beginning so that was an interesting experience. That strikes me that even they became a character in the book because that would be disingenuous and it speaks to issues of identity and all other kinds of interesting things they are dealing with. Do you see any correlation around current debate of cobit 19 as an urban resident to find very interesting what you have to say about this. I love this question because justin was a significant character in the book i was thinking about that this morning. I have a childhood friend who lives outside of the city to keep saying the infection rate is incredibly low it wont hurt to be open for business but i said it is lower than is lower than we thought because they are sheltering in place but its hard for him to understand because he doesnt live in the urban setting how greater activity could inhibit that infection rate or death rate even higher. So i file cobit 19 has revealed the difference between the lifestyles that we live and how we work which is very different. And the next time i have to look at somebody from the midwest that did that they new yorkers are rude i will say how people in the midwest command we reopen the state. And that kind of rhetoric that is unhelpful. And this continues to highlight. The two things that are relevant are going on is the current garden city in the meek and non in the meatpacking plant so we are containing the virus into bouncing around what churches can or cant do in there was a church that is trying to keep the services in person and also the metric between those the more cosmopolitan and urban point of view, so yeah it is interesting. A few weeks ago i had this conversation with eric on the phone and talking about how cobit 19 has impacted farming i wrote a piece for salon that was published but in that conversation he said to me with the meatpacking and meet facilities and this was weeks ago and now that somebody has a comment on south dakota and iowa and also nebraska anywhere along that interstate 80 you can see how the virus is spreading across the United States and impacting farmhouses and facilities and with the meat shortage. It is interesting. And those who live far away from us. The very idea to be essential is an important question. In the question of who is essential medical people and medical personnel not like we sat at home on our hands because that is essential. Heres an interesting question from the audience. So in what ways is that so hard but before you answer that how long were you on the road camping alongside them . Can you talk about the process of the book and then answer the question. And the harvesters all the way through to september maybe be a little shy of that and then leave and come back and to give you an understanding have extraordinary the people are and to that he had purchased an additional trailer that he has a trailer for the guys to say about a new trailer for the girls and then go along for harvest and then i really fully understood the implications of what that meant and he was extraordinary and just an open and we had had another conversation about farming that he knows that better than i do and was trying hard to share his now knowledge of every culture about chicken farms and the dairy farms et cetera and get a whole picture of agriculture and then what happened was in 2016 he was very nervous before the election nobody thought donald trump would when and then he comes it and eric that one of the reasons why is you do have this understanding the way our country works so that was the decision the invitation was put forward to develop an even more a picture of the urban and rural divide. So that is the background to the book. And as far as how difficult it was, its only difficult in the sense i didnt always understand what was happening but also a degree there like being placed in a situation like that so it is challenging but is not like an unwelcome challenge and those are the conversations that i generally like to have. What was one of the biggest surprises to you about writing the book . The biggest would be that i had to ask the question of what christianity was and if there was anything i could understand about it and all the conversations around that were surprising and wonderful to me. And with my a deeper understanding of American History surprised me then and continues to surprise me now somebody asked me some of the biggest lessons i had learned and i only recently thought of this understand why the Founding Fathers said when they discover the continent for them to produce enough food to feed their population and very few countries could do that. Talk about Food Shortages in the United States those that are lining up at we have the capacity to create calories for everyone to exhume on consume my mother grew up in japan after the war so there were a number of years of starvation because japan had colonized korea moving the farming off of the main island of japan because it could not produce enough food of the population. And it made me understand among other things the incredible greed that we had initially because it would be extraordinary to have a landmass to feed enough people. And to understand to the degree is not comfortable but it is amazing for those that produce enough food for their own population i think china produces enough calories to feed itself either. I suppose thats a surprise to me as well. Thank you for bringing that up. So with American History to what extent is there the awareness of the people you have spent time with . We do go into that a little bit in the book different characters have different degrees of awareness of American History and those moments where she says how long am i supposed to feel bad of the history of the native americans in this country . With a series of other conversations the answer is reconciliation isnt about feeling bad but be aware of other peoples stories. The way you see different characters trying to demonstrate awareness they may not have had before and some do not change their behavior unnecessarily. But that is a dark and uncomfortable questions some of the darkest moments in the book happen around that question and as a writer that this is not my story to tell that here we are living on the rv park in the indian reservation and then be invited to participate so that something i could not shy away from. So to hear the way the different characters led to the history and understood the history that there is a point where im having a conversation with the woman who is native american who adopted the mormon faith because we were in righteous because it was so distressing to hear because there is a way this has been justified and its an attitude that people continue to have and then to wield against each other. And then to see how the impacted people and their sense of security and stability and happiness. And deeply distressing and something we can live with. I notice that you call the people in the book and one of the characters that it strikes me as very interesting as anyone in the book of they read it back. Yes. How did that feel to know that people . It had to be done. He did a book i have written they need it or they dont read it. It seems to matter more it was written and the questions to ask and thats the job. I can tell you from the record not off the record. [laughter] and so with this sort of project to my friends write nonfiction. And they are called the subjects. And this is the way the project competes and so im trying Something Different but it was important to me to be honest and i was very aware of very early on the conventional narrative those attitudes that i would be expected to have. And its important to me and not have that as i go forward and write the book. And its not my personality anyway. Is somebody said if you write a book about the farm then you need to go back and live on the farm and most people from the city dont go back and live on the farm so even if you think that that supposed to be is not an accurate reflection we for an aging population of farmers and diminishing numbers i dont know what will happen as a result of the pandemic and we think we know how its supposed to go that week carry those biases how its told and its important. How would you characterize that relationship to the farm . I am not the person who knows how to fix the equipment when it breaks that was what my father would say to me. I was writing the book talking about farming he would say to me two things. The farm grows itself you cant farm you dont know how to fix anything. Because i lived in the city because my responses i will call the expert who knows how to fix it. I know the guy who fixes a car, the plumbing, thats not the way most farmers live they live on a wonderful code of selfreliance. And i dont know how to fix things. And by the same token whenever im out with one of the guys they will say to me i wish i had farmland. If i wanted to break into farming it would cost me 700,000 minimum and now we have this credible privilege it would be wasteful for me to say i dont know how to farm so i shouldnt so i dont know what my relationship is to the land and what it will be. I am a landlord which is not an attractive title. So i dont know. Using that as a launchpad is certainly good use of the land spec if i werent to write i would not be able to write the book and its true i try to do something constructive with it but there is also a part of me i will never know the land as well as people who farm it. There is a question here from the audience what connections do you make about the landscape from the area that you traveled and written about in japan . What connections . Im not sure what that means like how do people relate to the land what i think about the relationship of the land and the land of japan . I think i understand what the question means. I have thought a lot about how the process modernization people carry globalization a lot and i understand that term but i think a lot about the process of modernization which overlaps with globalization but is slightly different. We see the same process happening especially before the pandemic that modernizes people leave the countryside they leave their aquarian jobs and moved to the city and that impact traditional cultures and exacerbates others and they certainly saw that happen in japan. In the same way it happens in the United States and ways that i investigated traditional folk religions are preserved in the countryside in a way they are not in the city in japan so very old traditions are preserved the way they are not in the city because it is a younger country is still see the rural urban tension in terms of people leaving the rural area to go live in the city for the knowledge worker job and how that can exacerbate tensions and ive had these moving experiences to go to japan as a child in be taking care of of our rice farmer and parttime when a tourist comes by they dont let the people of the town take care of the temple and with these Rural Communities not sure quite what the question was but initially thats what comes to mind. Its interesting and thoughtful and well said regardless. And those that practice this agriculture and Rural Communities since i have been sheltering in place i have ordered a lot of bowls i planted them a couple weeks ago and now i have faith in the process just hasnt quite come out of the ground yet. I think a good farmer would not do that. [laughter] so it makes sense some traditions that we revolve around and then to preserve life existed Rural Communities and ways they dont in the city way we schedule our lives and our time. Host having spent so much time traveling and writing about the urban rural divide , do you see any way to fastforward for the Mutual Understanding . That such a great question. If i could come up with three bullet points and pretend that i did, i could probably make major media are really happy that its hard and i resist the temptation to say this is all we need to do so i have two things to say the first is in this book you see me have really Difficult Conversations with people who are very different than im and they are around god and evolution and gender that didnt get turned over and talked about but my hope is other people can say look at these conversations maybe i can help i really hope we have a leader in november who doesnt exacerbate her differences or talk down to farmers who doesnt talk down to anybody and speak in a way that is intelligent that would be very helpful. Because right now the problems are exacerbated by having a leader in place that likes to inflame the population and seems to thrive on people being riled up and upset and thats not helpful. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was fascinating and wonderful and important. Thank you for having me be a part of the festival im sad i didnt get to be there in person but i do appreciate we can share like this. I hope people buy books and if its not my book i hope they buy a book. American harvest. Now in a beautiful hardcover published in the center of the country you can buy by a clicking on the button we have plenty in stock they will be shipped out on monday we will see you next year in real life. Thank you hi there welcome back to National Book festival with timely subjects and big ideas brought to you by the library of congress. My name is marie on the literary director of the library of congress our program today features a distinguished professor of American History from harvard university
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