Richard A. Thompson
Mar. 22nd, 2012 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nx74defiantRichard Thompson author of Big Wheat spoke at the Stillwater Library on March 21st.
The Stillwater Library is a beautiful old building.
I learned a lot of the era of the Threshers. How the Thrashers were to big and expensive for an individual farmer to buy and farmers were not big on communal property. The Thrashers would start in the south and move north in a big wave as Harvest time come. It was like a Circus. They brought with them repair people, speakeasy, etc. When they left some people would disappear, Especial young men in search of adventure, or a fresh start.
During World War I the government decided we would be the "Bread Basket" of the world. they set up subsidies. The Thresher and subsidies ushered in the change form balanced farming (a self sufficent mixture of crops and animals) to cash crop farms (all one crop). The dust bowl was an outcome that was brought on by our own actions.
The Stillwater Library is a beautiful old building.
I learned a lot of the era of the Threshers. How the Thrashers were to big and expensive for an individual farmer to buy and farmers were not big on communal property. The Thrashers would start in the south and move north in a big wave as Harvest time come. It was like a Circus. They brought with them repair people, speakeasy, etc. When they left some people would disappear, Especial young men in search of adventure, or a fresh start.
During World War I the government decided we would be the "Bread Basket" of the world. they set up subsidies. The Thresher and subsidies ushered in the change form balanced farming (a self sufficent mixture of crops and animals) to cash crop farms (all one crop). The dust bowl was an outcome that was brought on by our own actions.
